HIGHLAND CLEARANCES

At one time, Mull’s population was much larger, but with numbers approaching 10,000, it was considered to be unsustainably high. Sheep were seen as a better asset than people, and through the early decades of the 19th century, the Highland Clearances took place, during which communities were evicted from their homes to make more land available for grazing. The manner in which the Clearances were carried out caused justifiable outrage, and some of the worst were on Mull. Glen Gorm got its name, it is said, because of the smoke rising from the burning houses; ‘gorm’ meaning ‘blue-grey’ in Gaelic. Evidence of all this does not take long to find. Many is the ruined cottage left in a corner of the interior or on one of the edges of the west coast. A large number of those evicted were transported to North America, and some of the loveliest Gaelic songs from Mull are about saying farewell.