United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They thought of their crofts and clachans, where if the land was stingy, the gift of the sea was at hand to supply abundant food. But this was no time for sighs or regrets. The Hudson's Bay traders from Brandon House were waiting for expected goods, and Messrs. Hillier and Heney, who were the Hudson's Bay Company officers for the East Winnipeg District, had arduous duties ahead of them.
We were on the hill road before the sun, for there was the matter of a calf to be seeing to, and it was fine to be alone in the fresh day with the dew still heavy on the green grass and wetting the horse to the fetlocks; and the sun was coming up in the East, and here and there the curl of blue smoke rising up from far-out clachans.
I knew it not; but a herd that I fell in with on the hill told me what town it was, and the names of divers clachans, and the houses of men of substance in the lowlands before me.
In a year after the departure of the clan, the clachans of Crawford and Traquare had lost almost all traces of their old pastoral character. The coal pit had been opened, and great iron furnaces built almost at its mouth.
"I don't think that is quite what I want. Besides, I haven't much time and would sooner keep to the south." "Then ye'll take the high ground and go by tracks the moss-troopers rode, winding up the waters and among the fells, where there's only cothouse clachans and lonely farm-towns.
Sometimes he kept so close to the shore that he rippled the shadows of the great cliffs, and sometimes he ran into little coves and replenished his water-casks, or bought in the seaward clachans a supply of fresh cakes or fish. He met no very bad weather.
In the plantation of Scottish settlers in the North it seems that either for company or mutual protection against the dispossessed children of the soil, the farmhouses are built together in clachans or little groups. After a lapse of years these clachans in some cases expanded into small towns.
Next morning I was early afoot, and well before midday was in sight of the narrows of the Kyle, and the two little stone clachans which face each other across the strip of sea. About two miles from the place at a turn of the road I came upon a farmer's gig, drawn up by the wayside, with the horse cropping the moorland grass. A man sat on the bank smoking, with his left arm hooked in the reins.
"I'll hae you to understand, Dominie Tallisker, that I am laird o' Crawford and Traquare, and I'll hae nae such pliskies played in either o' my clachans." "If you are laird, I am dominie. You ken me weel enough to be sure if this thing is a matter o' conscience to me, neither king nor kaiser can stop me.
When the native population was driven off the good valley lands to the hills of Donegal during the confiscation times, they built their cabins in groups, like the Scotch clachans, for company, perhaps even for protection. Each man broke up, clearing off stones and rooting up whins, the best patch within his reach.
Word Of The Day