April 16, 2025
-by Cathy Gillies
The recent popularity of the book series – Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and its subsequent TV adaptation – has spurred an enormous interest in all things “Highland” and Scottish. Many people with only a tenuous connection to Scotland have been busy exploring the history and culture of the part of Scotland depicted in the series. There are
many websites catering to people who want to dress in the style of 18th-century Scotland and many more travel tours in Scotland based on this fascination. On a recent visit to Culloden battlefield, I saw a tombstone for a James Fraser which was enclosed by a small fence to prevent people tramping down the path in front of it. The hero Jamie Fraser of the books was fictitious, but this has not prevented tourists from making a pilgrimage to this site. Outlander is a romantic fantasy, and while it is set against the real historical background of the Scottish Highlands at a pivotal time in its history, it falls well within the category of thousands of other romantic novels using the image of a handsome, dashing Scottish hero set against the misty mountains of Highland scenery.
Over the last few decades, more recent research has been done on Highland Scottish history. For many of us here in Nova Scotia, the books of John Prebble, Glencoe, Culloden, and The Highland Clearances, are to be found in many people’s personal libraries. Of the European settlers who came to Canada over the last four hundred years, Scots made up the third largest group after the French and English. Scots worked in the fur trade along with the French and were part of one of Canada’s earliest industries. Men from the Highlands were heavily involved in the North West Company, which opened up much of the country before it merged with the Hudson Bay Company in 1821. Families with Scottish names are to be found everywhere in Canada and even many among our First Nations communities. The centuries-long rivalry between Scotland and England, in which the Scots were always forced to play a secondary role in Great Britain, initially enticed many Scots to emigrate. Later in the 19th century, thousands were cleared from their homes in order for the landlords to bring in vast herds of sheep. However, over the last two centuries, so many Scots succeeded in Canada in business, industry, politics, culture, and the military (our many Highland regiments), that one person quipped, “Canada is Scotland’s revenge on England!” Thus, the impact of Scotland’s diaspora looms large in Canadian history.
For a much clearer and more historical focus, James MacKillop, a Celtic Studies professor in New York State, has recently published Highlanders – Unlocking Identity Through History. While born in the United States, Mr. MacKillop’s parents came from Port Hood. His father, Colin, was a brother to Alec Rory MacKillop, former manager of the Port Hood Coop, and brother to CND Sister Margaret MacKillop. MacKillop Road, between Port Hood and Mabou, has long been connected to the family and they are also directly related to St. Mary MacKillop of Australia who was canonized in Rome a number of years ago. Mr. MacKillop’s mother, Margaret Gillis, was a Gillis from Hawthorne Road in Port Hood. Both immigrated to the United States, and while they made visits back to Cape Breton, their children, including James MacKillop, had to “re-discover” their Cape Breton and Scottish roots. This book is James MacKillop’s search for that Highland identity, and as an academic, this meant many years of research.
Highlanders – Unlocking Identity Through History is an exploration of the history of the Highlands of Scotland. While Mr. MacKillop claims it is merely a “sketch” of the main themes of Highland history, it provides an in-depth journey of what the term “Highland” means in the context of the geography of place and the culture of a people. He defines the meanings of terms that we often take for granted. Who were the Celts? Where did they live in Scotland? Who were the Picts? Where was Dalriada? Where is the Highland Line separating the Highlands from the Lowlands of Scotland?
While Mr. MacKillop starts with the earliest foundations of Highland history, he moves through the Middle Ages when Somerled’s descendants as Lords of the Isles dominated the Western Highlands and Islands, then tells the story of the clans and their role in the many feuds and battles of the Scottish and English Civil War period of the 17th century. Once he moves the reader into the area of the Jacobite Risings of the 18th century, we begin to get a clearer picture of the historical forces that propelled our ancestors across the Atlantic. We can recognize the plight of those who struggled to survive in the aftermath of Culloden, and, facing poverty, opted for a better life in Canada.
An interesting chapter, which relates tangentially to the “romantic” image of Highlanders so popular in historical fiction, relates to the contradictions which developed in the late 18th century of the conflicting views of Highlanders as seen by Lowland Scots and the English. No royal monarch had visited Scotland since the restoration of Charles II in the 17th century until Sir Walter Scott invited King George IV to Edinburgh in 1822. He organized an enormously lavish spectacle and guests were urged to dress in Highland costume. From that time on, all things Highland became the rage while at the same time, the people of the Highlands were being dispossessed from their homes and Lowlanders looked down their noses at these “lazy, dirty peasants” on the fringes of proper Scottish society. Some commentators even went so far as to refer to the once “wild, savage Highlanders” as the “aborigines” of Great Britain.
Even to this day, the Lowlander’s slang word “teuchter” for a Highlander has derogatory connotations. However, the opposite view of the romantic Highlander persists, and it was given no greater boost in the 19th-century by Queen Victoria herself when she ‘discovered’ the romantic Highlands and established the royal family’s summer home at Balmoral.
The so-called “lost” poetry of Ossian – the supposed ancient bard of Scotland, but actually written by James MacPherson in the 18th century, was one of the initial sparks that heralded the beginnings of this romantic view of the Highlands. It was the era of Romanticism – a reaction in the arts to the Neo-classicism earlier in the century. At the same time, this was the period when thousands of Highlanders were making their way across the Atlantic. The Highlands were soon becoming the playground of rich landlords, visiting tourists coming to admire the majestic mountains and lochs, and sportsmen stalking the deer in remote glens for pleasure.
Most of this later history was lost to the generations of Highland Scots who left the Gaidhealtachd for Nova Scotia two centuries ago. Yet, most of us with Highland roots have maintained the ties that bind us to the land of our ancestors. Many of us, though perhaps not well-versed in all the historical details, have a strong sense of kinship. Cape Breton Island, settled by thousands of Highland Scots, has kept the traditions passed down from these Highlanders but transformed into a unique Canadian identity. In some ways, it is almost as if one of the Hebridean islands had drifted across the ocean and attached itself to Canada. This Highland identity is rooted deeply in the Canadian psyche from one coast to the other.
Mr. MacKillop’s book is thoroughly researched and has an extensive bibliography and glossary at the back – especially informative for any neophyte wanting to explore the history of the Highlands, but also suitable for anyone who wants to delve more deeply into their Highland roots. He doesn’t deal with the trans-Atlantic migrations, but some of his own personal journey is described in the preface and in the coda at the end of the book. James MacKillop’s book is a tribute to a lifetime of academic work in the field of Celtic studies, culminating in this exploration of Highland history.
While some copies may be made available at local bookstores, the book can also be purchased on Amazon.com.
