How could a just and loving God allow so much misery on His earth? Mam went to church like everybody else only because she hated to have fingers pointed at her. She had heard stories of women being burnt as witches for much less, but her heart was never in it. She liked Father Anthony Ross as a man but only because he was the son of Molly Ross, a good childhood friend. She had known Anthony as a bairn, and had always liked his cheerful disposition and his ready laughter. He let her air her feelings about “your God” when there were no strangers around. The priest knew that Mrs Mackenzie meant every word she said, but cleverly made as if it was all banter and laughed it off, grateful that the woman was intelligent enough not to put him on the spot when in company. He tut tutted with feigned severity and winked at her as they parted. Having made her point, she was willing to leave it at that.
Image credit: Public domain, “The Artist’s Mother” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1860
Read about Mhairi »
Book 1
Chapter 3: Year of the Sheep
(Scottish Highlands, 1792)
The granny-to-be was overjoyed at the news of the new addition, but in keeping with her no-nonsense nature, her first reaction was, 'What? Another mouth to f...
Chapter 7: Insurrection in the Highlands
(Scottish Highlands, 1792)
The seed for the insurrection had scarcely been put into the all too fertile soil of discontent, had not even been watered by illicit brew, than it had sprou...
Chapter 11: Inverness and Cromarty
(Scottish Highlands, 1795)
‘We are at the dawn of a new age,’ he said with an almost religious fervour, ‘soon the country will be unrecognisable, it will be the age o...
Chapter 13: Strathnaver
(Scottish Highlands, 1800s)
One night Mam surprised everybody by telling the young pair that if they stopped fighting, she would tell them a story. Hugh did not remember her telling him...
Chapter 15: Dunrobin
(Dunrobin, Scotland, Early 1812)
On that cold spring afternoon, with scattered snow still covering the tops of ridges, Sir John Sinclair sat in his coach dressed in his finest, feeling that ...
Chapter 17: Clearance
(Highlands, 1800s)
What happened next was something nobody was prepared for. A few weeks later, Hugh had gone to Golspie and was drowning his sorrow in a tankard of ale at the ...
Book 2
Book 2 Chapter 9: Atlantic
(Crossing to Canada, 1800s)
They had all told her that for an unmarried mother, life in the Highlands was going to be unbearable, and urged her to go to Canada with John Robert.