Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c. 1698–1770), legal name Alexander MacDonald, or, in Gaelic Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill, was a Scottish war poet, satirist, lexicographer, and memoirist.

He was born at Dalilea into the Scottish nobility (Scottish Gaelic: flath) and Clan MacDonald of Clanranald (Scottish Gaelic: Clann Raghnaill) and is believed to have been homeschooled in Celtic mythology, Irish bardic poetry, Classics, and the Western canon, before briefly attending university. MacDhòmhnaill was multilingual and had the rare skill at the time of literacy in the vernacular Scottish Gaelic language. Drawing upon his own culture and the literature in the other languages he knew, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill began composing Gaelic poetry while teaching at a Protestant school at Kilchoan, run by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. The bard published the first secular book in Scottish Gaelic, the glossary Leabhar a Theagasc Ainminnin (1741).

Hearing MacDhòmhnaill's Jacobite poetry read aloud by one of the Seven Men of Moidart, Alasdair was credited by Gaelic literary scholar John Mackenzie with helping persuade Prince Charles Edward Stuart to sail from France to Scotland and begin the Rising of 1745. MacDhòmhnaill fought as a captain in the Jacobite Army. The Clanranald Bard, as he has since been dubbed by Hamish Henderson, was also chosen to teach Gaelic to the Prince.

After the Battle of Culloden, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill, his wife, and children remained in hiding until the Act of Indemnity was passed. He then served, under the name, "Captain Alexander MacDonald, brother german of Æneas or Angus MacDonald of Dalely (sic) in Moidart, of the family of Clanranald, and full cousin-german to Miss Flora MacDonald", as a source about the rising and its aftermath for non-juring Episcopal Bishop Robert Forbes' 3 Volume primary source collection The Lyon in Mourning.

In 1751, MacDhòmhnaill published the second secular book in the Gaelic language, Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich (The Resurrection of the Old Scottish Language); a poetry collection. Due to his Jacobitism, frank treatment of sexuality, and vocal attacks in verse against the House of Hanover and the ideology of the ruling Whig political party, all known copies were publicly burned at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh. Even so, twelve copies of the first edition still survive.

After another two decades of composing Gaelic poetry, Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair died at Arisaig and was buried locally in St Máel Ruba's Roman Catholic cemetery in 1770. His last direct descendant, Capt. Angus R. McDonald (1832-1879), emigrated from Eigg to the United States and fought in the Union Army during the American Civil War, after which he was known throughout Wisconsin as "the hero of Fort Blakeley."

Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill and 20th-century Symbolist Bard Sorley MacLean are considered the twin pinnacles of Scottish Gaelic literature. 21st-century Celticist Robert Dunbar called Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, "the greatest poet of the eighteenth century Golden Age of Gaelic poets", and the 1751 publication of Ais-eridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich inspired, "an increasing number of important collections of Gaelic poetry."

Due to the very high praise of literary scholar John Lorne Campbell beginning in the 1930s, the British folk revival in the 1950s, Scottish devolution in the 1990s, and the growth of Scottish Gaelic-medium education as a tool of heritage language revival, interest in Alasdair MacDhòmhnuill has also been revived. He has even been promoted as Scotland's other national poet and even as a complimentary figure to Robert Burns. After over two centuries of bowdlerisation, the first complete and uncensored collection of MacDhòmhnaill's poetry was published at West Montrose, Ontario in 2020. Ballachulish-based vocalist Griogair Labhruidh has also recorded Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's Òran Eile don Phrionnsa ("Another Song to the Prince"), titled by its first line Moch sa Mhadainn 's Mi a' Dùsgadh, as part of the Soundtrack for the 2nd and 4th Seasons of the TV series Outlander.

Family background

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was born around 1698, into both the Scottish nobility and Clan MacDonald of Clanranald. Through his great-grandmother Màiri, daughter of Angus MacDonald of Islay, he claimed descent from Scottish Kings Robert the Bruce and Robert II, the first monarch of the House of Stuart, as well as, like the rest of Clan Donald, from Somerled. Furthermore, Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's paternal great-great-grandfather, Raghnall Mac Ailein 'ic Iain (Ranald MacDonald of Benbecula), the uncle of the then Chief of Clanranald, had acted as a protector to the illegal Franciscan missionaries dispatched from the underground Catholic Church in Ireland to the Scottish Gaeldom during the 1620s and '30s.

Upon 9 September 1630, Fr. Patrick Hegarty, OFM, was arrested upon South Uist by priest hunters commanded by John Leslie, the Episcopalian Bishop of the Church of Scotland's Diocese of the Isles. Before Bishop Leslie could deliver Fr. Hegarty for trial, however, Ragnaill mac Ailein intervened and relieved the Bishop and the priest hunters of their captive. The incident enraged King Charles I, who sent a furious letter about it to Privy Council of Scotland on 10 December 1630. Efforts by Lord Lorne, the infamously anti-Catholic Sheriff of Argyllshire, to retaliate by summoning Raghnaill mac Ailein to Inverary for criminal prosecution under the Statutes of Iona were ignored by the Bard's ancestor, who died peacefully upon the Isle of Canna and was buried at Howmore, South Uist in 1636.

The Bard's father was Maighstir Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill (Fr. Alexander MacDonald, 1st of Dalilea), who was the Church of Scotland rector (this was prior to the Scottish Episcopal Church splitting from "The Kirk") of Ardnamurchan (Scottish Gaelic: Àird nam Murchan) and lived as a tacksman (Scottish Gaelic: Fear-Taic) at Dalilea (Scottish Gaelic: Dàil Eileadh) in Moidart (Scottish Gaelic: Mùideart).

The Bard's father was a native of South Uist and was the fourth son of Ronald MacDonald, the Tacksman of Milton. Through his oldest brother, Ranald MacDonald, who succeeded their father as Tacksman of Milton and Balivanich, Maighstir Alasdair was the uncle of the famous Flora MacDonald. He was also distantly related to The Captain of Clanranald (Scottish Gaelic: Mac Mhic Ailein). He graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1674 and shortly afterwards was 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 (Cille Chòmhghain), 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, the Covenanters toppled the High Church Episcopalian leadership of the Church of Scotland and took complete and permanent control over the denomination. As a result, Presbyterianism became the established and only tolerated form of both Sunday service and church government within the Kingdom of Scotland. Maighstir Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill, however, refused to conform. In consequence, he was declared deposed from his parish by the synod. However, the rector was very popular and the presbytery of Lorne never succeeded in establishing a new minister in his place. It is said, however, that Rev. Colin Campbell, the Presbyterian minister of Ardchattan, came to Kilchoan upon the Christian Sabbath wearing a kilt and armed with a drawn claymore and a cocked pistol. Rev. Campbell then announced the Synod's deposition of Maighstir Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill with his back to the wall. Although both the Protestants and Catholics of the district intensely hated Rev. Campbell for being a ministeir na cuigse, or "minister of the Whigs", he was allowed to deliver his message and leave Ardnamurchan none the worse for wear. Maighstir Alasdair accordingly "remained in his parish as a non-Jurant minister after the revolution of 1690."

