“The Owlet”—Three Macgregor songs—The old bardic system superseded—Era of modern Gaelic poetry—Mary Macleod—Details of her life—Famous songs—Iain Lom—Ardent poet and politician—His “Vow”—Eventful career—Poems—Created Gaelic Poet-Laureate—Influence on Highland history—Other minor bards and bardesses—Imitations by Sir Walter Scott—The blind harper, and the blind piper—A comic poet—Two major bards—Maccodrum’s Muse—Characteristics of the group before the Forty-five.

The Book of the Dean of Lismore may be regarded as having gathered up the best of the available, medieval, Gaelic poetry, and as having closed the old bardic period. After it there came a break of nearly a hundred years. It is true that there are some pieces which hail from this interval, but they are isolated and few, with no certain dates.

Of these, the most remarkable is that styled “The Owlet,” and it is worthy of notice here as being the only composition of the kind in the language. The poem is attributed to Donald Macdonald, a native of Lochaber, and perhaps the most expert archer of his day. Withal a famous wolf-hunter, he appears to have lived in the days before firearms, and to have composed the verses when old. Their occasion is briefly summarised by Mackenzie of “The Beauties,” in a footnote. In his declining years the poet had married a young woman who proved a very unmeet helpmate. For when he and his dog were worn down with the toils of the chase, and infirmities rendered them stiff and decrepit, this “crooked rib” took a pleasure in teasing them. Finding an old feeble owl one day, she installed it in the house as a more fitting companion than herself for the aged bard and his dog. The poem is an ingenious performance in the form of a dialogue between the outraged husband and the bird.

Three Macgregor songs of that period have likewise a wonderful charm and pathos. They are entitled “Macgregor’s Lullaby,” “Macgregor’s O’Ruara,” and “The Braes of the Ceathach.” The authoress of the first laments the death of her husband, who, with his father and brother, were beheaded at the instigation of Colin Campbell of Glenorchy; her own sire, Campbell of Glenlyon; and Menzies of Rannoch. The following verses are from Pattison’s rendering:—

We pass by the few existing lines of Bishop Carsewell and Sir John Stewart of Appin, who both lived in the sixteenth century, and forthwith emerge upon the new time, the era of modern Gaelic poetry. Almost simultaneously in Scotland and Ireland, a great change took place in the form and complexion of this vernacular poetic literature. From the early part of the seventeenth century, the intricate metres and technicalities of the old bardic system, which had been in vogue for a thousand years, began to be discarded and superseded, and more freedom in versifying introduced. Dr. Douglas Hyde sums up the principles of this new departure in two sentences: first, the adoption of vowel rhyme in place of consonantal rhyme; second, the adoption of a certain number of accents in each line in place of a certain number of syllables. And in consequence of these changes, he holds that the Gaelic poetry of the last two centuries is probably the most sensuous attempt to convey music in words ever made by man. He who has once heard it and remains deaf to its charm can have little heart for song or soul for music. It is absolutely impossible, he says, to convey the lusciousness of sound, richness of rhythm, and perfection of harmony in another language. The sweetest creation of all Gaelic literature, this new outburst of lyric melody was a wonderful arrangement of vowel sounds, so placed that in every accented syllable, first one vowel and then another fell upon the ear in all possible kinds of harmonious modifications. Some verses are made wholly on the à sound, others on the ò, ù, è, or ì sounds, but the majority on a unique and fascinating intermixture of two, three, or more; as, for example, in Mary Macleod’s vowel-rhyming over the drowning of Mac-Ille Chalum in the angry Minch between Stornoway and Raasay:—

To give the effect in English the original has been somewhat freely, though not quite accurately, rendered thus:—

It has been acknowledged even by Dr. Hyde, one of our greatest Irish authorities of the present, that the Scottish Gaels led the way in this great change that transformed the Celtic poetry of both Islands, and to Mary Macleod, popularly known as “Mairi nighean Alasdair Ruaidh,” has been assigned the honour of being the first of the modern Highland bards to inaugurate the new system.

