Landlords removed many tenants from estates across the Scottish Highlands and Islands as agriculture was reorganised for sheep farming and commercial use. Families moved to coastal settlements, Lowland towns, Canada, the United States and Australasia. Clearance, famine and emigration weakened Gaelic-speaking communities.

Gaelic poets recorded eviction, poverty and departure with an immediacy often absent from official histories. Mary MacPherson and later Sorley MacLean drew upon clearance memory, while emigrant songs preserved attachment to particular glens and islands.