On another occasion, Maighstir Alasdair is said to have brutally flogged a Catholic neighbour, who had repeatedly grazed his cattle herd on the rector's land. The local Catholic population was outraged and vowed to retaliate. A group of Catholic men led by Iain Caol MacDhunnachaidh ("Slender John Robertson") surprised Maighstir Alasdair near Dalilea and beat him so savagely that the Rector of Kilchoan 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, Iain Caol is said to have shot a bird so that it fell at the feet of Maighstir Alasdair's wife. Iain 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 on which a skeleton has been carved.

Maighstir Alasdair was succeeded as tacksman of Dalilea by his eldest son, Aonghas Beag MacDhòmhnaill (Angus MacDonald, 2nd of Dalilea), who married Margaret Cameron, a devoutly Roman Catholic woman from Achadhuan, in Lochaber (Scottish Gaelic: Loch Abar). According to Father Charles MacDonald, "She is represented to have been a lady of singular piety, and of a gentleness of manners which was well-calculated to have had a beneficial effect on the fiery characters surrounding Dalilea. The natives still point out a certain spot on the top of the knoll behind Dalilea House, where this estimable person used to spend many of the summer evenings in reading and in devotional exercises. It was here, too, that she used to withdraw on Sundays to pray, when circumstances prevented her from going to church."

Under Margaret's influence, Aonghas Beag MacDhòmhnaill converted from the Scottish Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism "many years before the '45". He also served as Captain over 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 MacDhòmhnaill returned to Dalilea, where he finished his days in peace.

Castle Tioram 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 MacDhòmhnaill, 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.

The historic Episcopalian parish church at Kilchoan, which was dedicated to Saint Comgan, where Maighstir Alasdair served as non-juring rector, and where both Aonghas Beag and the Clanranald Bard were almost certainly baptized, is currently roofless and in ruins. The baptismal font, however, is still pointed out to those who ask.

Early life

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, the second son of the Rector of Kilchoan, was born at Dalilea at the beginning of the 18th century. The old part of Dalilea House, which is believed to date from the 15th century and where the Bard was born, is still extant. So, in fact, is an oak which the Bard is said to have planted in his youth.

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 (insular script) of the Clanranald bards, and in the classics (this is borne out by the references in his poetry to Ancient Greek and Roman literature). For example, his elegy upon a dove is believed to have been heavily influenced by Catullus' similar poem upon the death of Lesbia's sparrow. There may, however, have been another source for the Bard's education.

Furthermore, 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 (old Clanranald excepted) 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 Classical 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.

The Bard and his brother would also have been taught how to live off the land, how to withstand cold and other hardships, and how to follow the code of honour demanded of Scottish clan chiefs and in Gaelic warfare. In his biography of Rob Roy MacGregor, W.H. Murray described the code of honour as follows, "The abiding principle is cast up from the records of detail: that right must be seen to be done, no man left destitute, the given word honoured, the strictest honour observed to all who have given implicit trust, and that a guest's confidence in his safety must never be betrayed by his host, or vice versa. There was more of like kind, and each held as its kernel the simple ideal of trust honoured... Breaches of it were abhorred and damned... The ideal was applied 'with discretion'. Its interpretation went deeply into domestic life, but stayed shallow for war and politics."

In 1714, the Protestant Elector of Hanover mounted the British and Irish thrones as King George I and, with his assistance, the ascendent Whig political party seized absolute power and launched a purge of all Tories from the Government, the British Army, the Church of England, the legal profession, and local politics. Great Britain and Ireland became de facto single party states and were to remain so until King George III was crowned in 1760 and allowed the Tories back into the Government. Even so, some modern historians now call the period between 1714 and 1783 the, "age of the Whig oligarchy."

Meanwhile, at his residence and government in exile at the Palazzo Muti in Rome, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, whom Whigs termed "The Old Pretender" and whom Jacobites termed "The King over the Water", had developed a political ideology and a series of planned governmental reforms that have had an enormous influence upon what is now called traditionalist conservatism and which gave the prospect of a second Stuart Restoration a very wide public appeal, even among the many Protestants of the British Isles. These promised reforms included linguistic rights for minority languages instead of coercive Anglicisation, freedom of religion and full rights under the law to everyone who chose to worship outside of the Established Churches instead of the Whig Party's ongoing religious persecution of them, and the return to devolved government instead of the centralization of government power in London.

According to Derrick S. Thomson, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill is "almost certainly" the author of the Journall and Memoirs of P- C- Expedition into Scotland, etc. 1745–46, which was later published in volume 2 of the Lockhart Papers. Even though he would have been only a teenager at the time, according to Derrick S. Thomson, "from one or two references there it could be thought that he", had also taken part in the Jacobite rising of 1715.

If so, both Alasdair and his brother Aonghas Beag would have been fighting on the right wing of the Jacobite Army during the Battle of Sherrifmuir and witnessed when Ailean Dearg, the Chief of their clan, fell mortally wounded, "killed, it was popularly said, by a silver bullet that negatived the charm he used to wear". They also would have heard Alasdair Dubh, 11th Chief of Clan MacDonald of Glengarry rally the faltering warriors of Clan Donald by throwing up his blue bonnet and crying Buillean an-diugh, tuiream a-màireach! ("Blows today, mourning tomorrow!").

Alleged university education and marriage

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 without receiving a degree. He is known, however, to have later set several of his poems to the airs played upon the Steeple of the Glasgow Tolbooth, near the Old College.

Derick Thomson suggests that the Bard's departure may have been due to his having married Jane MacDonald of Dalness (Sine Nic Dhòmhnaill).

Derick S. Thomson writes that Jane's family, the MacDonalds of Dalness, "had strong literary interests". Her father had composed a verse dialogue between Queen Anne and the Chief of Clan Stewart of Appin. Furthermore, the Gaelic song Tha mise seo 'm laighe is attributed to Jane's brother.

Alasdair later wrote the poem Òran d'a chéile nuadh-phósda in praise of his bride and referred to his father in law as, "The Rhymer".

According to Fr. Charles MacDonald, however, who interviewed the Bard's surviving relatives about their family's oral tradition, Alasdair left the university because his family could not afford the price of attending.

According to John Lorne Campbell, "In any case, Glasgow University has no record of Alexander MacDonald, son of 'Maighstir Alasdair', as a student."

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

Allt Coire Mhuilinn, near Kilchoan, where Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill both farmed and lived with his family while working as a schoolmaster.

