It was a great source of joy to Hugh that his formidable mother and his meek Martha, who was all sweetness and light, got on so well. Not that Mam kept her criticisms of what she saw as the failings of the younger woman to herself. She was wanting in organisational skills, used too much soap when she did the laundry, spilled too much oatmeal when she made bread, but Martha shrugged these pinpricks off because she knew the old lady meant well, and hardly gave them any thought.
Image credit: Public domain, “Mac Nicol”. A plate illustrated by R. R. McIan, from James Logan’s The Clans of the Scottish Highlands, published in 1845
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Read about Martha »
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.