Sorley Maclean from Raasay, arguably the most important Gaelic poet of the 20thC and a campaigner for Gaelic in Scottish schools and he himself was a teacher on Skye, addresses the issue of poetry from the Clearance period in his book "Ris a Bhruthaich - The Criticism and Prose Writings".

He gives instances of poets who pointed the finger at the instigators of Clearance but a lot of the time everyone is blamed (the English, the Lowlanders, the Shepherds, even the sheep) except those actually responsible.

On one poet it causes him to write "the poem goes on to describe the desolation of the Highlands and to express with great power and even a physical contempt for the Lowland shepherds and farmers, their manners, their talk, their whole being, but not a disparaging word of the noble landlords whose pockets were being filled by the high rents paid by the shepherd farmers. I wonder if Ailean Dall's failure to indict the real authors of the villainy was due to stupidy, or to the intellectual confusion of the day, or to his intention of seeking patronage and subsciptions".

His point is addressed also at Mairi Mhor one of the prominent poets who wrote about the Clearances.

"It is only too common a feature of Gaelic poetry to blame Englishmen and Lowlanders for the crimes of Highland chiefs. This tendency gets an absurd expression in Mairi Mhor's wish to drive the Sasunnaich from Skye, where nearly all the principle Clearars had names at least as Gaelic as her own.