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 Marcus Tanner, the S.P.C.K. had been incorporated under Queen Anne in 1709 and was building both schools and libraries in the Highlands and Islands with a twofold purpose. The first purpose was to prevent the Gaels from returning to the strictly illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland. The second was to ensure, "that in process of time Britons from North to South may speak the same language". For this reason, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill would have been under orders to teach his students only in English and to subject any student who spoke Gaelic inside the school or on the playground to corporal punishment.

According to John Lorne Campbell, "Objections were indeed made against the banning of Gaelic in these SSPCK Schools by sensible ministers and schoolmaster on the spot in the Highlands, but they were brushed aside in the Edinburgh offices of the Society."

Also according to John Lorne Campbell, "Too often Scottish writers, and particularly writers on the history of the Scottish Highlands, have confused 'education' with 'Calvinist indoctrination', such as was given in the S.P.C.K. schools in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, where the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Shorter Catechism, Vincent's Catechism, the Protestant's Resolutions, Pool's Dialogues, and Guthrie's Trials, all in English, formed the bulk of an unattractive list of school books."

Lastly, what the unpublished early minutes of the S.P.C.K. in Scotland reveals about its ideology and policies shows that Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill's employment from 1729 to 1745 as one of their schoolmasters was a violation of his natural loyalties as a member of the Clan MacDonald of Clanranald. Therefore, Campbell postulates that Alasdair must have had a dispute with Ranald (1692–1766), the 17th Chief of his Clan, and that this caused him to seek employment with the SSPK.

From 1738 to 1744, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill taught at the school attached to his father's former parish church at Kilchoan. He also supplemented his salary of £16 a year by renting the farm at Allt Coire Mhuilinn, about which he later composed one of his most famous poems: Allt an t-Siùcar (The Sugar Brook), which remains, according to Scottish nationalist literary scholar Cailean Gallagher, "a favourite at Mòds and ceilidhs to this day."

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 Emissaries 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.

In a 2016 article, Alan Riach expressed the belief that compiling the first Gaelic dictionary convinced Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair that the Gaelic language deserved preservation and that this new belief caused him to turn against the S.S.P.K. and everything it stood for.

According to Campbell, "Meanwhile, MacDonald's official salary as an SPCK schoolmaster and catechist has been reduced from £18 to £15 in 1738, to £14 in 1740, and to £12 in 1743." Even so, there was a proposal in 1742 to send him as a Protestant missionary to the overwhelmingly Catholic island of South Uist.

Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill's whereabouts during the year of 1744, however, are unknown. The SSPK believed him to have "deserted his post to help rally the Jacobite clans" and their suspicions are confirmed by the flyting poem between the Clanranald Bard and "the Mull Satirist". In the same minute, the SSPK criticized Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill for assigning his sixteen-year-old son Raonuill Dubh MacDhòmhnaill to cover his teaching duties.

In June 1745, the minutes of S.S.P.K. reported, "It's represented that Alexr. MacDonald schoolmaster at Ardnamurchan is an offense to all sober well-inclin'd persons as he wanders thro' the country composing Galick songs stuffed with obscene language." The Committee recommended that the Synod of Glenelg be asked to look into the matter.

According to John Lorne Campbell, "Probably this refers to his Rabelaisian song on the subject of the libidinous behaviour of two old fellows in Ardnamurchan; his political satires were composed later."

The Synod's investigation found the allegations credible and the Bard was summoned to Edinburgh by the Royal Bounty Committee to answer the charge that he was composing erotic poetry in Gaelic. He ignored the summons. The SSPK finally dismissed Alasdair, who they were told had again abandoned his teaching duties at Coire Mhuilinn, in a minute dated 4 July 1745. In reality, on 15 May 1745, according to historian John Watts, Alasdair MacDonald had already preempted his dismissal by resigning his post. At the time, like many other Gaels, whether Protestant or Catholic, he was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

Crossing the Tiber

Like his brother Aonghas Beag, the Bard converted during this period from Protestantism to the still illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland. 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. Historian John Watts, however, believes that their close kinsman from Morar, Bishop Hugh MacDonald, the underground Catholic Vicar General of the Highland District, also played a highly significant role in the conversions of Aonghas Beag and Alasdair MacDonald. Although the exact date of the bard's reception into the Catholic Church remains unknown, Watts believes that he was received in secret, in order to safeguard his job, at least by 1744, when suspicion of his religious sympathies began to cause problems related to his employment as a Church of Scotland schoolmaster and catechist. According to a letter by Lord Lovat quoted by historian Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey, Bishop MacDonald was well known at the time throughout the Highlands and Islands for his ability to persuade Protestant Gaels, despite the enormous risks they faced under the religious persecution of the era, to convert to Roman Catholicism.

Also according to Watts, the Clanranald Bard helped Bishop MacDonald in late 1743 by drafting a detailed report to the Presbytery of Mull, which explained why the faculties of Fr Francis MacDonnell, a recent Protestant convert, anti-Catholic polemicist, and Church of Scotland minister, had been revoked, prompting his conversion to Presbyterianism. The reported accused Rev. MacDonnell of violating priestly celibacy, incest with his own sister, two counts of infanticide after twice getting his sister into trouble, and bribing another man to falsely claim paternity. The Synod of Argyll investigated, found the accusations in the report credible, and MacDonnell was quietly transferred to the Church of Scotland parish of Duirinish, in the Isle of Skye, where he died thirty-seven years later. The report written by the Bard, titled, "Reasons for Laying on and continuing Mr Francis McDonnells suspension, and why they are published", survives in the Scottish Mission Papers, Scottish Catholic Archives.

The Bard, who "was first an Episcopalian, then a Presbyterian, and finally a Catholic", was mocked and reviled while engaging in Flyting, or the exchange of insults in verse, with a fellow Scottish Gaelic poet called "The Mull Satirist." Even though the Mull Satirist accused Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill of becoming a Catholic solely out of political careerism and a desire to curry the favour of the House of Stuart Government in Exile at the Palazzo Muti in the Papal States, according to Charles MacDonald, "The best answer to this is, that MacDonald continued a Catholic when it might have been to his temporal advantage to have gone back to either of the former denominations... His children and their descendants were noted for being staunch Catholics."

Jacobite officer and war poet

Jacobite Standard of the 1745 Uprising.

In the introduction to his groundbreaking 1933 volume Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, John Lorne Campbell explained that, contrary to widely held beliefs, the Scottish Gàidhealtachd during the 18th-century was far from isolated from the literature and culture of the outside world. For example, Campbell explained, the Jacobite war poetry of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair shows a very clear understanding of the religious, political, and dynastic issues at stake and abounds with learned allusions to figures from Classical mythology, the Christian Bible, and from both the Mythological and Fenian Cycles of Celtic mythology.

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 and for the reforms promised by "The King over the Water." 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. Furthermore, as Charles MacDonald wrote during the early 1880s, the Jacobite war poems of Alasdair, "are sung at almost every fireside in the Jacobite districts to this day."