Before her day most of the Gaelic poetry was Ossianic, or of uncertain authorship; fugitive, and generally in the ancient style. The poets were bound by the rules of their order, and to excel within the very narrow limits of the old-world prosody, hedged about as it was with so many technicalities, required years of severe bardic study and preparation. Mary, apparently without any tuition, without even the power to read or write, suddenly burst these unnatural bonds asunder, and gave to the spirit of her poetry the freedom of the elements, unhampered and unfettered by the intricate metres of the Schools. She invented rhythms of her own, often making the music of sound an echo of the sense. And from her time scores of new and brilliant metres have made their appearance.

Only a few biographical details of this remarkable woman are known, but they are characteristic, and extremely interesting, revealing a personality outside the common order of Highland intellect. Born in Roudal, Harris, in the year 1569, she was the daughter of Alexander Macleod, son of Alasdair Ruadh, a descendant of the chief of that distinguished clan; and at an early age, apparently, she became a nurse in the family of the Macleods at Dunvegan Castle. Though otherwise illiterate, the poetic Mary must have derived some culture, independently of book learning, from her association with the chiefs and their following in the ancestral home where, nearly 200 years afterwards, Dr. Johnson and his friend were so hospitably entertained. In the course of her long career, for she lived to be 105 years old, she nursed no less than five lairds of the Macleods,^[32] and two of the lairds of Applecross.

There is no evidence that she was much addicted to the making of poetry until somewhat advanced in life. It was then at least that she composed those pieces that have survived and made her name illustrious in Highland literature. Most of them have reference to events that happened in the Macleod family.

Thus the song, “An Talla ’m bu ghna le Mac Leoid,” was produced extempore during the last illness of one of the lairds. Happening to ask Mary facetiously what kind of a lament she would make for him after he was gone, she declared in response that it would be a very mournful one. “Come nearer me,” said the aged chief, “and let me hear part of it,” whereupon the clever bardess sang this pathetic dirge. The power of extemporising poetical compositions still lingers in the Highlands.

Again, “Hithill, uthill agus hò,” owes its existence to the gift of a snuff-mull bestowed on Mary by a son of Sir Norman.

All her barderie, however, did not suit the proud chief of Dunvegan, who objected to the scope of the publicity he and his menage received at the hands of the family nurse, exercising, as she freely did, the privileges of the poet. And therefore he banished her to the island of Mull, under the care of a relative.

But if one song sent her away, another brought her back. It was hard to be exiled from Eilean-a-Cheo, and the castled seat of the clan, and so seizing the opportunity which the advent of the young laird’s birthday offered, she composed the now well-known “Luinneag Mhic Leoid,” or “Ode to Macleod,” in which she presented a portrait so flattering that the stubborn chief relented and sent a boat to bring her back, on condition that henceforth she should no more exercise her gift of song. The delighted poetess readily assented.

Yet even on the way from Mull to Skye she could not restrain the poetic afflatus, and though for a time after her return she kept her word, as Blackie says, “a bird is a bird and will sing”; and Mary Macleod, this irrepressible daughter of the red-haired clansman, once more incurred the displeasure of her chief by composing a new poem on the recovery of his son from some illness; and in extenuation of the charge laid against her, she naively maintained, “It is not a song; it is only a crònan,” that is, a crooning.

The ode she produced in Mull in the days of dreary exile is one of the finest of her poems; wild and beautiful, with a very peculiar charm. It generally appears in all the best collections of Gaelic songs, and has been translated into English verse both by Pattison and Blackie. The rendering of the latter is, perhaps, the more euphonious, and brings out better the repetition at the beginning of each stanza, as:—

It needs some of Mary’s own imagination to picture her going about in after days wearing a tartan tonnag, fastened in front with a large silver brooch, and carrying a silver-headed cane. Hardy to a degree in mind and constitution, the venerable nurse and poetess, when long past the natural span of years, was much given, we are told, to gossip, snuff, and whisky. After her death, which took place at Dunvegan in 1674, she was buried in her native isle of Harris.

Mackenzie of “The Beauties” appraised this quaint personage as the most original of all our poets, who borrowed nothing. Her thoughts, her verse, and rhymes were all equally her own; her language simple and elegant; her diction easy, natural, and unaffected. There is no straining to produce effect; no search after unintelligible words to conceal the poverty of ideas. Her thoughts flow freely, and her versification runs like a mountain stream over a smooth bed of polished granite. She often repeats her rhymes, as in the above instance, yet we never feel them tiresome or disagreeable, for, more than most of her Gaelic compeers, Mary was mistress of the poetic lyre.

