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Alexander MacGregor was the son of the parish minister at Kilmuir and his father entrusted him with writing the parish account for the 1845 Statistical Account. In this (14, 271-273), he summarised(!) an account of the famines of the 1836 and 1837 which he had written for Blackwood's Quarterly Journal of Agriculture:
'The general scarcity of Bliadhna na peasach, or the pease-meal year of 1782, is not yet forgotten. In the same manner, the hardships of want were severely felt in the years 1807 and 1817; but the distress of those seasons was trifling in comparisons with that of 1836 and 1837, which will ever be memorable in the annals of this and other parishes.
It is impossible by any description to give an adequate idea of the calamities of the late destitution. The spring of 1835 was cold and inclement. Sowing was of necesity late, and, owing to the moist state of the soil, a large portion of the seed never vegetated. Potatoes were planted, but, from an unaccountable disease in that prolific and alimentary root, as well as from the coldness of the soil, the greater part decayed in the ground. In harvest the unripe fields were deluged with rain. The straw lost its substance. The grain remained unfilled, and the hopes of the husbandman for the support of his family and cattle were simultaneously blasted. For the spring of 1836 the people were ill prepared. Their oats were damaged and scanty. Their potatoes were few and of the worst quality. The fields were with difficulty tilled for the reception of seed, which gave but feeble hopes of vegetation. In many places, tracts of land were cultivated which remained unsown. The cattle became emaciated on the sapless straw. The season advanced with every appearance of fearful results. The natives, so justly characterised by their sense of pride and patience under the hardships of indigence, were forced to acknowledge their want of the necessities of life. Already the residence of the clergyman was daily frequented by groups of the helpless, as if he could procure immediate relief. The shores were ransacked late and early, and at all hours, for sea-weed and shell-fish, to afford a scanty repast. The fields were of unpromising appearance, and, before they arrived at any thing like maturity, October came in, with its piercing frost, and destructive storm of snow. Sad and distressing were the scenes of hardship and want then witnessed. All classes of the lower order, cottars and crofters, lotters and land-occupiers of every grade, were simultaneously overwhelmed in the general calamity. The attention of gentlemen, both clerical and lay, was speedily aroused. The clergy who were located in the regions of distress, and were eye-witnesses to scenes of hardship which they can never forget, lost no time in framing and forwarding representations of the calamity to all and sundry in the kingdom, who, they supposed, could afford relief. The British capital was visited by a deputation of gentlemen, who relinquished for a time their several avocations, and with minds teeming with philanthropy, aroused the sympathies, and the noblest feelings of the English nation, by appeals adorned alike with eloquence and truth. Those appeals the benevolent English could not resist, and the amount of liberality displayed on that occasion surpasses all admiration and praise.
The primary cause of the late destitution was a redundancy of population, occasioned by an injudicious system of management. The error of the system of management lay in the frequency of early and improvident marriages, encouraged by the introduction of the lotting system, which, in its turn, gave rise to bad husbandry. These several causes operated on each other with mutual influence, and acted in concert against the prosperity of the inhabitants. The amount of population was rapidly increasing, while the amount of the means of support for each family was, in the same ratio, diminishing. Poverty was speedily making inroads among the people, and the seeds of wretchedness at a future period were rapidly growing up. The natives, however, might have borne up under the pressure and influence of these unfavourable circumstances, had not other external causes come to operate in unison with those just mentioned, to reduce them with accelerated speed to poverty. These other causes were the fall in the price of cattle, the failure of herring fisheries, the cessation of kelp manufacture, and the want of remunerating employment. The only preventive remedy is to reduce the population by a Government system of emigration.'
Although his wordy praise of benevolence may sound sycophantic there is no doubt that public donations, not just in England but also in the lowlands of Scotland, made a huge difference to famine relief with around £70,000 collected. The clergy also made an impression, notably the Rev Norman MacLeod of Glasgow, then moderator of the Church of Scotland (identified by MacGregor in a footnote), who led the deputation to London. Nevertheless, for all the individual generosity MacGregor's account does not question the role of the government in allowing the situation to develop in the first place, not just in the Highlands, where it was most pronounced, but throughout the country. Ineffectual public works' programmes, the abolition of fishing bounties and, most importantly, protection of the proprietors' pockets by an inability, or unwillingness, to manage the collection and distribution of funds by the Poor Law authorities exacerbated the problems in the Highlands and Islands.
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