On 25 July 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."

According to the local oral tradition, the Prince is said to have called upon the Bard's family at Dalilea House, during his journey up Loch Shiel on the way to the raising of his Standard. According to Bishop Forbes, "Captain MacDonald said it was most certain that if Keppoch, Lochiel, and young Clanranald had not joined the Prince, he would have been forced to shift for himself in the best manner he could."

Even though he later told Bishop Forbes that most of the other Clanranald men were busy rowing the luggage, baggage, and supplies brought aboard the Du Teillay down the length of Loch Shiel and were unable to join the Jacobite Army until four days later, on 19 August 1745, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill is believed to have witnessed as the Prince's Standard was unfurled by the Marquess of Tullibardine, blessed by a reluctant Bishop Hugh MacDonald, and raised at Glenfinnan (Scottish Gaelic: Gleann Fhionnain), which signalled the beginning of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Alasdair is also said on this occasion to have personally sung his song of welcome: Teàrlach 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.

David Morier's depiction of the 1745 Battle of Culloden – An Incident in the Rebellion of 1745

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 as a captain in the Clan Ranald Regiment where he was placed in command of 50 "cliver fellows" whom he personally recruited in Ardnamurchan. Among his other responsibilities, the Bard was appointed to teach Scottish Gaelic to the Prince due to his "skill in the Highland Language."

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair fought alongside the Clanranald men for the duration of the campaign which ended with the crushing defeat and the no quarter given to the Jacobite Army at the Battle of Culloden.

The Year of the Pillaging

After Culloden: Rebel Hunting by John Seymour Lucas depicts the rigorous search for Jacobites during "The Year of the Pillaging."

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, about which he later helped write a detailed account. 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 (Scottish Gaelic: Àrasaig), four or five days after the disaster of Culloden.

Due to the "arbitrary and malicious violence" that Hanoverian Redcoats inflicted, the aftermath of Culloden is still referred to in the Highlands and Islands as Bliadhna nan Creach ("The Year of the Pillaging"). What is worse, according to John Lorne Campbell, "Lochaber suffered more from Hanoverian reprisals and plundering than any other part of the Highlands."

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.

Non-juring Episcopal Bishop Robert Forbes first met and interviewed "Captain Alexander MacDonald, brother german of Æneas or Angus MacDonald of Dalely (sic) in Moidart, of the family of Clanranald, and full cousin-german to Miss Flora MacDonald", between 28 & 29 December 1747 about the Rising and its aftermath for the highly important primary source The Lyon in Mourning.

According to Bishop Forbes, during "the Year of the Pillaging", "Captain MacDonald had all his effects plundered and pillaged. After everything was destroyed or carried off, the party happened to spy a living cat, immediately killed the poor harmless puss, and threw it out of the way, lest the poor mother and her children should have eaten the dead cat in their necessity. For Cumberland and his army were exceedingly desirous that the young and old (women and infants not excepted) they did not murder might be starved to death, which was the fate of too many, and their endeavours were fully equal to their desires. 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."

During a visit to the Bishop, after listening to the detailed journal of the rising and its aftermath by Captain Félix O'Neille y O'Neille of the French Royal Army's Irish Brigade being read aloud, the Clanranald Bard described the diary as accurate for the most part. When he was then asked who had betrayed Captain O'Neille to the notorious Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone of H.M.S. Furnace while the Irish Jacobite was hiding inside a lake-side cave upon Benbecula. The Bard responded that the Captain O'Neille believed the informer to be "Ranald MacDonald of Torulum in Benbecula", but he explained that the Clan MacDonald of Clanranald had already conducted its own investigation. Torulum had been subjected to a harsh and grueling interrogation by the Chief, but had vowed that he deserved to die if he had done such a dishonourable thing and was ultimately ruled out as a suspect.

About the alleged violation of the given word of honour and theft under cover of authority of Captain O'Neille's finances, consisting of 450 guineas, and his gold watch by General John Campbell and other senior officers of the Campbell of Argyll Militia, according to the Bishop, "Captain MacDonald declared to me he did not in the least doubt the truth of that, for this simple reason, because all the Campbells, from the head to the foot of them, had discovered a most avaricious, greedy temper in the matter of pillaging and plundering their native country."

At their second meeting, on the evening of Wednesday 28 December 1748, 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 always treasured them afterwards as a relic.

On 22 April 1751, the Bard met again with Bishop Forbes at Leith and provided the latter with a detailed account of the violations of the laws and customs of war committed by both the Royal Navy and Hanoverian redcoats on the islands of Canna and Eigg. In addition to looting and sexual assault of the islands' women, all 38 surviving islanders who had served in the Jacobite Army were arrested by the Royal Navy Captain John Fergussone of Inverurie (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Uaraidh), boarded H.M.S. Furnace, and remained on board when it became a prison hulk anchored in the River Thames off Gravesend, Kent. Although many died aboard the Furnace from torture, disease, or starvation, the remaining 16 were eventually transported to the Colony of Barbados and the Colony of Jamaica, to work as slave labor on sugar cane plantations.

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 — (The Resurrection of the Old Scottish Language).

In the title page to this volume, the Bard described himself as "the Bailie of Canna". Writing in 1933, John Lorne Campbell commented, "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." Other sources, as Campbell learned through his research over later decades, reveal that the lands of Clanranald barely escaped forfeiture through a minor legal technicality. Campbell further wrote in 1981, "A note in bundle 117 of the Dunvegan Papers proves that Alexander MacDonald, 'the Famous Composer of Morack', (i.e. the well-known poem in praise of Mórag) was installed on Canna by 10 April 1750."

The title poem in the collection is in praise of the Gaelic language and a call for language revival, which, according to Campbell, was modeled after the similar praise poem which Presbyterian minister Rev. John MacLean of Kilninian on the Isle of Mull, had composed in honor of pioneering Welsh Linguist and Celticist Edward Lhuyd.

In other poems, the Clanranald Bard irately denounced the House of Hanover for having, "deprived the Highlanders of their natural garb and of the guns they used to hunt the deer, executed some of their natural leaders, and imprisoned and banished others". In one such poem, which is preserved elsewhere in manuscript, the Bard drew upon a Gaelic proverb by saying that the love of King George II for the Gaels was, "but the love of the raven for its bone."

It has been written by Fr. Charles MacDonald 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."

An Airce

Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes: An Aisling, 1883

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, a Jacobite verse form based on both Medieval Dream vision poetry and an early 17th-century convention invented by Fr. Geoffrey Keating in which a former deity from Irish mythology is seen weeping for a recently fallen hero.