After her came another striking figure in the history of Highland bardic literature. This was John Macdonald, the Lochaber poet, popularly known as Iain Lom, probably from lack of hair either on his head or face, and sometimes styled Iain Manntach, from an impediment in his speech. Singular in these physical respects, he was no less remarkable for his mental characteristics. A man of great force of character, he combined in his personality the ardent poet and the keen politician, the intuitive dreamer and the restless man of action.

Macdonald belonged to the Keppoch family, lived through the stirring times of Charles I., Charles II., James II., the Revolution, and subsequent reign of William and Mary, dying at an advanced age in 1710, when Anne was on the throne.

This is the wonderful schemer whom some regard as the real genius of the Montrose Campaign during the Civil War. Were it not for him, it is certain, events could not have developed so favourably and so brilliantly for the victorious Marquis as they did. Keen Jacobite as he always was, he accompanied the latter on most of his marches, and it is marvellous that the great Border minstrel, Sir Walter Scott, especially in his account of the battle of Inverlochy in the Legend of Montrose, makes no reference to him.

The Keppoch bard first came into prominence as a man to be reckoned with, in connection with the murder of his chief, which, it is said he foresaw, but was unable to avert. Sent abroad as a minor to be educated, the heir of Keppoch was supplanted in his absence by his own faithless and intriguing cousins, who murdered both him and his brother on their return home. The dastardly crime rankled in the bosom of the fiery bard. Among the faithless clansmen he alone remained fearlessly true to the stricken family, and he determined to have revenge. “The Vow of Iain Lom,” published in Mrs. D. Ogilvy’s Highland Minstrelsy, graphically depicts his state of mind at the time. He went from house to house, and castle to castle, calling for vengeance on the assassins, and having at last obtained a commission from Government to take them dead or alive, he first addressed himself to Glengarry, who declined the dangerous task, and then to Sir Alexander Macdonald, who put a company of chosen men at his disposal, the “Ciaran Mabach,” poet and soldier, at their head.

Under the Keppoch bard’s directions the murderers were summarily attacked and beheaded in their own barricaded house. A gruesome monument of seven heads, representing those of the father and six sons, now marks the well on Loch Oich side, known as Tobar-nan-ceann, where these bleeding trophies are said to have been washed on their way to Glengarry Castle, whence they were carried to Skye as a tribute to the Knight of Sleat.

The bard has a poem on “Mort na Ceapach,” the murder of Keppoch; and another entitled “A Bhean Leasaich,” in which he begins by praising Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat and his son Sir James, evidently with the intention of provoking Glengarry for his remissness in the matter of retribution upon the usurpers. His own persecution by the traitors furnished the poet with another theme. From this time he became a man of mark in the Highlands, feared and respected. Though not a soldier himself, when the Civil War broke out he identified himself with the cause of the Stuarts, and was the means of bringing the armies of Argyll and Montrose into deadly conflict at Inverlochy on February 2nd, 1645. The wily John, a willing spectator, evaded taking a personal hand in the encounter by the following ruse. When asked to make ready to march to the fight, by the Macdonald commanding the Irish contingent, he slyly replied, “If I go along with thee to-day, and fall in battle, who will sing thy praises to-morrow? Go thou, Alasdair, and exert thyself as usual, and I shall sing thy feats, and celebrate thy prowess in martial strains.”

The result was that the bard feasted his eyes from a safe distance on the disaster of the Campbells, with whom he was ever at feud, and moved by all the passion and prejudice of the event composed the heroic stanzas entitled, “The Battle of Inverlochy.” So realistic and graphic is the description given in the original Gaelic that it seems to photograph many of the details just as they happened. “The spirit of poetry, the language, and boldness of expression,” says Mackenzie, with perhaps the Celtic leaning to hyperbole, “have never been equalled.” Yet to-day we read these vindictive strains with different feelings from those that animated the bard.

