[2] After returning to his homeland and being ordained to the priesthood in the immediate aftermath of repeal of the Penal Laws, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and the 1878 restoration of the Hierarchy, Allan was assigned to the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles during the final decade of the Highland Clearances.

MacDonald's folklore notebooks were both plagiarized and distorted by fraudulent medium and paranormal researcher Ada Goodrich Freer has also been meticulously documented and publicized by both John Lorne Campbell and Trevor H.

[17][18] In a 27 October 1933 letter to the Stornoway Gazette, Skye-born Seanchaidh John N. MacLeod (1880–1954), who was fully versed in the oral traditions of Lochaber, explained about Iain Ailein Òg, (Scottish Gaelic: "Bha e mion eolach gach neach a bhiodh a' tachairt ris air an rathad fhada dhuilich a bhiodh anns na criochan sin aig an latha ud, agus 's iomadh neach a fhuair seanchas agus sgiala uaithe a bha deanamh an turuis aoibhneach dhoibh.

He later told Amy Murray about how deeply he believed as a child in local stories about the each-uisge, or "water horse", of nearby Loch Linnhe (Scottish Gaelic: an Linne Dhubh), whose back could magically expand in order to accommodate all the children who wished to ride him.

[30] According to the 1871 national census, which was taken only a few months before Allan MacDonald's arrival, Blair's College consisted of 49 seminarians, a Rector, a Procurator, three professors, a housekeeper, a cook, and twelve maids recruited from nearby villages.

According to John Lorne Campbell, however, the careful study of Latin and Koine Greek had already well prepared the seminarians of Blair's College to acquire additional languages and many were very successful at learning Gaelic using this method.

[40] In September 1876, Allan MacDonald was advised by his professors to continue his priestly training at the Royal Scots College, which had been founded in Madrid by Colonel William Semple of Lochwinnoch and his wife, Doña María de Ledesma in 1627, as a major seminary for the illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland.

For example, the House of Commons was informed in 1886 of, "a printed statement, lately issued by the proprietrix of South Uist [Lady Emily Gordon Cathcart], where it is alleged that outrages were committed by paraffin being put in her [Established] church pew, by telegraph lines being cut, and the terrorism prevailing was such that the perpetrators of these crimes could not be discovered by the authorities, although well known in the district..."[73] Meanwhile, Fr.

[77] Even so, the lifestyle of Father Allan's parishioners began to improve markedly, as crofters finally felt able to build more secure and cozy houses and grow more productive and profitable crops without risking drastic increases in rent.

He further owned an edition of The Fate of the Children of Lir published by the Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language and a copy of Sàr Obair nam Bàrd Gàidhealach by literary scholar John Mackenzie.

A particularly bad epidemic struck, "just following the passage of the Crofters Act, when the Isles were as yet barely out of their deepest misery",[88] Father Allan tirelessly travelled long distances over rough terrain to carry the Sacraments to the sick and the dying.

"[91] In January 1893, after a doctor warned that further extension could prematurely kill him, Fr Allan MacDonald was offered by the new Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, George Smith, a town parish on the mainland, "with better living and the company of book-learned men."

"[98] While accompanying Fr Allan during one such overnight visit, Frederick Rea was told as they waited for the ferry to arrive after the signal fire was lit, "This is the Highlander's glory - with back to the wind and face to the sun!

"[99] As Frederick Rea silently compared the sweeping view of the Outer Hebrides before them with Victorian era urban and industrialized Greater Manchester, Fr Allan saw that the answer was clearly written on the schoolmaster's face.

He swiftly earned the love of his parishioners and oversaw the construction of a new parish church, upon "Cnoc nan Sgrath, which dominates the western side of the island and has a beautiful view looking southward over the Sound of Barra and northward to South Uist", and an adjacent rectory.

[114] Furthermore, the site of the 1852 stone and thatch chapel where Fr Allan first offered Mass during his earliest visits to Eriskay is now a Marian shrine where a statue of Our Lady of Fatima stands overlooking the Sound of Barra.

A deeply moved American ethnomusicologist Amy Murray once heard the lullaby being sung from the choir loft of St Michael's Church in Eriskay and asked Father Allan whether it was another of his translations of Gregorian chant.

MacDonald had similarly harsh criticism of the choral and art song-style arrangements of Gaelic songs usually performed at both local Mòds and the Royal National Mòd, a language revival festival modelled after the Welsh Eisteddfod tradition, during their Victorian era inception.

MacDonald was eventually regarded as such a recognized expert in the field, that his opinion and advice were sought by letter by Walter Blaikie, by Alexander and Ella Carmichael, George Henderson, William MacKenzie, and Neil Munro.

MacDonald's notebook titled "Strange Things" supplied the vast majority of the fieldwork that was published by Ada Goodrich Freer, who was commissioned to investigate Hebridean mythology and folklore about second sight by the Society for Psychical Research in 1894–1895.

As Catholic islands such as South Uist and Barra had, "no lending libraries, no scientific and literary associations, very few newspapers, and only occasional mail", parish priests of the era needed to find personal hobbies.

MacDonald also translated the Tridentine Mass[137] and Christian Latin literature into Gaelic verse; including Thomas of Celano's Dies irae,[138] Stabat Mater,[139] Ave Maris Stella,[140] A solis ortus cardine,[141] Te lucis ante terminum,[142] and Salve Regina.

[145] Moreover, as both a musical accompaniment for Low Mass and as an alternative to Calvinist worship, which retains in the Gàidhealtachd the 16th century practice of exclusive and unaccompanied Gaelic psalm singing in a 16th-century form called precenting the line, Fr.

It might seem both un-pastoral and ungentlemanly of a priest to poke fun at little old ladies, but Amy Murray found that many Gaelic songs with exactly the same themes filled the oral tradition of the Outer Hebrides and were enthusiastically sung inside the ceilidh houses.

Father MacDonald irately skewers Clan Campbell (Scottish Gaelic: clann Diarmuid) for slaughtering his kinfolk during the Massacre of Glencoe and for repeatedly siding against the House of Stuart during the Jacobite risings.

They are his satire of local Samhain customs, An Gaisgeach fo Uidheamh Réitich ("The Hero Equipped for Bethrothal"),[157] and Luinneag an Amadain Bhig ("The Lay of the Little Fool"), which is also a parody of the cliches of epic poetry from the Fenian Cycle of Celtic Mythology by reducing the size of its warrior protagonist to that of Tom Thumb.

Ronald Black, on the other hand, is more sceptical and believes that the poem could just as easily be rooted in stories heard in childhood from local veterans of the Napoleonic Wars inside the Fort William pub belonging to the poet-priest's father.

Allan suffered from an extraordinary poetic demon struggling to get out; that just as he never actually delivered Banais nan Caimbeulach at the Campbell Wedding, he probably never revealed Luinneag an Amadain Bhig to its target, but kept it well-hidden in his notebook; and that effusions such as these were symptoms of a major poet in the making.

It enjoyed considerable success in the United States..."[107] American ethnomusicologist Margaret Fay Shaw credited the beginning of her lifelong passion for collecting Gaelic songs from traditional singers in both Scotland and Nova Scotia to when she was a teenaged student at St. Bride's boarding school in Helensburgh, near Glasgow.

"[171] After William J. Watson donated the folklore manuscripts of his father-in-law, the famous Celticist Alexander Carmichael, to the University of Edinburgh Library in 1948, John Lorne Campbell was informed by Prof. Angus McIntosh that the collection included many of Fr Allan's surviving notebooks.