According to Daniel Corkery, "The Aisling proper is Jacobite poetry; and a typical example would run something like this: The poet, weak with thinking of the woe that has overtaken the Gael, falls into a deep slumber. In his dreaming a figure of radiant beauty draws near. She is so bright, so stately, the poet imagines her one of the immortals. Is she Deirdre? Is she Gearnait? Or is she Helen? Or Venus? He questions her, and learns that she is Erin; and her sorrow, he is told, is for her true mate who is in exile beyond the seas. This true mate is, according to the date of the composition, either the Old or Young Pretender; and the poem ends with a promise of speedy redemption on the return of the King's son."

In Alasdair's hands, the conventions of the Aisling were given a 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. Some, including the Campbell Tacksmen of Inverawe, Carwhin, Airds, and Lochnell, are to be welcomed aboard the Ark and embraced as true Jacobites, which has led John Lorne Campbell to comment, "It is very evident that the Clan Campbell was not the monolithic Whig organization in 1745 that it is sometimes described as being."

Noah's Ark (1846), by American folk artist Edward Hicks.

The moderate Campbells will be welcomed aboard the Ark's decks after being purged of their Whiggery by swallowing a heavy dose of seawater. Redcoats from the Campbell of Argyll Militia, on the other hand, 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.

Ma Thig a bhan-bhárd na d'lionamh Ostag mhío-narach an an Obain, Ceanagail achdair r'i do bhrandi, Go bi toirt dram do'n a rónamh: Ach ma chinnis i na Jonah 'S a sluggadh beo le muic-mhara: Go meal i a cairstealan fheólain; Ach a sgeith air córsa Chana.

"If the poetess comes into your nets, The shameless little female pubkeeper from Oban, Tie an anchor of brandy to her To give a dram to the seals. "But if she becomes a Jonah, And is swallowed alive by a whale, May she enjoy her fleshy quarters Provided she be spewed up on the coast of Canna."

Also, Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, who has been appointed as the Crown's Factor on the forfeited lands of Clan Stewart of Appin and Clan Cameron of Lochiel, is one of the few Whigs for whom the ghost confesses a certain respect:

Ge toil leam Cailean Glinn Iubhair B' fheàrr leam gu 'm b' iubhar 's nach b' fheàrna; Bho 'n a threig e nàdur a mhuinntreach, 'S gann a dh' fhaodar cuim thoirt dà-san. Cuir boiseid de ionmhas Righ Deorsa, De smior an òir mu theis-meadhon; 'S ìobair e 'Neptun ge searbh e, Mur grad-ainmich e 'n rìgh dlighneach.

"Though Colin of Glenure I much esteem, Would that he was not alder but true yew; Since he forsook the allegiance of his sires, To be reprieved is not his due. "A girdle of the treasure of King George Of finest gold around his middle fling, And to Neptune offer him, though hard, Unless at once he name the rightful King".

Reaction and aftermath

A memorial marking the location before 1756 of the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh, where the seized copies Alasdair MacDonald's poetry book were publicly burned by the city executioner.

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."

Revealing that he saw the Jacobite risings as the continuation of the war his ancestors had waged against Oliver Cromwell, the Covenanters, and the Rump Parliament, Alasdair's book included English-Gaelic literary translations of three poems by Cavalier poet and Royalist General James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, which expressed his loyalty to King Charles I and to the House of Stuart during the English Civil War.

According to Hamish MacPherson, "One of the many contradictions about Alasdair was that he was a fine writer about love, but also wrote some very bawdy work – he wrote Praise of Morag about his wife which is full of sensual double entendres but also wrote Dispraise of Morag which is out-and-out obscene."

According to a 2017 article by Peter Mackay, the two poems that Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair wrote about his wife are both based on the rhythms of bagpipe music. In Praise of Morag the Bard likens his wife's breasts to geal criostal ("white crystal") and the lily of the valley, while comparing her skin to bog cotton and her kisses to cinnamon. In Dispraise of Morag, which was composed after his wife discovered her husband's infidelity, Morag NicDhòmhnaill was dubbed, A bhan-pheacach sin gun loinn, Làn de dh’fhòtas innt ("A graceless sinful girl, full of stinking pus").

According to John Lorne Campbell, two of the poems in Ais-Eridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich, Òran air Sean aois ("A Song on Old Age") and Comh-radh, Mar go b' ann eider caraid agus namhaid an Uisgebheatha ("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.

The same collection also includes the poem Guidhe no Ùrnaigh an Ùghdair don Cheòlraidh ("The Author's Petition or Prayer to the Muses"), which the Bard addresses to the Nine Muses and which, "reflects ruefully upon his own poetic powers." Another poem, Tineas na h-Urchaid ("The Venereal Disease") mocks the rotting flesh and the other symptoms of gonorrhea. It was composed during an outbreak of venereal disease among the population of Ardnamurchan and the Western Highlands. According to John Lorne Campbell, these diseases were most likely introduced to Ardnamurchan by Englishmen who arrived in the 1720s to work as hired labourers for Thomas Howard, 8th Duke of Norfolk and Sir George Wade in the lead mines at Strontian.

According to John Lorne Campbell, "The invective he heaped on the reigning House and its 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."

21st-century Celticist Robert Dunbar, however, has called Alasdair mac Mhaighstir, "the greatest poet of the eighteenth century Golden Age of Gaelic poets", and adds that the 1751 publication of Ais-eridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich inspired the publication of, "an increasing number of important collections of Gaelic poetry."

In a 2020 article, Scottish nationalist Hamish MacPherson expressed the belief that Alasdair's authorship of, "the world's first printed collection of Gaelic poetry... alone should make him worth revering, not least because its visceral criticism of the Hanoverian dynasty and the satire he employed to berate them are works of genius."

Later life

According to John Lorne Campbell, "Although the tradition of his sojourn is very strong on Canna, no building or ruin or piece of land is pointed out now as having been occupied by him. Just how long Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair remained as Baillie of Canna is unknown. In fact for a person who is well known as the leading Gaelic poet of the Highlands and as the former officer in the Jacobite Army who was an important informant for Bishop Forbes, extraordinarily little is known about his life after 1751. After he left Canna he was for a time tenant of Eigneig in Moidart."

Soon after the publication, the Captain of Clanranald's estate Factor evicted the Bard and his family from Eigneig. The main reason for this was that Father William Harrison, the local Roman Catholic priest, had objected to the Bard's composition of erotic poetry.

According to Father Charles MacDonald, however, the dispute between the Bard and Father Harrison was not only moral but also political. At the beginning of the Uprising, Father Harrison had appeared before the Sheriff of Argyllshire at Inverary (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Aora) and had sworn under oath that he took no part in politics, was as loyal to the House of Hanover, "as a good Patriot should be", and that he, " regretted that any of his co-religionists should have allowed himself to be involved in an enterprise so foolhardy," as the Jacobite rising of 1745. In response, the Sheriff had given Father Harrison a pass which was shown to any militia officers who encountered him. Father Harrison's pass made him, according to Father Charles MacDonald, the only Roman Catholic priest in the Highlands and Islands who was never imprisoned or even harassed during the 1745 rising or its aftermath. To the Bard, however, Father Harrison's loyalty to the Hanoverians was nothing short of treasonous and had marked him out as (Scottish Gaelic: an t-Sagairt na Cuigse), or ("the Priest for the Whigs").

