The Highland Clearances from start to finish emptied some third of the total area of Scotland of its inhabitants by the method of burning, harrying and forcible extrusion. The victims were the natural inheritors of the highest popular cultural tradition in Europe.

This novel concerns itself with the causes of so singular a negation of Man and his values: its subject is the Causes of the Clearances—but viewed in all their complexity. One has frequently heard those events dismissed as " simply " due to " Economic Causes." But there are no such things as "Economic Causes " conceived in this way as entities presiding over the destinies of human communities irrespective of the wills of those involved. The idea is purely superstitious. An event in the human world can never be other than the externalisation of human motive. Its cause therefore is always to be sought in the inner world of Man, and only seen from that point of view can it be understood.

The novel therefore takes into account not only those " Economic Causes " - which translated into human terms meant simple greed or avarice - but everything else involved; as for instance the emotional and other factors called into being where two different cultural and linguistic elements exist contiguously or superimposed -  - in the absence in this instance of any elements maintaining normal equilibrium, and with in this case the added exacerbation of a particular historical accident such as the fanatic hatred of Gaelic among many Lowlanders deriving from its association in their minds for centuries after the Reformation with the Catholic Religion.

A Cause all-pervasive - always permissive even when not active - was the actual religion of the Highlanders of the time, as indeed of Scotland at large. Maighstir Sachairi’s betrayal came from no lack either of human courage or of sincere good will, but from his possession by a Creed whose necessary implication was totally to de-value all natural human values. In that sense he typifies the fact that the Gael, as indeed the Scottish nation, has been destroyed in proportion to the area of inward consent to, and the degree of motivation by, a view of Man which has the necessary effect of negating him in his actuality, along with his natural values and especially of course in all his creative activity.