Sutherland Quotes

“This high-souled gentry and this noble and far-descended peasantry, 'their country's pride,' were set at naught and ultimately obliterated for a set of greedy, secular adventurers, by the then representatives of the Ancient Earls of Sutherland.”
― Donald Sage, Memorabilia Domestica: or, Parish Life in the North of Scotland

“The country or province of Sutherland abounds in corn, grass, woods, fruit beasts, all kinds of wildfowl, deer and roe; all sorts of fish, especially salmon, and all other commodities which are usual in this kingdom of Scotland, or necessary for man.”
― Robert Gordon, A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland, from its Origin to the Year 1630, with a Continuation to the Year 1651

“Life must have been good here in the old days. The folk were a lusty race, with a song never far from their lips.

The life of the glenpeople in its yearly round and seasons possessed a shape and harmony, it appeared as a natural work of completion of unassisted Nature, on which it rested as on a base properly proportioned to it and with which it formed a single, ordered, intelligible whole.”
― Fionn MacColla, And the Cock Crew

“In Kildonan there is today a shadow, a chill of which any sensitive mind would, I am convinced, be vaguely aware, though possessing no knowledge of the clearances. We are affected strangely by any place from which the tide of life has ebbed.”
― Neil M. Gunn, Landscape and Light: Essays by Neil M. Gunn

“He will sit here a little longer. His tracks now will be totally hidden. He will retrace his steps to the empty side of the mountain and climb down to the loch., drink from it, then find his way to a road where, easily acceptable as a snow-stranded and well turned out motorist who has walked some way from his car, he will accept a lift as far and as fast from the Achindarnoch Hotel as the sod's law of passing vehicles will allow.”
― Deirdre Chapman, Badlands