Jim McLean's words set to a traditional Scottish melody tell of the savagery and mass deportations of what are now called the Highland Clearances when whole communities were destroyed and the people shipped abroad by force during the 19th century. This new and atmospheric treatment by Sue Casson, tells a personal story.

 

‘The old tales were very close’ David Maxwell Fyfe writes in his autobiography, remembering not only how his great uncle took his own life under the threat of eviction from the family home in Creich during the late Clearances, but how his grandmother provided the blankets to construct a tent for the first service of the Free Church in Sutherland.

 

Words from Fyfe’s Uncle Hugh, spoken about these injustices in court during the Napier Commission in 1887, are threaded through the haunting traditional Scottish melody ‘Mist covered Mountains’ alongside Jim McLean’s lyrics of protest. The title of our show comes from the repeated refrain ‘Dreams o’ peace and o’ freedom’ with the unspoken message that these dreams began at Fyfe’s grandmother’s knee.