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Now clanship is but a name: a Seaforth Mackenzie is no longer chief in Kintail, and the Macrae who has succeeded his forbears in Achnagart finds the bunch of heather and the L5 alike superseded by the very far other than nominal rent of L1000.
Achnagart with his L1000 a year rental by no means tops the sheep-farming rentals of his county. Perhaps Robertson of Achiltie, whose sheep-walks stretch up on to the snow-patched shoulders of Ben Wyvis and far away west to Loch Broom, pays the highest sheep-farming rental in Ross-shire, when the factor has pocketed his half-yearly check for L800.
The oldest sheep-farming family in Scotland are the Mackinnons of Corrie in Skye. They have been on Corrie for four hundred years and they were holding sheep-farms elsewhere even earlier. The Macraes of Achnagart in Kintail, paid rent to Seaforth for two hundred years.
For as long before they had held Achnagart on the tenure of a bunch of heather exigible annually and their fighting services as good clansmen. Two hundred years ago an annual rental of L5 was substituted for the heather "corve"; the clansmen's service continuing and being rendered up till the '45.
The modern Achnagart with his broad shoulders and burly frame, looks as capable as were any of his ancestry to render personal service to his chief if a demand were made upon him; and very probably would be quite prepared to accept a reduction of his money rental if an obligation to perform feudal clan-service were substituted.
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