from around 1775. During the Highland Clearances of the mid-1820s, Aonghas Lathair MacDhòmhnuill gained local notoriety by beginning the planned eviction of the whole village of Cleadale. Aonghas Lathair was acting under orders from the Chief of Clanranald, who intended like many other Scottish landlords of the era, to replace the people of Cleadale with much more profitable herds of Cheviot and black faced sheep. Aonghas Lathair planned afterwards to assign the cleared land at Cleadale to his brother-in-law as a sheep farm, but severe hardships then fell upon Aonghas Lathair and his family, which ultimately resulted in the tacksman committing suicide. According to the local oral tradition, the old people of Eigg blamed the MacDonald family's misfortune on a curse that was said to have been put on them by the women whom Aonghas Lathair had evicted from Cleadale. In 1827, the Clanranald family sold Eigg to Dr. Hugh MacPherson and the planned eviction of Cleadale was cancelled. Angus R. MacDonald, the son of Raonuill Dubh's son Allan and Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's last direct descendant, at first carried on with the family's farm on Eigg after the death of his father and then emigrated to the United States with his mother. He served as a Lieutenant in the 11th Wisconsin Regiment during the American Civil War. He "distinguished himself by his gallantry during the operations of the Federal Army in Alabama and Mississippi." After being wounded in action by Confederate troops, Lieut. MacDonald returned to Wisconsin and settled into a civil service job. He never married, died without issue in Milwaukee, and the direct line of the Bard became extinct. Folklore According to John Lorne Campbell, ghost stories about sightings of the undead spectre of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair or of his brother Lachlan on South Uist and other islands are very common in Hebridean mythology and folklore. The following story was recorded on the isle of Canna from "Aonghus Eachainn" by Dr. Calum Maclean of the Irish Folklore Commission. The translation is by John Lorne Campbell, "Alexander MacDonald was for a time living in Canna. He was bailie for one of the Clanranalds when they had Canna. One fine day he was going over to Uist in a rowing boat, and some old men of the island were down at the place called Gob a' Rubha, the point past the pier. When Alexander was going past, one