Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair


Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair , legal name Alexander MacDonald, was a Scottish war poet, satirist, lexicographer, political writer and memoirist. He was one of the most famous Scottish Gaelic Bards of the 18th century. He served as a Jacobite military officer and Gaelic tutor to Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

Family background

Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair was born in 1698 into the Clan MacDonald of Clanranald. Through his great-grandmother Màiri, daughter of Angus MacDonald of Islay, he claimed descent from King Robert II of Scotland. He was also the first cousin to the famous Flora MacDonald.
The Bard's father was Maighstir Alasdair who was the Non-juring Church of Scotland minister for Ardnamurchan and who lived as a tacksman at Dalilea in Moidart.
According to Father Charles MacDonald, the Bard's father was a native of South Uist and was distantly related to the Chief and Captain of Clanranald. He is said to have graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1674 and to have shortly afterwards been assigned to the parish in Ardnamurchan. The poet's mother was a Maclachlan from Glencripesdale and the two came to reside at Dalilea at about the end of the 17th century.
At the time, the majority of Ardnamurchan was composed of Roman Catholics and the Episcopalians and Presbyterians who made up Maighstir Alasdair's parishioners were evenly spread over the whole district. The only Protestant church was located at Kilchoan, which was nearly thirty miles from the Minister's home at Dalilea. According to the local oral tradition, the minister would always leave at an early hour on Sundays, travel the whole distance on foot, and reach Kilchoan at noon. He would then preach, perform divine services for his congregation, and then return home on foot, arriving near midnight. The route taken in his journey is also preserved in the oral tradition.
After the overthrow of King James II in 1688, Presbyterianism became the established form of Sunday service and church government in Scotland and Maighstir Alasdair refused to conform. In consequence he was declared deposed by the synod. However, the minister was very popular and the presbytery of Lorne never succeeded in establishing another minister in the parish. It is said, however, that Rev. Colin Campbell, the minister of Ardchattan, came to the parish wearing a kilt and armed with a claymore and a cocked pistol. Rev. Campbell then announced Maighstir Alasdair's deposition with his back to the wall. Although both the Protestants and Catholics of the district hated Rev. Campbell as a ministeir na cuigse, or "Whig-Minister", he was allowed to deliver his message and leave the parish none the worse for wear.
On another occasion, Maighstir Alasdair is said to have brutally flogged a Catholic neighbour, who had repeatedly grazed his cattle herd on the minister's land. The local Catholic population was outraged and vowed to retaliate. A group of Catholic men led by one Ian Caol MacDhunnachaidh surprised Maighstir Alasdair near Dalilea and beat him so savagely that the minister had to be carried home in a blanket. Maighstir Alasdair and his family then fled their home and for a time took refuge on the island of Camas Drollaman in Loch Shiel. While they were in hiding on the island, Ian Caol is said to have shot a bird so that it fell at the feet of Maighstir Alasdair's wife. Ian Caol then told her that he would do the same to her husband if given the chance.
Maighstir Alasdair is said to have died in the 1720s. He lies buried next to his wife on Finnan's Island in Loch Shiel, on the south side of the ruined chapel, underneath a gravestone upon which a skeleton has been carved.
Maighstir Alasdair was succeeded at tacksman at Dalilea by his eldest son, Aonghas Beag, who married Margaret Cameron, a devoutly Roman Catholic woman from Achadhuan, in Lochaber. According to Father Charles MacDonald, the places where Margaret MacDonald had said her prayers had survived in the oral tradition and were pointed out to him during the 1880s. Under Margaret's influence, Aonghas Beag converted from the Scottish Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism and served as a Captain of the men of Dalilea during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. He survived the Battle of Culloden and returned to his native district, where he had to remain in hiding for two years and only rarely dared to visit his family. After the act of indemnity was passed, Aonghas Beag returned to Dalilea, where he finished his days in peace.
is the traditional seat of the Clan MacDonald of Clanranald.
In 1914, J. Wiseman MacDonald of Dalilea, an American-born descendant of Aonghas Beag and Margaret MacDonald, purchased Castle Tioram in Loch Moidart, the traditional home of the Captain and Chief of Clanranald, and had much restoration work done on the ruins during the Interwar period.