The Bard responded to his eviction at Father Harrison's urging by reviling Eignaig in satirical poetry.

He moved again to Inverie (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Aoidh) in Knoydart (Scottish Gaelic: Cnòideart), to Morar (Scottish Gaelic: Mòrar). While in Morar, the Bard composed a poem in praise of both the place and of Bishop Hugh MacDonald, the priests, and students at the illegal Buorblach seminary, who were less critical of his poetry and politics than Father Harrison had been.

The Bard is believed to have composed his poem Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill, which is about the troubled voyage of a Highland War Galley from the ghost town of Loch Eynort in South Uist across the Irish Sea to Carrickfergus, in what is now Northern Ireland, and which remained unpublished until after his death, during the 1750s. John Lorne Campbell has written about Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill and the Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill, "There is a strong local tradition that at least part of his famous epic... was composed in Canna, while he was lying under an upturned boat at the head of Canna Harbour near the spot known as Lag nam Boitean. The same tradition exists in South Uist about Loch Eynort."

According to Derick S. Thomson, however, "His major poem, Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill (The Galley of Clan Ranald) is... a striking tour de force of dramatic description, precisely constructed but accommodating elements of the fantastic and with echoes of the 'runs' from the saga Cath Fionntràgha, a version of which is in the poets own hand (Nat. Lib. MS 72.2.11)."

Although Gaelic poetry was once assumed to be isolated from the literature of other languages, Alan Riach argues, "With Duncan Ban MacIntyre, you have someone who is illiterate but fluent in Gaelic, and composes his poetry to be sung, to be performed, as music; with Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair and The Birlinn of Clanranald you have an extremely sophisticated poet who reads fluently in a number of languages. So he's familiar with Homer and Virgil and the great epics of classical literature. He's familiar with poetry being written in English at the time. He's familiar with poetry written in Scots. His own writing in Gaelic is part of that continuum, part of that context."

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 (John MacCodrum), the famed bard to Sir James MacDonald of Sleat.

Death

Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair rests in an unknown plot in the cemetery beside the ruins of St. Maelrubha's Roman Catholic Church at Arisaig.

In his 1889 book Moidart: Among the Clanranalds, Father Charles MacDonald recorded the Bard's last moments in 1770 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."

According to Dom Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey, the outlawed Roman Catholic "heather priest" assigned to Arisaig in 1770 was Fr. Alexander MacDonald (d.1797), a graduate of the Scots College in Rome who was later described as, "a man who loved fatigue". As Fr MacDonald was not sent an assistant until 1777, it was almost certainly he who administered the Last Rites and offered a Tridentine Requiem Mass following the death of the Clanranald Bard.

According to Fr. Charles MacDonald, "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."

According to John Lorne Campbell, "There is a strong aura of a man whose career had gone wrong about him, such as might attach to a spoilt priest or minister. A bitter quarrel with his parents is hinted at in the poem on the flyting between himself and the Mull ploughman. But we know no details. Alasdair was certainly a remarkably well-educated man, who left a very strong mark upon Highland history and Scottish Gaelic literature. We may well wish we knew more."

Although the exact location of the Bard's grave is no longer known, a wall plaque was erected in 1927 in St. Maelrubha's Roman Catholic cemetery in Arisaig, which reads, "In this graveyard in a now forgotten spot lies Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald) The Clanranald Bard, born probably at Dalilea House, Loch Shiel, 1700, died at Sannaig, Arisaig, 1780. This bronze is erected to his memory (1927) by a few Jacobite admirers in New Zealand and some fellow clansmen at home in recognition of his greatness as a Gaelic poet. R.I.P."

Literary and cultural legacy

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair may be said to rank first among all the 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.

According to Alan Riach, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's high level of education, his ability to read and write in his own language, and his multilingual understanding of the Western canon from Classical literature to the time of the French and Scottish Enlightenments, is what sets him apart from the other truly great Gaelic poets of the era.

According to Derrick S. Thomson, "He was a man of strong views and violent emotions but with a hard intellectual cast of mind also; he was learned in the Gaelic tradition and open to influence from his other reading; he was an innovator and a conservative; and his poetry is full of the stimulating contradictions that proceed from these diversities."

According to Charles MacDonald, who considered Alasdair to share, "with Duncan Bàn M'Intyre the foremost place in the ranks of Celtic poets", also commented, "MacDonald was undoubtedly a person of high poetical genius, and although critics may differ as to the exact merits of some of his productions, no one will deny that there are certain poems - for instance, the Galley of Clanranald - which will be read and relished as long as the Gaelic language lives."

King Charles II named Gaelic Cavalier poet Iain Lom as his Poet Laureate during the Stuart Restoration, and Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was also appointed Poet Laureate by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the de jure Prince Regent, during the Jacobite Rising of 1745. But as the House of Stuart was unseated in 1688, and the subsequent Jacobite risings failed to permanently restore the Stuarts, the Whig single party state's historical apologists, like Lord Macaulay, wrote both poets out of what was long considered the unquestioned official history of British Isles. The stature of both poets was further diminished by the fact that they composed in Scottish Gaelic, at a time when all minority languages were under attack by the central government and the Established Church.

Even so, long before legendary Canadian Gaelic poet Iain mac Ailein, the former Bard to the 15th Chief of Clan Maclean of Coll, emigrated with his family from Tiree to Nova Scotia in 1819, Iain mac Ailein was only one of many Gaelic-speaking Seanchaidhe who could recite the entirety of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's immram poem Birlinn Chloinne Raghnaill ("The Birlinn of Clanranald"), from memory.

Furthermore, Iain mac Ailein also carried with him when he emigrated an extremely rare first edition copy of the Clanranald Bard's Ais-eridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich. In 1915, MacLean's grandson, Presbyterian minister Rev. Alexander MacLean Sinclair, donated his grandfather's copy of the book to St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. In a letter to the university's Rector, Rev. Hugh P. MacPherson, Rev. Sinclair apologized for having razored out everything between pages 152 and 161, which he called, "abominably filthy". These pages had contained two of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's most famous works of erotic poetry; Moladh air Deagh Bhod ("In Praise of a Good Penis") and Tineas na h-Urchaid ("The Venereal Disease").

Including the copy that was censored by Rev. Sinclair, only twelve copies of the original edition of Ais-eridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich are now known to exist. The same book, in heavily bowdlerized editions by puritanical censors, continued to appear repeatedly during the 18th and 19th centuries.

