[3] A further problem facing the Presbyterian church in the Highlands was poor ministerial discipline, with many ministers failing to carry out the bare minimum of their duties, committing crimes, or holding illegal marriages.
[4][page needed] Like other large and mountainous parishes in the Scottish Highlands, Kiltarlity in the 18th century would have had a scattered population and few navigable roads.
[5] Over ⅓ of the parish's adult male population in 1794 were cottars, a further ¼ "small tenants", and at least 60 crofters on the nigh inhospitable, upland moors.
Only those nearest to the village kirk in the parish's low-lying east could "transact ordinary business in English"—though bilingual parishioners retained “a strong predilection for their mother tongue".
Hydro-powered, using a "strong artificial dam", the mill transformed Scots' pines felled 30 miles upriver into timber bound for "Leith or London".
[4] New species and technology were also introduced to the parish in the late-18th century, including larch for timber purposes and the modern cast-iron plough.
According to the local Church of Scotland minister, alcoholism was rife in the parish in the form of whisky, with dozens of homemade and household stills.
The owners of Castle Dounie (seat of Clan Fraser prior to the 1745 rising) and the Belladrum Estate lived in Lowland Aberdeenshire, and were only present in the village "some months in the year".
The Sobieski Stuarts built a new mansion house on the island of Eilean Aigas in the Beauly River that still stands today.
[8] The new Lord Lovat also commissioned a Catholic chapel to be built in Strathglass, to the parish's northwest, marking an important shift back towards public tolerance of Catholicism, now that Jacobitism was no longer a political threat.
With more tenants competing for less available and lower-quality land, greater English literacy rates, and the onset of the Highland Potato Famine from 1846 to 1856, yet more parishioners would have emigrated during the late-19th century.
This is without even considering land clearances in the area, for which there is evidence in a Gaelic poem titled Theid Sinn a dh'America, written c. 1801 by an unknown bard from Strathglass:“A plague on the landlords, with their greed for money; they prefer flocks of sheep to their own armed hosts.”
Mechanisation of agriculture put many young men out of work, whilst centralisation around Inverness led to the closure of the village blacksmith, shoemaker, tailor, and public house.
[3] The popularisation of automobiles in Kiltarlity in the 20th century came at the benefit of service-providers in nearby Beauly and Inverness, but to the detriment of local merchants and shopkeepers.
[3] With the establishment of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and construction of hydroelectric dams on the River Beauly in the 1940s and 50s, most homes in Kiltarlity quickly gained electricity.
The Old Statistical Account for the parish of Kiltarlity cites it as deriving from a corruption of the Latin cella, meaning 'the worship place of a saint', and St. Thalargus—a figure of unknown origin.
[7] A final explanation from a University of St Andrews study points to the Gaelic translation of Cill Targhlain, meaning 'Church of Talorgan'.
The main settlement was known as Aultfearna (Gaelic) or Allarburn (Scots), referring to the alder trees that grow on the banks of the Bruiach Burn, which runs through the village.