Life

Early life

Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, the second son of the minister of Kilchoan, was born at Dalilea at the beginning of the 18th century.
There were no schools in the area and so it is thought that the younger Alasdair was educated by his father throughout his early years. The Bard is said to have enjoyed a fine grounding in the ancient corra litir of the Clanranald bards, and in the classics. Alasdair followed in the footsteps of his father and attended the University of Glasgow, and the University of Edinburgh, at a time when Scottish songs were gaining huge popularity. He is said to have left prematurely, however, having married Jane MacDonald of Dalness. According to the oral tradition of Moidart, Alasdair left the University because his family could not afford the price of attending.
Bishop Robert Forbes later wrote of the Bard, "He is a very smart, acute man, remarkably well skilled in the Erse, for he can both read and write the Irish language in its original character, a piece of knowledge almost quite lost in the Highlands of Scotland, there being exceedingly few that have any skill at all in that way. For the Captain told me that he did not know another person that knew anything of the first tongue in its original character... Several of the Captain's acquaintances have told me that he is by far the best Erse poet in all Scotland, and that he has written many songs in the pure Irish."
According to John Lorne Campbell, there are no poems by the Bard in Early Modern Irish that are known to have survived. Campbell adds that the last Scottish Bard to have extant poetry in the Irish language is Niall MacMhuirich, who died in 1722.
Alasdair was described as a fine singer, of tall height and broad chest, handsome in feature and fair in hair. Among his attributes were sincerity, honesty, loyalty to his friends and to his own convictions.

Protestant missioner

In 1729 Alasdair was appointed to a school at Finnan Island, at the head of Loch Shiel and only a few miles from Alasdair's ancestral home at Dalilea, as a teacher by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. He was the catechist of the same parish under the Royal Bounty Committee of the Church of Scotland; his position required him to teach at various locations throughout Moidart.
According to John Lorne Campbell, the unpublished early minutes of the S.P.C.K. in Scotland reveal that it was Anti-Catholic, Anti-Episcopalian, Anti-Jacobite, and set on destroying the Scottish Gaelic language. Therefore, Alasdair's employment as one of their schoolmasters from 1729 to 1745 was a violation of his natural loyalties as a member of the Clanranald branch of Clan Donald. Therefore, Campbell postulates that Alasdair must have had a dispute with the Captain and Chief of Clanranald and that this caused him to seek employment with the SSPK.
In 1738, Alasdair he worked in a school at Kilchoan and supplemented the living of £16 a year by becoming the tenant of the farm at Coire Mhuilinn, where he composed one of his most famous poems: Allt an t-Siùcar.
In 1741, the Bard compiled a 200 page Gaelic-English vocabulary at the request of the Society, which published it with a dedication to the Marquess of Lothian. As source material and a model for his spelling, Alasdair used the existing Irish language translations of the "Confession of Faith", the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and the Book of Common Prayer.
In his dedication to the volume, the Bard wrote, "It seems to have been reserved for you to be the happy instruments of bringing about the Reformation of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, diverse places of which are remote from the means of obtaining instruction; and indeed when we consider the situation of the inhabitants, their ignorance, their inclinations to follow the customs, fashions, and superstitions of their forefathers, the number of Popish Emmissaries in many places of these countries; and add to that their way of life, the unfrequented passes and the distance of their houses from one another, one would not think, but that an attempt to reform them would be a very arduous task to be brought about, even by the most desirable means."
According to John Lorne Campbell, "His Galick and English Vocabulary was commissioned by the S.P.C.K. for use in their schools in furthering their policy of replacing Gaelic by English as the vernacular of the Highlands and Islands... No doubt the reading MacDonald did in preparing this translation, for which he was ultimately paid the princely sum of £10, helped to develop his powerful command of the resources of the Gaelic language." The vocabulary was the first secular book to be printed in Scottish Gaelic.
Alasdair's whereabouts during the year of 1744 are unknown. The SSPK believed him to have "deserted his post to help rally the Jacobite clans" and criticized him for charging his sixteen-year-old son Raonuill Dubh with his teaching duties; the SSPK finally dismissed Alasdair in a minute dated 14 July 1745. Early in 1745 he was summoned by the Royal Bounty Committee to Edinburgh, which had heard that he was composing overtly sexual poems in Gaelic. He ignored the summons.