According to John Lorne Campbell, however, "...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."

Even so, The Clanranald Bard's influence over Scottish culture continues.

During the 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh, which brought Scottish traditional music to a large public stage for the first time and is now considered to be one of the beginnings of the British folk revival. The concert took place inside Edinburgh's Oddfellows Hall and continued long afterwards at St. Columba's Church Hall on Friday 26 August 1951. The Scottish Gàidhealtachd was represented by Flora MacNeil, fellow Barra native Calum Johnston, and John Burgess. The music was recorded live at the scene by American musicologist Alan Lomax.

During the Ceilidh, two Scottish Gaelic songs about the Jacobite rising of 1745 were performed onstage.

Beforehand, master of ceremonies Hamish Henderson announced, "One of the great movements two hundred years ago was the Jacobite movement, the last great Stuart rebellion, and in the West of Scotland it brought out many fine songs. The song that you're going to hear now from Calum Johnston is one of the songs of Alexander MacDonald, the Clanranald Bard, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair. And the song he's going to sing is one called 'A New Song for the Prince'. The words mean, 'Early in the morning as I wakened, great my joy, for I hear that he comes to the land of Clanranald."

Calum Johnston, who was "keen to show his own admiration for [the] poet and for the Highlanders who fought for Charlie", then delivered a passionate rendition of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's Òran Eile don Phrionnsa ("Another Song to the Prince"). Flora MacNeil then performed, Mo rùn geal òg, Catriona Nic Fhearghais's lament for her husband, Uilleam Siseal (William Chisholm of Strathglass), who fell bearing the standard of Clan Chisholm for the House of Stuart during the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

During the 21st century Ballachulish-based poet and musician Griogair Labhruidh also performed Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's Òran Eile don Phrionnsa ("Another Song to the Prince"), titled by its first line Moch sa Mhadainn 's Mi a' Dùsgadh, as part of the Soundtrack for the 2nd and 4th Seasons of the TV series Outlander.

In 1995, a memorial cairn was erected at the sandy beach upon Eriskay known as Coilleag a' Phrionnsa ("The Cockel Strand of the Prince") where Prince Charles Edward Stuart first set foot on Scottish soil. The inscription it bears is also the first stanza of Òran Eile don Phrionnsa:

"Moch sa mhadainn 's mi dùsgadh

'S mòr mo shunnd 's mo cheòl-gàire

On a chuala mi 'm Prionnsa

Thighinn do dhùthaich Chlann Raghnaill."

"Early in the morning as I wakened,

great [is] my joy,

for I hear that [the Prince] comes

to the land of Clanranald."

A further sign of the Bard's popularity is how many times that same song has been emulated by other great Bards in Scottish Gaelic literature. For example, North Uist war poet Ruairidh MacAoidh (1872-1949) adapted Alasdair's song-poem to the outbreak of the First World War. Instead of a Jacobite anthem and an attack against the Whig political party, however, MacAoidh transformed the song into a jingoistic anthem preaching hatred against the last Kaiser, the German people, and the Second Reich.

In a deeply ironic contrast, anti-war poet Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh (1919–1986) somewhat facetiously rewrote the same poem in 1946. In Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh's version, however, he instead speaks of his joy at waking up on board a ship that was about to return him to the peacetime and civilian life on South Uist which had once bored him terribly, after the horrors of combat during the 1940 Fall of France followed by six years of backbreaking manual labor as a POW in Nazi Germany during World War II.

Due to the recent rise of Scottish nationalism, the progressing devolution of Great Britain, the passing of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005, and the resulting campaign to bring the Gaelic language back from the brink of extinction through immersion schools funded by the Scottish Parliament, interest in Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair has grown.

In 2012, at the request of the National Trust for Scotland, Scottish artist Ronald Elliot painted Prince Charles Edward Stuart and the Clanranald Bard having breakfast together beside the captured cannons while both looking extremely haunted, immediately following the Jacobite Army victory at the Battle of Prestonpans.

In 2020, Aiseirigh: Òrain le Alastair Mac Mhaighstir Alastair, the first ever complete and uncensored collection of the Clanranald Bard's verse, was edited by Sgàire Uallas and published by An Clò Glas, a Canadian Gaelic publishing house based in West Montrose, Ontario. In May 2023, Taylor Strickland's translations of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's Gaelic poetry were published by Broken Sleep Books, under the title Dastram / Delirium. The book was a Poetry Book Society Translation Choice, and won The Scottish Poetry Book of the Year award in 2023.

Ironically, despite his own personal Monarchism, the Clanranald Bard is also having a growing influence upon activists for Scottish independence and even republicanism.

In a 2020 article, Scottish nationalist Hamish MacPherson praised Robert Burns and Alasdair MacDhòmhnuill as the two greatest Scottish poets in any language and called it, "a national disgrace that there is no national monument" anywhere in Scotland to the Clanranald Bard. MacPherson then wrote, "I believe Alasdair is a poet whose personal journey is an example to all of us who have joined the cause of independence and all those who are still to be converted. For Alasdair was a linguistic innovator who was a scholar of the Classics but became the champion of Gaelic and the culture of the Gael, a Protestant teacher who converted to Catholicism, and a man of peace who fought for Prince Charles Edward Stuart in the 1745 Jacobite Rising. In other words, someone who found his true beliefs and fought for them with words as his chief weapons – shouldn't that be all of us Scots?"

Descendants

His son, Raonuill Dubh MacDhòmhnuill (lit. "Black Ranald", officially Ranald MacDonald, 1st of Laig) (c.1715-c.1805), was also a famous Gaelic poet who published Comh-chruinneachidh Orannaigh Gaidhealach, which is also called "The Eigg Collection", at Edinburgh in 1776. Raonuill Dubh is believed to have drawn heavily upon oral poetry collected and written down by his father and also upon the similar collection made by Hector Maclean of Grulin. This theory is further strengthened by Alasdair MacDhòmhnuill's own statements to Bishop Robert Forbes, about how he hoped to collect and edit a volume of Scottish Gaelic literature by other authors for publication.

Several Gaelic poetry manuscripts in Alasdair MacDhòmhnuill's hand were among those lent by Raonuill Dubh's heirs to Ewen MacLachlan in 1814 and acquired by the Highland Society of Scotland after MacLachlan's death in 1822. The Clanranald Bard's surviving manuscripts are now part of the collections of the National Library of Scotland.

