In the Year Of The Sheep and the burnin’ time They cut our young men in their prime The old Scots way was a hangin’ crime For the Gaels of Caledonia There’s a den for the fox, a hedge for the hare A nest in the tree for the birds of the air But in a’ Scotland there’s no place there for the Gaels of Caledonia
Chorus: But there’s no use getting’ frantic It’s time tae hump yer load Across the wild Atlantic On the Destitution Road
The bailiff came wi’ the writ and a’ And the gallant lads of the Forty Twa They drove ye oot in the sleet and snaw The Gaels of Caledonia When yer house was burned and yer crops as well Ye stood and wept in the blackened shell And the winter moor was a living hell For the Gaels of Caledonia
The plague and the famine they dragged ye doon As ye made yer way tae Glesga toon Where ye’d heard o’ a ship that was sailin’ soon For the shores of Nova Scotia And ye sold yer gear, ye paid yer fare Wi’ yer heid held high though yer heart was sair And ye bid farewell forever mair Tae the glens of Caledonia
The land was cleared and the deal was made Noo an English lord in a tartan plaid He struts and stares as the memories fade Of the Gaels of Caledonia And he hunts the deer in the lonely glen That once was home to a thousand men And the wind on the moor sings a sad refrain For the Gaels of Caledonia
Notes
Many thanks to Alistair Hulett for permission to add this song to the Union Songs collection.
Alistair writes: The time in Scotland known as the Highland Clearances was a government led assault on the non-English speaking tribal societies - the clansfolk, that had existed there for countless centuries. From it’s inception in 1792, when it was called in Gaelic by its victims Bliadhna nan Caorach, meaning The Year Of the Sheep, till it finally ended nearly eighty years later, this was a period of incredible violence and cruelty carried out in the name of modernisation. Wool was seen by the clan chiefs as a better source of profit than rent, and the government agreed. Many sold their lands to southern capitalist farmers while others carried out the clearings themselves. In all cases the military gave assistance in what amounted to a programme of ‘ethnic cleansing’.
Hard on the heels of The Year of the Sheep came The Year of the Burnings, when any hope of return was put to the torch and destroyed. Capitalist farming methods and the introduction of sheep to the glens gave rise a process of physical and cultural genocide that has left the Scottish Highlands barren of its human population to this day. The passage out of the Highlands in those times was known as The Destitution Road.