On this day, 11 January 1883, an unfortunate official was despatched from Glasgow to serve court orders on the highest-profile rebels during the Hebridean Land Revolt. For some months a rent strike had held strong on Skye’s most westerly peninsula, provoked by the denial of traditional grazing rights on a hill that had been let for sheep farming. Exhausted by the hostility he faced, the sheep farmer declined to renew his lease, lamenting that the crofters “went about with pitch-forks and scythes and poles pointed with iron or steel, and it was a mercy no one would serve the processes upon them, or they would have murdered him sure enough. You cannot get a sheriff’s officer to serve a process on any tenant in Skye.” Recognising this, the Sheriff requested that Skye be invaded by the navy, but this was initially not agreed. And so, on 11 January the Messenger at Arms set forth from Dunvegan with just two police officers. They reached the bridge that crosses the Hamara River, where the path was blocked by a crowd of 60 crofters. Along the glen, others were blowing horns to summon their neighbours. The Messenger at Arms approached the crowd with his ceremonial wand of peace upheld, but he later reported that crofters “gave me a push which shoved me back some four or five yards, saying ‘turn back now, you won’t be allowed to go further towards Milovaig.’” Then, in case this wasn’t understood, the crowd, which grew to number 200, followed the lawmen through the townships of Fasach, Colbost, and Skinidin, and drove them across the Brunigil Burn. Along the way they occasionally lobbed stones and tripped and clubbed their victims, while yelling “Let him be caught alive so that we can put him in a peat bog.” According to one version, by the time they’d been pushed off the estate, the Messenger and his assistant were vomiting blood. The revolt continued to spread across the island and beyond.
Pictured: crofters in revolt, 1888 https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1896369157214892/?type=3
Do you have any special places you wish you could visit and explore, but are way too far away? I wish to visit Vele di Scampia in its full post-apocalyptic glory before it gets torn down, but I absolutely will not fly to Naples for such frivolous reason.