Jacobite

songs penned by Alasdair such as: Òran Nuadh — "A New Song", Òran nam Fineachan Gaidhealach — "The Song of the Highland Clans" and Òran do'n Phrionnsa — "A Song to the Prince," serve as testament to the Bard's own passion for the Jacobite cause. According to literary historian John MacKenzie, these poems were sent to Aeneas MacDonald, the brother of the Clanranald tacksman of Kinlochmoidart, who was a banker in Paris. Aeneas read the poems aloud to Prince Charles Edward Stuart in English translation and the poems played a major role in convincing the Prince to come to Scotland and to initiate the Jacobite Rising of 1745.
On July 25, 1745, the Prince arrived at Loch nan Uamh from Eriskay aboard the French privateer Du Teillay. The Bard was one of the first to go aboard.
According to Bishop Robert Forbes, "He did not then know that the Prince was among the passengers, who being in very plain dress, Captain MacDonald made up to him without any manner of ceremony, and conversed with him in a very familiar way, sitting close by the Prince and drinking a glass with him, till one of the name of MacDonald made him such a look that immediately he began to suspect he was using too much freedom with one above his own rank. Upon this he soon withdrew, but was still in the dark about what particular person the young gentleman he had been conversing with might be."
Alasdair was among the first to arrive at Glenfinnan witness the raising of the Prince's Standard on 19 August 1745 which signalled the beginning of the campaign. He is also said to have sung his song of welcome: Tearlach Mac Sheumais. Afterwards he became the "Tyrtaeus of the Highland Army" and "the most persuasive of recruiting sergeants".
Many of his surviving poems and songs openly glorify the Jacobite cause and satirise and revile those, like Clan Campbell, who sided with the House of Hanover.
's depiction of the 1745 Battle of Culloden.
Alasdair's name appears upon a "Roll of Men upon Clanranald's Mainland Estates, with their arms, made up in 1745", with a gun and pistol.
His first commission was a captaincy in the Clan Ranald Regiment where he was placed in command of 50 "cliver fellows" whom he personally recruited in Ardnamurchan. Amongst his other responsibilities, the Bard was appointed to teach Scottish Gaelic to the Prince due to his "skill in the Highland Language."
Like his brother Aonghas Beag, the Bard converted from the Protestantism to Roman Catholicism during this period. According to Father Charles MacDonald, who interviewed Alasdair's surviving relatives, the Bard's conversion was due to the example and influence of Margaret Cameron MacDonald, his devoutly Roman Catholic sister-in-law. Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair fought alongside the Clanranald men for the duration of the campaign which ended with the crushing defeat of the Highland Clans at the Battle of Culloden.

