Donald MacKinnon (1839–1914), born on Colonsay, an island in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, was a Celtic scholar, the first elected Professor of Celtic languages, literature, history and antiquities at Edinburgh University, a chair he occupied from 1882[6] to the year of his death in 1914.

He enrolled in the local Sean Sgoil (The Old School),[8] and at the age of eighteen, attended the Church of Scotland Training College.

[9] He also contributed to the Mac Talla, a Gaelic-language newspaper published 1892 to 1904 in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

He edited, translated, and annotated the fifteenth century Glenmasan manuscript (formerly Adv.

MS. LIII, now National Library of Scotland Adv.MS.72.2.3), an important codex containing a later romance version of the Deirdre story besides other material.