Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair

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.

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[24] were ignored by the Bard's ancestor, who died peacefully upon the Isle of Canna and was buried at Howmore, South Uist in 1636.

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.

[8] 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.

[35] 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.

[26] 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".

[55] 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.

[64] 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.

[65] 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 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.

[67] 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."

"[63] 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.

"[73] 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,[72] 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.

[82][83] 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.

[87] 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.

[103][99] 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.

"[15] 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.

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.

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.

[111] 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.

"[108] 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.

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.

[113] 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.

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.

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.

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.

[128] 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.

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.

[133] 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.

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,[132] and the direct line of the Clanranald Bard became extinct.