After Culloden

In the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, it is believed that the Bard remained with the Prince for at least part of the latter's flight. John Lorne Campbell believes that the Bard may have been one of the survivors of the Clanranald Regiment who joined the Prince at Glenbiastill in Arisaig, four or five days after the disaster of Culloden.
After the Prince escaped to France, both the Bard and his elder brother Aonghas Beag were fugitives in their own country; both Alasdair's house and his brother's mansion at Dalilea were plundered by Hanoverian redcoats. Even the bard's cat was killed lest it might provide food for his wife and children.
According to the non-juring Episcopal Bishop Robert Forbes, who interviewed the Bard for a collection of Jacobite memoirs, "Captain MacDonald and his wife and children wandered through hills and mountains until the act of indemnity appeared, and in the time of their skulking from place to place his poor wife fell ill with child, which happened to be a daughter, and is still alive."
The Bard's conversion to Catholicism had caused him to be mocked and reviled in verse by a fellow Scottish Gaelic poet called "The Mull Satirist." Even though the Mull Satirist accused Alasdair of becoming a Catholic out of careerism and not genuine belief, Alasdair did not convert back to Calvinism during the often savage anti-Catholic and Anti-Episcopalian persecution that followed the defeat of the Uprising.
At their second meeting, the Bard gave Bishop Forbes two pieces of the eight-oared boat in which the Prince had sailed from Borodale to Benbecula in the aftermath of Culloden. The Bishop preserved them as a relic.
After the Highlands grudgingly became more peaceful, Alasdair received the farm at Eignaig on the Glenuig estate, from the Captain and Chief of Clanranald. He remained there with his family until 1751.
On April 22, 1751, the Bard met again with Bishop Forbes at Leith and provided the latter with a detailed account of the atrocities committed by Hanoverian redcoats on the islands of Canna and Eigg.

''Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich''

Alasdair then travelled to Edinburgh with the purpose of publishing his volume of poems entitled: Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich —.
It has been written that, "It is very characteristic of his reckless courage that he published these poems, breathing rebellion in every line, and pouring the vials of his wrath upon the whole race of the Georges, five years after the battle at Culloden."
In the title to this volume, the Bard described himself as the Bailie of Canna. According to John Lorne Campbell, "It is difficult to account for this appointment, as Canna was part of the Clanranald estates, which were forfeited, and the Government was certainly not in the habit of appointing Jacobites to administer the forfeited properties. He does not seem to have occupied the position very long."

''An Airce''

Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich included the poem, An Airce "The Ark," a biting satire aimed at the Whigs of Clan Campbell.
Like the Irish language Bard Brian Merriman, Alasdair begins by parodying the conventions of the Aisling, or Vision poem. In the Aisling genre, the poet is out in the countryside and meets a figure, usually a woman, from the Otherworld. The figure will lament her lot under foreign tyranny, call upon her sons to liberate her, and prophesy the return of justice when the House of Stuart regains the throne. In Alasdair's hands, the convention is given an cynical and comedic twist.
Instead of a woman, the Bard describes a meeting with the ghost of a Campbell who was beheaded for supporting the Stuart claim to the throne. The ghost then tells the Bard that the Campbells will soon be punished for committing high treason against their lawful King, first being visited by the Ten Plagues of Egypt and then by another Great Flood upon their lands.
The Bard is instructed to emulate Noah by building an Ark for carefully selected Campbells. The moderates will be welcomed aboard the Ark's decks after being purged of their Whiggery by swallowing a heavy dose of seawater. Campbell redcoats are to be tied with millstones and thrown overboard.
A female poet of the clan who had mocked Prince Charles and accused him of illegitimacy was to be treated to a fitting punishment before being delivered right into the Bard's hands.
Also, Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, who has been appointed as the Crown's Factor on the forfeited lands of Clan Stewart of Appin, is one the few Whigs for whom the ghost confesses a certain respect:

Reaction and aftermath

According to Father Charles MacDonald, "In other passages he prays that the Butcher may have a rope tied around his neck and may be made to swing from it., - a blessing to which, if it could do any good, many a Highlander today would respond with a hearty amen. His choicest of offering to the King is the Scottish Maiden - i.e. the Guillotine - and so on. But these extravagant forms of lese majeste, and of course not at all to be approved of, even in a poet."
According to John Lorne Campbell, two of the poems in Ais-Eridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich, A Song on Old Age and A Dialogue between a Friend and a Foe of Whisky, were actually composed by Alasdair's close friend, the North Uist bard Iain Mac Fhearchair.
According to John Lorne Campbell, "The invective he heaped on the reigning House and it's supporters gained him the enthusiastic approval of friends and the severe displeasure of the Government. MacDonald himself escaped prosecution, but the unsold copies of the book were seized and burned by the public hangman in Edinburgh market-place in 1752."
Only twelve original copies are now known to exist. The same book, in censored editions, appeared several times in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Soon after the publication, the Captain and Chief of Clanranald deprived the Bard of the farm at Eignaig. An additional reason for this was that Father Harrison, the local Catholic priest, had objected to the Bard's composition of overtly sexual poetry. The Bard responded to his eviction by reviling Eignaig in verse.