A few verses may be quoted from the rendering of Professor Blackie, which, though they lack the fire and intensity of the original, give a good idea of the gist of the poem:—^[33]

All this to the weird and exulting chorus:—

His dangerous strategy and stinging sarcasm at length roused the Marquis of Argyll to offer a reward for his head, and it is characteristic of the impetuous John that he appeared in person in the audience-hall of this mighty chief to claim it, relying for safety, no doubt, on the sacred regard in which Highlanders always held the professional bard. The Marquis received him courteously, and as they passed through a room hung round with heads of moor-fowl, he asked him, “Have you ever seen, John, so many black-cocks together?” “Yes,” he replied. “Where?” “At Inverlochy.” “Ah! John,” muttered Argyll, “will you never cease gnawing at the Campbells?” “I am only sorry,” added the implacable bard, “that I cannot swallow them.”

For his services in the Stuart cause he was created Gaelic poet-laureate, and received from Charles II. a yearly pension. Iain Lom thus holds the unique distinction of having been the first and only Gaelic poet-laureate. Altogether his poems would occupy a considerable volume, though they have never been so issued.^[34] Pattison has not translated any, but Iain Lom has nevertheless obtained a well-merited niche in Messrs. Blackie, the publishers, Poets and Poetry of Scotland, 1876, compiled by James G. Wilson; and the romantic side of his character is charmingly represented incidentally in Neil Munro’s novel, entitled John Splendid.

Long after his death his Jacobite effusions still exercised a powerful influence over his countrymen, counteracting in no small degree the efforts of the Government to suppress the Stuart factions. “Children were taught to lisp them,” says the New Statistical Account of Scotland. “They were sung in the family circle on winter nights, and at weddings, lykewakes, fairs, and in every company. They attributed to the Stuarts and their adherents the most exalted virtues, and represented their opponents as incarnate fiends. In 1745, Moidart and Kilmonivaig were called ‘The Cradle of the Rebellion,’ and they were the very districts where the songs of Iain Lom leavened the whole mass of society with Jacobite sentiments.”

Contemporary with Iain Lom, and his confederate in bringing retribution upon the Keppoch traitors, was a minor bard, known as Archibald Macdonald, or “An Ciaran Mabach,” an illegitimate son of Sir Alexander Macdonald, sixteenth baron of Sleat. In after life he lived in easy circumstances, well adapted for the cultivation of his poetic tastes, on an estate granted him in North Uist by his influential father, in return for numerous services rendered as a sagacious and practical man of affairs. Otherwise his life was uneventful and his poetry limited in amount.

But the field held various other less prominent bards, for to this period belonged several of those whose productions appear in the Fernaig MS. of Duncan Macrae. Nor was the Highlands then lacking in poetesses. Two at least figure in the record of the remembered.

Dorothy Brown, a native of Luing Island, Argyllshire, composed many poems, of which perhaps that to Alasdair Maccolla is the only one now extant, yet as a poetess she alone of women in that age approached the standard of Mary Macleod.

Cicely Macdonald, her contemporary, was daughter of Ronald of Keppoch, in youth a frolicsome maiden and clever at epigrams. Marrying a gentleman of the Lovat family, she lived with him farther north, and came to be known for her bardic gifts. Songs and laments were her chief productions, but after her husband died at Inverness in a fit of inebriety, she took to hymn-making. The names of her earlier pieces are suggestive, such as: “Moràghach Mhic Shimidh,” “Slan gu bràth le ceòl na clarsaich,” and “Alasdair a Glinne-Garaidh.” The latter beautiful one, Mackenzie assures us, has served as a model for many Gaelic songs.

The next name in the succession is that of Nial Macvurich, family bard and historian of Clanranald, distinguished also as a descendant, through a long line of bardic ancestors, from the ancient and historic Muireach Albannach, whose poetry figures in the Book of the Dean of Lismore. To Nial we are indebted for the history of his illustrious clan, written in Gaelic and preserved in the Red Book of Clanranald. But it is to be regretted that of his own poems none is now extant, except two pieces treasured in “The Beauties.” Solicitous to perpetuate the history and ancient poetry of others, it appears that Nial took no thought for his own to have them written down, and so they have mostly disappeared. He lived to a great age, like the majority of these early Highland bards, and was an old man living on his farm in South Uist at the time of the first Jacobite rising in 1715.