According to a 1964 oral history interview with Eigg seanchaidh Donald Archie MacDonald, both Raonuill Dubh MacDhòmhnuill and his son, Aonghas Lathair MacDhòmhnuill (lit. "Strong Angus", officially Angus MacDonald, 2nd of Laig), were hereditary tacksmen of Laig in Eigg 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. As estate Factor, Aonghas Lathair was acting under orders from Ranald George Macdonald, 19th Chief of Clanranald, who intended, like many other Anglo-Scottish landlords of the era, to replace the Crofters of Cleadale with much more profitable herds of Cheviot and black faced sheep. Despite being permitted by Scots property law, the eviction went against dùthchas, the cultural principle that Gaels had an inalienable right to rent land in their clan's territory and that the land was never the personal property of the Chief or the landlord. Aonghas Lathair however, planned to assign the management of the sheep farm upon the cleared village of Cleadale to his brother-in-law, 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 19th Chief of Clanranald sold Eigg, after 800 years of ancestral ownership, to Dr. Hugh MacPherson and further evictions from Cleadale were cancelled.

Angus R. McDonald (1832–1879), the son of Raonuill Dubh's son Allan and ultimately Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's last direct descendant, at first carried on with the family's rented farm on Eigg after the death of his father and then emigrated to the United States with his mother and brother Allan, with whom he became one of the first settlers of Mazomanie, Wisconsin. In Mazomanie, the MacDonald brothers built the town's first hotel, which they later donated to St. Barnabas Roman Catholic Church to be used as a Catholic school.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Angus R. McDonald enlisted in Company A of the 11th Wisconsin Regiment at Mazomanie on 2 September 1861. Following basic training at Camp Randall, McDonald served under the command of Colonel Charles L. Harris and repeatedly, "distinguished himself by his gallantry during the operations of the Federal Army in Alabama and Mississippi." Angus McDonald was later described as, "a very large and powerful man, and brave almost to the point of temerity." He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on 14 July 1864.

The Storming of Fort Blakeley.

During the Battle of Fort Blakeley, which was part of the Siege of Mobile, on 9 April 1865, Lieut. McDonald was leading an advanced skirmish party in the storming of a Confederate earthenwork fortification, when a Confederate States Army officer and twelve enlisted men launched a counterattack while crying, "No quarter to the damned Yankees!" As the Confederate attackers opened fire and indiscriminately shot down both Yankees and surrendered Rebels alike, Lt. McDonald fell with a bullet through his thigh. He was then repeatedly bayoneted by a Confederate soldier until Sgt. Daniel B. Moore of Company E picked up a fallen Rebel soldier's musket and shot Lt. McDonald's attacker dead. For this feat, Sgt. Moore was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. After a 15-minute long engagement, the regimental standard of the 11th Wisconsin Regiment was planted atop the captured Fort. Lt. McDonald survived his wounds and was later known as, "The Hero of Fort Blakeley".

Old Abe, the live war eagle of Wisconsin, 1876. From the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

After being promoted to Captain, Angus R. McDonald was mustered out of the United States Army on 15 May 1865. He returned to Wisconsin and eventually settled into a shop keeping career and a position at the Wisconsin State Capitol as paid caretaker to Old Abe, the tame bald eagle who had famously served as the battlefield mascot for the 8th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War. Captain McDonald never married and died without issue in Milwaukee on 14 April 1879. His body was returned to Mazomanie, where, following a Tridentine Requiem Mass at St. Barnabas Church, he was buried in the parish cemetery with full military honors and in the presence of his fellow veterans, and the direct line of the Clanranald Bard became extinct. Mazomanie's Grand Army of the Republic Post was named in honor of Captain Angus R. McDonald and an engraving of him is held by the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.

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 commonly told 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 of the old men who was fishing for cuddies said to him: 'Won't you give your opinion of us now, Alasdair?' 'I will do that,' he said; and he said to them:

Thug sibh ur cùl ris na creagan Buidheann fhiata nan glùn giobach; 'S olc an dream sibh, ge nach trod sibh, Na fir mhóra, ròmach, giobach!

'You with your backs to the cliffs A wild crowd with hairy knees; You're a bad tribe, even if you're not quarrelling, Big shaggy hairy fellows!'

Gaelic naming conventions

• The poet's Gaelic name means "Alasdair, son of the Reverend Alasdair". His father, also named Alasdair, was known as Maighstir Alasdair ("Master Alexander") which was then the way of referring to a clergyman in Scottish Gaelic. In English, Maighstir Alasdair was known as the "Reverend Alexander MacDonald".

Further reading

• Ronald Black (2016), The Campbells of the Ark: Men of Argyll in 1745. Volume I: The Inner Circle, Birlinn Limited
• Ronald Black (2017), The Campbells of the Ark: Men of Argyll in 1745. Volume II: The Outer Circle, John MacDonald.
• Edited by Eberhard Bort (2011), Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival, Grace Note Publishing
• John Lorne Campbell (1984), Canna; The Story of a Hebridean Island, Oxford University Press.
• John Lorne Campbell (1979), Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, Arno Press, New York City
• Rev. A. MacDonald (1924), The Poems of Alexander MacDonald (Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair), Northern Counties Newspaper and Print and Pub. Co., Inverness. (Bilingual edition)
• Charles MacDonald (2011), Moidart: Among the Clanranalds, Birlinn Limited
• Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh (2020), 'Bìrlinn Chlann Raghnaill: Long a fuair foscadh in Éirinn', COMHARTaighde 6:
• Derick S. Thomson (1987), The Companion to Gaelic Scotland, (Blackwell Reference 1987), ISBN 0-631-15578-3
• Edited by Sgàire Uallas (2020), Aiseirigh: Òrain le Alastair Mac Mhaighstir Alastair, An Clò Glas, West Montrose, Ontario. (Scottish Gaelic text of the poems only, but unexpurgated and published as originally written)

External links

• Poetry on Wikisource (in Scottish Gaelic)
• Digitised version of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich / The resurrection of the ancient Scottish language, 1751 at the National Library of Scotland. Contains a Preface in and literary translations from English, plus original poetry in both Latin and Scottish Gaelic.
• Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair Alexander MacDonald (1695 - 1770), Scottish Poetry Library
• Manuscript containing the poems of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald), written in Gaelic script, Catalogue of Archives and Manuscripts Collections, National Library of Scotland
• As Described by the "Clan Donald Society of Edinburgh"
• "Bards of the 'Forty-Five"
• The Poems of Mac Mhaighistir Alasdair (In Gaelic) (Archived 2009-10-25)
• Allt an t-Siùcar performed by Jenna Chuimeanach, 2020.
• Not Burns – Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair! by Alan Riach, The National: The Newspaper that Supports an Independent Scotland, 11, February 2016.
• The Scottish Poetry Library interviews Alan Riach about Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, June 2016.
• Willies, ghillies and horny Highlanders: Scottish Gaelic writing has a filthy past by Peter MacKay, University of St. Andrews, The Conversation, 24 October 2017.
• A great Scot, too aft forgot: Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair by Hamish MacPherson, The National: The Newspaper that Supports an Independent Scotland, 13 January 2020.
• It's time to embrace the legacy of this rebel poet, by Cailean Gallagher, The National: The Newspaper that Supports an Independent Scotland, 11 June 2023.