Later life

He smoved again to Inverie in Knoydart, to Morar. While in Morar, the Bard composed a poem in praise of both the place and the local Catholic priests and seminarians at Buorblach, who were less critical of his poetry than Father Harrison had been.
The Captain and Chief of Clanranald then granted him land at Camas an t-Salainn and then Sandaig in Arisaig.
He frequently travelled to North Uist, where he had a close friend in Iain Mac Fhearchair, the famed bard to Sir James MacDonald of Sleat.

Death

In his 1889 book Moidart: Among the Clanranalds, Father Charles MacDonald recorded the Bard's last moments from the oral tradition of Moidart, "In his last illness he was carefully nursed by his Arisaig friends, two of whom on the night of his decease, finding the hours rather monotonous, and thinking that he was asleep, began to recite in an undertone some verses of their own composition. To their astonishment, however, the bard raised himself up, and, smiling at their inexperienced efforts, pointed out how the ideas might be improved and the verses made to run in another and smoother form, at the same time giving an illustration in a few original measures of his own. He then sank back on the pillow and immediately expired. It was proposed at first to carry his remains to Eilean Fhionnain – Island Finnan, but the project, owing to a severe gale then raging along the coast, had to be abandoned. The Arisaig people thereupon got their own way, and Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was buried in the cemetery of Kilmorie, close to the present Catholic church of Arisaig."
Although the exact location of the Bard's grave is no longer known, a wall plaque was erected in 1927 in Cille Maolruadh cemetery "by a few Jacobite admirers in New Zealand and some fellow clansmen at home, in recognition of his greatness as a Gaelic poet".

Legacy

Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair may be said to rank first among all bards of the Scottish Gaels, perhaps with only Sorley MacLean, of more recent fame, as an exception. He "owed little or nothing either to his predecessors or his contemporaries" in the field of poetry and many of his poems are available in anthologies of Scottish poetry. His song Òran Eile don Phrionnsa was performed by Barra native Calum Johnston at the 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh. A CD recording was released, as part of the Alan Lomax Collection, by Rounder Records in 2006. Capercaillie recorded several of his poems on their album Glenfinnan.
According to John Lorne Campbell, "...no satisfactory text of MacDonald's poems has yet been produced. Apart from the peculiarities of his own spelling – which represents nearly the first attempt to adapt the orthography of the old literary language common to Scotland and Ireland to the vernacular of the Highlands – he uses forms which are not now employed in modern speech, and which have been consequently removed by all his editors from MacPherson onwards, presumably as a concession to readers unwilling to acquaint themselves with obsolete forms of the language."
His son, Raonuill MacDhòmhnuill or Raghnall Dubh, was also a famous Gaelic poet who published Comh-chruinneachidh Orannaigh Gaidhealach in Edinburgh in 1776.
According to a 1964 oral history interview with Eigg seanchaidh Donald Archie MacDonald, both Raghnall Dubh and his son, Aonghas Lathair, were tacksmen of the Laig estate in Eigg from around 1775. Aonghas Lathair gained local notoriety by
evicting the people from Cleadale so that he could give the land to his brother-in-law. When severe hardships fell upon Aonghas Lathair and his family, which resulted in Aonghas Lathair committing suicide, the old people of Eigg blamed the family's misfortune on the curse that was said to have been put on them by the women whom he had evicted from Cleadale. Angus R. MacDonald, the son of Raghnall 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