Still another poet of Clanranald fame, John Macdonald, or Iain Dubh Mac Iain ’Ic-Ailein, born about 1665, and resident in Eigg; and then we reach the Aosdan Matheson, who was bard to the Earl of Seaforth in the seventeenth century. Appurtenant to this post he held free lands in Lochalsh, Ross-shire, and composed as many poems as would fill a large volume, but most of these, like Nial Macvurich’s, and for the same reason, have long been forgotten. One of those preserved has been very freely rendered or imitated in English by Sir Walter Scott, under the title “Farewell to Mackenzie, High Chief of Kintail,” 1815.

The original verses are arranged to a beautiful Gaelic air, of which the chorus is adapted to the double pull upon the oars of a galley, and which is therefore distinct from the ordinary boat-songs. They were composed on the occasion of the embarking at Dornie, Kintail, of the Earl of Seaforth, who was obliged to take refuge in Spain, after an unsuccessful effort in favour of the old Chevalier in 1718. Sir Walter’s version runs thus:—

Hector Maclean, of the same period, was bard to Sir Lachlan Maclean of Duart, from whom he had a small annuity. Two poems of his, the “Chief’s Elegy” and “Song,” are reckoned among the beauties of Gaelic poetry, and have also attracted the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who translated or imitated in the abrupt style of the original a fragment of the latter, entitled “War-Song of Lachlan, High-Chief of Maclean.” This song, like many of the early Gaelic productions, makes a rapid transition from one subject to another. From the situation of a forlorn maiden of the clan, who opens with an address to her absent lover, it passes finally to an eulogium over the martial glories of the chieftain. Thus:—

Lachlan Mackinnon of Strath, Isle of Skye, is the next to figure in this succession. Unlike so many of the others, he was not unlettered, nor ignorant of such knowledge of the language as may be gleaned from a critical study of its structure. Hence his Gaelic is wonderfully pure and correct. In early life he filled the rôle of a strolling musician, carrying his violin about with him from place to place, till certain personal considerations obliged him to desist.

After him came a blind harper and a blind piper, both famous in Highland minstrelsy. The harper was Roderick Morrison, son of an Episcopal clergyman in the island of Lewis. He was born in the year 1646, and in his boyhood had been sent along with his two brothers to be educated at Inverness, all three having been destined by their father for the ministry of the Church. But, unhappily, while there the youthful islanders were seized with smallpox, which was then epidemic in the town. His two brothers recovered from the effects of the dread scourge, and afterwards became ministers, one at Contin, the other at Poolewe in Ross-shire. Roderick himself was the chief sufferer, for not only was his face disfigured and contracted, but he also lost the use of his eyes. Incapacitated thus for a profession, he turned his attention to music, and in addition to the skill he acquired in playing other instruments, became an adept at the harp. Hence the name “An Clarsair Dall,” by which he was generally known throughout the Highlands.

Visiting Ireland, it is thought he profited by tuition from his fellow-harpers there, who had achieved fame in that form of minstrelsy; and on his return to Scotland he took occasion to call at every baronial residence on the way to exhibit his art. It so happened at the time that many of the Scotch nobility and gentry were at the Court of King James in Holyrood, Edinburgh, and thither the blind musician wended his way, where he found an excellent friend in the person of the Highland chieftain, John Breac Macleod of Harris, who readily engaged him as his family harper.

While holding this office Morrison composed several beautiful tunes and songs, living the life of a farmer at Totamòr in Glenelg, on a piece of land which his patron granted him rent-free. On the death of the latter he returned to his native island, and died there in a good old age, and was buried in a country churchyard near Stornoway.

Morrison was a poet of power and culture. His elegy, “Creach nan Ciadan,” on the chieftain who befriended him, is reckoned one of the most pathetic, plaintive, and heart-touching of Highland laments.

