dennis - kildonan, once more - double photo

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Kildonan, once more

Seventy years have come to pass

Since first I set my eye

Your wondrous sights to see.

Memories are fading fast,

Memories that come and go

As they dance to senile’s tune.

Childhood memories that flutter by

Of tales of yesteryear,

To be grasped before they die,

Kildonan, once more.

The roar of stags and distant hinds,

The clash of horns on Dhorain high,

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Eagles soaring on the wing,

Salmon leaping in the spring,

Shooting stars on winter nights

And now and then the northern lights,

The wonders of the cosmic might

And on a moonlit night,

So empty, eerie and alone,


Upon the hillside high,

In the ancient crags of time,

You can hear them clear,

The whispered sounds of yesteryear

Echoing from ben to ben.

Echos from the mists of time

Stand witness to the deeds of yore

Until the death of yesteryear,


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O’er the eons they did come,

Ancient Britons, Picts and Gaels,

Vikings bold and strong

And Donan came and built his kil

And spread his gospel wide.

For seven thousand years and more

They sheltered in thy bosom

And then in just a flash of time,

In but a single day, ochone,

Kildonan, no more.

Cast in stone for all to see,

Icons from the distant past,

Ancient houses round and true,

Silent sentinels standing tall,

Pictish brochs eight in all,

The bustling kirk

Where Sage did preach

Now empty and forlorn,

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Kildonan, ochone.

Donan’s god was but a myth!

Laid low by Moray’s satan son,

Well versed was he in thought and deed,

With Edin’s books on right and wrong

And Adam’s laws on wealth to make,

With Betty’s ear and Loch’s as well,

A witch’s cauldron made in hell!

With pious words he set his trap,

Infamous deed for infamous greed

Kildonan, no more.

They came in the early rays of dawn

With fire and cudgel and pistols drawn,

Betty’s edict was read from afar,

Then came the thugs, as if to war.

They fell upon her loyal clan,

Young and old, the sick, the lame,

Driven from heath and hame

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With nothing but the clothes they wore,

For Donan’s god was but a myth!

Kildonan, no more.

From Caen to Kinbrace,

Twelve long miles and more,

A dozen townships all ablaze.

Billowing smoke, its veil did spread

And cast a darkness o’er the land

Save for inferno’s leaping flames

Lit upon the fleeing souls,

Wailing to their god on high,

But Donan’s god was but a myth!

Kildonan, no more.

They huddled on Bunilidh’s shore,

Cast adrift from kith and kin,

Ne’er a hand from kirk or king,

For Betty’s chattels they remain.

But in this, their darkest hour

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A lowland laird an offer made,

A passage to a distant land

And soil to till as-their-own.

Was Donan’s god but a myth?

Kildonan, no more.

And so began an epic trek,

A journey straight from hell

Across the wild Atlantic

To Hudson’s mighty bay.

Towering waves and icebergs too,

Howling gales and arctic freeze,

A typhus plague, the frail laid low

In the graveyard of the deep.

For Donan’s god was but a myth!

Kildonan, no more.

An arctic winter they endured

On Hudson’s frozen shore,

Forty below and blowing snow

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For six long months and more,

Spade and axe did cabins make,

Game and fish their strength did keep,

Winter’s bears they held at bay,

With every challenge that was met

Their spirits they did sore.

Kildonan, once more?

Those that bent to winter’s toll

They laid by Hudson’s shore.

They bowed their heads in prayer

And set their faces to the west,

Seven hundred miles of wilderness

Before the Promised Land,

Canoe and portage by the score,

Blizzards fierce and rapids wild,

O’er marsh and river and forest dense,


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The Promised Land came in sight

By the river in the valley wide,

Selkirk’s earl his vow did keep

With land upon their crops to reap,

They were free and they were strong,

Oppression’s dragon they had slain!

They built a kirk for Donan’s god

And called the place Kildonan,

For Donan’s God was not a myth?

Kildonan, once more!

Kildonan’s seeds they did sow

In the face of nature’s foes,

Grit and toil a miracle wrought,

Golden wheat sprung to the sky

O’er a vast and timeless land,

To the limits of the eye.

A mighty city soon did grow

Around the kirk for Donan’s God.

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The gateway to the west was born.


The silent straths of Sutherland

Their sons and daughters gone,

Bear witness to the folly

Of a tyrant’s heavy hand.

The prairies vast and wide,

Where riches now abide,

And the nation they begot,

Steeped in freedom’s ways,

Bear witness to these words:



- Donald (Dennis) S. MacLeod

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On the 200th Year Anniversary

of the Kildonan Clearances.

‘This poem is dedicated to the memory of all of the peoples of the

Highlands and Islands of Scotland who, in the face of great

adversity, sought freedom, hope and justice beyond these shores.

They and their descendant’s went forth and explored continents,

built great countries and cities and gave their enterprise and

culture to the world. This is their legacy.

Their voices will echo forever through the empty straths and glens

of their homeland.’

Notes:

1. This is a story told in rhythm rather than a poem told in

rhyme.

2. Kildonan and adjacent straths were cleared in stages and

there were at least three ships that sailed to Hudson’s Bay

with settlers at different times. All of the events described

occurred at one time or other over this period in one or more

of the straths.

3. For ease of telling the story has been written as one

continuous event.

4. The trials and tribulations of the settlers caused by the ‘war’

between the North West Company and the Hudson Bay

Company is left for another day.

5. Dhorain – Beinn Dhorain, Strath of Kildonan.

6. Donan – Gaelic priest who brought Christianity to the Picts of

Northwestern Scotland.

7. Kil – hut or church.

8. Ochone – woe is us.

9. Broch – Pictish tower.

10. Sage – Alexander Sage, minister at Kildonan at the time of the

Clearances.

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11. Moray’s satan son – Patrick Sellar, factor for the Sutherland

Estates (also William Young, chief factor), natives of Moray.

12. Edin – Edinburgh University where Patrick Sellar obtained a

law degree.

13. Adam – Adam Smith, father of economics.

14. Betty - Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, Chief of the clan

Sutherland.

15. Loch – James Loch, lowland lawyer, senior advisor to the

Sutherland Estates.

16. Caen, pronounced as in, and presumably named after Caen

in France, was the most easterly of the Kildonan townships.

17. Bunilidh – gaelic name for Helmsdale.

18. Lowland laird (Selkirk’s earl) – Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of

Selkirk.

dennis - kildonan, once more - double photo

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