Hebrides

This is a chain of islands off the northwestern coast of Scotland. Not truly north, like the Shetland or Faroe Islands, but what is essentially the northern most part of the west coast of the island of Britain.

The Hebrides are directly north of Ireland.

Why I Looked It Up

From What's Bred in the Bone:

The Senator was the Honourable James Ignatius McRory, born on the Isle of Barra in the Hebrides in 1855, who had been brought to Canada in 1857 by parents who were, like so many of their kind, starving in their beautiful homeland.

Barra is one of the southern-most of the Hebrides.

The only reference I could find to why people were “starving” in 1855 was some form of land dispute that was preventing the land from being farmed.