The blind piper, John Mackay of Gairloch, was a contemporary, though twenty years his junior. Like his father before him, who hailed from the Reay country, this Mackay was born blind. Taught music first of all under the paternal roof, he was sent later on to the Isle of Skye to perfect his studies under the direction of the celebrated Mac Crimmon. There he excelled all other pupils, and soon learned to compose pipe-music himself. In fact, it is recorded that one of the Mac Crimmons, jealous of his powers as a pipe-music composer, bribed some of the youths to throw him over a precipice, which they did one day, the blind stripling falling a distance of twenty-four feet, but without physical hurt. The rock is still known as “Leum an Doill,” or “The Blind Man’s Leap,” since he had the good fortune to land on his soles.

After seven years’ tuition in Skye he returned to his native parish, succeeding his father as family piper to the Laird of Gairloch, and subsequently marrying. Numerous pibrochs, strathspeys, reels, and jigs are placed to his credit. When at length he was superannuated on a small but competent annuity, the old man used to pass his time visiting gentlemen’s houses in the Reay country and the island of Skye. On one of these peregrinations in Sutherlandshire he composed the beautiful pastoral “Coire an Easain,” lamenting Lord Reay. Of this poem Mackenzie says, “It is not surpassed by anything of the kind in the Celtic language—bold, majestic, and intrepid, it commands admiration at first glance, and seems on a nearer survey of the entire magnificent fabric as the work of some supernatural agent.” Could Highland admiration go farther?

The “Piobaire Dall” lived till he was about ninety-eight years of age, and sleeps with his father Ruairidh Dall within the clachan of his native parish in the west.

Other minor bards of the period were, John Whyte, William Mackenzie, John Maclean, Malcolm Maclean, the poet Macdonald of Muck, who composed the “Massacre of Glencoe,” Angus Macdonald, Hector Macleod, Archibald Macdonald, and Zachary Macaulay.

Archibald Macdonald excelled as a comic bard—one of the few that Highland Gaeldom has produced. His “Elegy” on Roy while living—a piper and favourite companion of his own—and his “Resurrection” of the same individual, are counted very clever. He it was who composed the famous satire, “Tha biodag air Mac Thomàis,” which, when played at a wedding memorable in Highland history, ended so tragically for the player, and, indeed, for Mac Thomàis himself, the alleged heir to the Lovat estates, who had to fly from the country, and whose descendants have on more than one occasion in recent times contested the right of the present Lovat family to the ancient inheritance.

Tradition still pathetically relates how on that occasion, enraged at the playing of the piece which so cleverly satirised himself, this young Master of Lovat stabbed the bag of the piper, to silence it, with his biodag, but the weapon entered the player’s heart also, and bag and piper both collapsed with a mournful groan.

Zachary Macaulay is worthy of note on another account. From his family was descended the brilliant Lord Macaulay, so famous in letters, and it may very well have been from this source that the gifted essayist and historian derived his vivid pictorial style. Zachary was born in the island of Lewis early in the eighteenth century, and was the son of an accomplished Episcopalian clergyman there. His productions as a poet exhibit true bardic power, though he is believed in his youth to have been given to writing wanton songs. The air of one of his popular pieces was in after days a great favourite with Burns.

Two major bards remain to be noticed, who lived partly before and partly after the Forty-five—John Maccodrum and Alexander Macdonald. The latter, the more distinguished of the two, claims fuller mention hereafter. Meanwhile, no more fitting subject might be found wherewith to conclude this chapter than an account of the original and witty Maccodrum, with examples of his poems.

Born in North Uist, he became in manhood bard to Sir James Macdonald of Sleat, who died at Rome in 1766. It was a curious circumstance that first commended him to the notice of this nobleman. The poet happened to make a satire on the tailors of the Long Island, who were so exasperated that they refused one and all to make him any clothing. Consequently he went about for a time in tatters, and meeting Sir James one day, the latter naturally inquired the reason why his trousers were so ragged. Maccodrum explained, and was asked to repeat the offending verses. On complying he was there and then promoted to be bard to the family, and obtained, as was usual in such circumstances, free lands on the estate for his maintenance.

A lively wit and biting sarcasm seem to have been characteristics of Maccodrum’s Muse. Yet he could be very tender, as on the occasion when he laments the untimely death of his patron, at the early age of twenty-five. Then was the bard unusually serious and even pious:—