James Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands and was its first Director of the Centre for History. The author of twelve books about the Highlands and Islands, he has also been active in the public life of the area. In the mid 1980s he became the first director of the Scottish Crofters Union, and between 1998 and 2004 he was chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the north of Scotlands development agency.
Alastair McIntoshs books include Soil and Soul (Aurum, 2001), Hell and High Water (Birlinn, 2008) and Island Spirituality (Islands Book Trust, 2013). He was a founding trustee of the original Isle of Eigg Trust and holds fellowships at the Centre for Human Ecology, the University of Glasgows College of Social Sciences and Edinburgh Universitys School of Divinity.
Praise for On the Other Side of Sorrow
I first read On the Other Side of Sorrow a decade ago and was astonished. I found myself challenged and changed by its magnificent combination of political passion, scholarship, literary sensitivity, poetic historiography and, well, hopefulness. Though I did not agree with all that James argues, it was without doubt the single book that most changed my perception of the landscape politics of wild Scotland, and of the histories and possible futures of community and place in the Highlands.
Robert Macfarlane, author of Mountains of the Mind and The Old Ways
An extraordinary intellectual voyage through our history and literature
David Ross, The Herald
A very thoughtful piece of advocacy
Allan Massie, The Scotsman
This book has caused shockwaves in Scotland. Those readers who think of Highland scenery solely in terms of romantic landscape, or who glory in Highland deserts and want them kept mainly for the eagle and the deer, should have some tranquilisers to hand... A milestone of a book
Rennie McOwan, Scots Independent
Hunters vision... attempts to reconcile two widely differing concepts of the Highlands that espoused by environmentalists and that held by Highlanders themselves. Hunter urges the two groups to come together and, in an optimistic tone, argues that, at least in the Scottish Highlands, people and nature can co-exist in ways which would benefit both
Bill Howatson, Press and Journal
James Hunters book... sets out a case for repopulating areas of the Highlands and Islands... Like other noted Highlanders, James Hunter is a dreamer. He is also a historian and a man who deals in facts. That may appear to be a contradiction in terms, but it is his research that makes the reader at least this one believe that here is one dream that could come true
Nick Hunter, Highland News
This important book... delves in economic prose into the history and literature of Gaelic society, hammering home that, fifteen centuries ago, the Scots were among the first Europeans to develop an environmental awareness
Tom Weir, Scots Magazine
This eBook edition published in 2014 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by
Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh
Copyright James Hunter 1995, 2014
Foreword copyright Alastair McIntosh 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
eBook ISBN: 9780857908346
ISBN: 9781780271873
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
For
Catherine and Paul
Thar bochdainn, caitheimh, fiabhrais, mhghair,
thar anacothruim, eucoir, ainneairt, nraidh,
thar truaighe, eu-dchais, gamhlais, cuilbheirt,
thar ciont is truaillidheachd; gu furachair,
gu treunmhor chithear an Cuilithionn
s e g irigh air taobh eile duilghe.
SOMHAIRLE MACGILL-EAIN
Beyond poverty, consumption, fever, agony,
beyond hardship, wrong, tyranny, distress,
beyond misery, despair, hatred, treachery,
beyond guilt and defilement: watchful,
heroic, the Cuillin is seen
rising on the other side of sorrow.
SORLEY MACLEAN
Preface to the 2014 edition
This book was first published in 1994. Much has changed, both in the Highlands and in the wider world, during the intervening twenty years. That point is underlined in Alastair McIntoshs introduction to this new edition. There, however, the point is also made that the book retains both relevance and significance. New readers will make their own judgements. For my part, I am grateful to Alastair for his critical analysis of my attempt by way of pointers deriving from literature, history and ecological writing to map out a route to a good Highland future. Some progress has been made, I think, along that road. But there is still a longish way to go.
I have made just one or two small corrections to the original text. And I have added the Gaelic originals to many poems which, in the first edition, were quoted only in translation. This has been done where the quoted poems date from the last two or three centuries. Older poems in older forms of Gaelic most of those poems dating from a thousand or more years ago are still given only in translation. The references in the text, however, are such as to make it fairly easy to find the originals.
Place-names in the text are mostly in the form found on modern Ordnance Survey maps.
And one last thought. On my opening page I am very uncharitable about the appearance of Tyndrum. It should be noted, therefore, that the most garish of the Tyndrum fast-food eateries I complained about in 1994 has been replaced by a Real Food Cafe, dealing in locally-sourced produce and serving some of the tastiest fish-and-chips in Scotland. Bear that in mind when reading, on ensuing pages, about the difficulties that have confronted or still confront the Highlands. Change can be made to happen in Tyndrum or more generally. And it can be for the better.
James Hunter, April 2014
Acknowledgements
M ANY PEOPLE HAVE helped make this book possible. When Professor Christopher Smout of the Institute for Environmental History at St Andrews University invited me in the spring of 1994 to prepare a paper on Highland landscape for delivery at one of the institutes seminars, he was expecting, I guess, something in the order of two or three thousand words. In the event, Chris found himself circulating uncomplainingly a paper which was as much as four times longer than he had anticipated. Now that the paper in question has grown into a book, it is good to have the chance to thank Chris both for his encouragement to me personally and for his wider commitment to developing the environmental history of Scotland.
As well as benefiting greatly from the discussion of my original paper at St Andrews in the summer of 1994, I profited from having the chance, later that year, to air some of my ideas at a seminar organised by the History Department in the University of Aberdeen and at a conference organised by the Department of Scottish History in the University of Glasgow.
