Dr. James Coull
Scottish Studies, 7, (1963).
Used by Kind Permission of Dr Coull
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On the north coast of Scotland, and flanked by the broad inlets of Loch Eriboll to the west and the Kyle of Tongue to the east, lies the peninsula of the Moine. On the north-east part of this peninsula lies the district of Melness (Fig. I) @ Page 2 Fig 1 Click Here which is the home of a crofting community. The district illustrates the problems of modern crofting - problems which are basically those of adapting a traditionally communal way of life, evolved under subsistence conditions, to the economic individualism and cash economy of the industrial age. Here, as elsewhere in the Highlands, the old way of life underwent modifications and began to lose its separate identity through the ties forged with the Lowlands after the
The dependence on home-produced food, a fundamental binding force in the community, started to be undercut in the 1880's when cheap imported flour began to replace the old staples of potatoes and oat-meal; and the upheavals which accompanied and followed World War I gave the old way its death-blow.
In Melness there is a farm and a number of croft clusters: these are townships of varied size, but all share a big area of common grazing, and Melness is in effect one community. The district is part of Tongue parish, for which statistics have been used, although this includes other crofting districts on the eastern side of the Kyle and several farms as well.
The Moine has a rectangular outline, and stretches some 10 miles north to south and 6 miles east to west. Its surface for the great part is an old planation surface; ranging from 400 to 700 feet in elevation, and covered with blanket peat (the name Moine means "peat moss"). On it there are a few upstanding residual masses, and it falls sharply on all its seaward slopes. In the Melness area this slope is less steep but more complex in form: the landscape is varied with small ridges and valleys, and by the Strath of Melness - a bigger and deeper valley which runs north to south with the rock strike.
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