[3] Following his arrival in the New World, MacLean remained a prolific poet and composed one of the most famous and most popular Scottish Gaelic emigration poems, Òran do dh' Aimearaga ("A Song to America"), which is also known as, A' Choille Ghruamach ("The Gloomy Forest").
Alexander MacLean Sinclair (1840-1924), later wrote that the Bard was also a seanchai and that, "his powerful memory ensured that his stores of information connected with the Highland clans and poets were very great.
[12] In 1818, Iain mac Ailein published the poetry collection, Orain nuadh Ghaedhlach, le Iain Mac Illeain, ann an Eilean Tirreadh ("New Gaelic Songs Collected by John MacLean on the island of Tiree") at Edinburgh, with a dedication to his employer, Alexander, the 15th Chief of Clan MacLean of Coll.
[13] One of Iain mac Ailein's primary sources, according to Robert Dunbar, was a handwritten manuscript of Gaelic poems which Dr. Hector Maclean of Grulin, Eigg had made between 1738 and 1768.
Iain mac Ailein, as "one of the last professional poets to enjoy any patronage from a chieftain",[15] had a very privileged life compared to other Highland tenant farmers.
In August 1819, the MacLean family set sail from the port of Tobermory, on the Isle of Mull, aboard the ship Economy and arrived at Pictou, Nova Scotia on about October 1, 1819.
While living in this claim Iain Mac Ailein composed his famous protest against the hardship of pioneer life: Òran do dh' Aimearaga ("A Song to America"), better known as A’ Choille Ghruamach ("The Gloomy Forest").
"[19] According to Effie Rankin, "A' Choille Ghruamach ('The Gloomy Forrest') probably contains the most detailed and vivid account of pioneer life which exists in Gaelic.
In this dirge, John MacLean bemoans his fate in the Canadian wilderness, where winter's cold is dreadful, summer's heat is equally oppressive, and always everywhere broods the menacing and invincible forest.
"[21] According to Michael Newton, however, MacLean's A' Choille Ghruamach, which is, "an expression disappointment and regret", ended up becoming, "so well established in the emigrant repertoire that it easily eclipses his later songs taking delight in the Gaelic communities in Nova Scotia and their prosperity.
[23] The song remains very popular among Gaelic-speakers in both Scotland and Nova Scotia and is often referred to by its first line, Bithibh Aotrom 's Togaibh Fonn ("Be Light-hearted and Raise a Tune").
[25] During a weeklong election held at Pictou in September 1830, Iain mac Ailein composed the song, Don Phàrlamaid Ùir ("To the New Parliament")[26] and played a role in mobilizing his fellow Nova Scotia Gaels as voters.
[30] After he learned of the death of his former patron in 1835, Iain mac Ailein composed the lament, Marbhann do dh'Alastair Mac-Gilleain, Tighearna Chola ("An Elegy for Alexander MacLean, the Laird of Coll").
Sinclair later alleged that the poems in this collection, "were very inaccurately printed", his claim has been disproved by comparisons to a manuscript in Iain mac Ailein's hand that was acquired by the National Library of Scotland in 2011.
[34] Despite this fact, Presbyterianism in Nova Scotia was considerably less strict than in an t-Seann Dùthaich ("the Old Country") and, "most of the stern traditions and harsh penalties of the Kirk", were never enforced in the New World.
[39] In a Canadian Gaelic elegy composed for Iain mac Ailein's death, fellow Antigonish County poet John MacGillivray lamented: In the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, MacLean is commonly known as Bàrd Thighearna Chola ("The Bard to the Laird of Coll") or as Iain mac Ailein ("John, son of Allan").
[42][43] Several of the Bard MacLean's songs were very popular during his own lifetime and a significant number have survived to this day among Gaelic singers and tradition-bearers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
"[45] During his employment as Professor of Gaelic Studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, American linguist Kenneth E. Nilsen (1941-2012), whose contagious enthusiasm for the language did much to inspire the ongoing revival of Canadian Gaelic, would take his students every year to visit the grave of Iain mac Ailein at Glen Bard, Antigonish County, Nova Scotia.
Boyd's rendering of the text, according to Robert Dunbar, is much closer to Iain mac Alein's manuscripts than in the highly influential poetry collections edited by the Bard's grandson, Presbyterian minister Rev.
Although it survives in manuscript form and was published in John Boyd's collection, Iain mac Ailein's piece of praise poetry about Fr.
Sinclair similarly excluded Iain mac Ailein's Òran do Dhòmhnaill MacArthair ("A Song for Donald MacArthur"), a piece of comic poetry about a Gael from Tiree who travels to the Scottish Lowlands to work with the harvest crews, only to get drunk in Glasgow, robbed of all his earnings, and infected with Venereal Disease by a prostitute.
[52] Writing in 2020, however, Dunbar announced that his own corrected edition of Iain mac Ailein's 44 surviving secular poems was shortly to be published by the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society.
[53] Scottish-Canadian poet Watson Kirkconnell published a literary translation of Iain mac Ailein's A’ Choille Ghruamach in the 1948-'49 theme issue of Dalhousie Review under the title, "John MacLean’s Gloomy Forest".