What song about the Highland Clearances was performed by the Proclaimers in 1987?
Letter from America (song) Letter from America (song) "Letter From America" is a song written and performed by Scottish band The Proclaimers that appears on their 1987 debut album "This Is the Story". Lyrically, the song reflects Scotland's long history of emigration with Scots leaving behind economic depression in their own nation to start new lives in America and Canada. There is also an allusion to the enforced emigrations of the Highland Clearances when wealthy landowners forcibly evicted whole communities in order to turn their land over to the more profitable enterprise of raising sheep, and comparison of the impact of the Highland clearances
Highland Clearances Highland Clearances The Highland Clearances ( , the "eviction of the Gaels") were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands mostly during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the first phase, they usually resulted from enclosures of common lands and a change from farming to sheep rearing, largely carried out by hereditary landowners who previously had status as Scots Gaelic clan chiefs. Later clearances, in the second phase, involved overcrowded crofting communities that had lost the means to support themselves, through famine and/or collapse of industries that they had relied on (such as the kelp