[2] According to Michael Newton, MacRae the war poet so inspired the Gaels settled along the Cape Fear River to rise up and fight for King George III that American Patriots, "treated him with great severity.
"[3] During the 21st century, his song (Scottish Gaelic: Tha mi sgìth ‘n fhògar seo) ("I am weary of this exile"), was recorded for the soundtrack to the 7th season of the television series Outlander.
Iain mac Mhurchaidh had already composed a poem complaining that his hunting rights were being restricted and, for this and many other reasons, he decided on taking the minister's advice and emigrating to North Carolina.
In those poems, like many other Gaelic poets of the era who favored voluntary emigration, MacRae complained that warriors were no longer valued and that greed had come to mean more to the Chiefs and the Tacksmen than family or clan ties.
[9] In one such poem, he bade farewell to his fellow Gaels in Glen Cannich and Strathglass, whom he highly praised, according to Colin Chisholm, for, "their well known hospitality and convivial habits; [and] the musical sweetness and modest demeanor of their matrons and maidens, uncontaminated by modern fashions and frivolities.
[13][2] Following his emigration Iain mac Mhuirchaidh is believed by some scholars to have composed the Gaelic lullaby Dèan cadalan sàmhach, a chuilean a rùin ("Go to sleep peacefully, little beloved one").
After successfully bluffing their way through an interrogation by the North Carolina Committee of Safety, both British officers arrived in the Cape Fear Valley and issued an appeal to all Scottish Gaels in the Colony to take up arms on behalf of the Loyalist cause.
According to John Patterson MacLean, "When the day came, the Highlanders were seen coming from near and from far, from the wide plantations on the river bottoms, and from the rude cabins in the depths of the lonely pine forests, with broadswords at their side, in tartan garments and feather bonnet, and keeping step to the shrill music of the bag-pipe.
In response to the ambush, on the early morning of 27 February 1776, Iain mac Mhuirchaidh fought in the famous Highland charge at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge and survived to be taken prisoner.
[2] While held with the battle's other Loyalist leaders as a prisoner of war in Philadelphia and feeling a deep sense of regret for ever having emigrated to British North America, Iain mac Mhurchaidh composed the song Tha mi sgìth dhe'n fhòghairt seo ("I am weary of this exile").
In his diary, Major Iain Dòmhnallach (John MacDonald) of the Maryland Loyalists, describes in considerable detail the lengths to which he had to do to keep his men from defecting to the Patriot side and bringing arsenals of ammunition with them.
"[30] Furthermore, David Stewart of Garth wrote in a post-Battle of Yorktown letter, "I have been told by intelligence officers, who served in the last war, that they found the Highland emigrants more fierce in their animosity of the mother country than even the native Americans.
Iain mac Mhurchaidh must have been either released or else have escaped from captivity in Philadelphia, because, according to tradition, he fought again as a Loyalist soldier under the command of Major Patrick Ferguson and Captain Abraham de Peyster on 7 October 1780, at the Battle of King's Mountain,[13] which has since been described as "the war's largest all-American fight".
According to one source, Iain mac Mhurchaidh, in a revival of, "the diplomatic immunity of the ancient Celtic bards", walked between the opposing armies during the battle and, in an attempt to convert his fellow Gaels among the Patriot militia and the Overmountain Men to the Loyalist cause, he sang the song, Nam faighte làmh-an-uachdar air luchd nan còta ruadha ("Even if the upper hand were gained against the Redcoats").
[34] In the poem, which is believed to have cost its singer very dearly, Iain mac Mhurchaidh called the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution against King George III every bit as unnatural as disrespect against one's earthly or heavenly father.
[40] Following the end of the war, Moore County and many other regions of the new United States which had been mainly settled by Scottish Gaels, were almost depopulated, as Gaelic-speaking Loyalists fled northward, often under extremely brutal conditions, towards what remained of British North America.
Ironically, and despite their former minister's Loyalism, the Gaelic-speaking congregation at the Barbeque Presbyterian Church in Harnett County, North Carolina, was known for the rest of the American Revolution as, "an island of Whigs in a sea of Tories.
[45] According to Michael Newton, the memory of Iain mac Mhurchaidh was often invoked for decades after his death by fellow Gaels in both Scotland and Canada, particularly in response to the mass evictions known as the Highland Clearances.
"[49] Unlike in Nova Scotia, however, where a distinctive Canadian dialect of Scottish Gaelic continues to be both spoken and written, the North Carolina Gàidhealtachd only survived, according to Marcus Tanner, "until it was well and truly disrupted", by the American Civil War.
[54] In the poem, Cionneach mac Cionnich reviles the Scottish clan chiefs for becoming absentee landlords, for both rackrenting and evicting their clansmen en masse in favor of sheep, and for "spending their wealth uselessly", in London.
MacCionnich also argues that truth is on the side of George Washington and the Continental Army and that the Gaels would do well to emigrate from the Highlands and Islands to the United States before the King and the landlords take every farthing they have left.
For example, after joining the mass migration from Atlantic Canada to the American city of Boston, Massachusetts and it's suburbs during the late 19th and early 20th-century, which one contemporary writer compared to a gold rush,[57] Mrs. Catherine MacInnes from Cape Breton made and published a Scottish Gaelic literary translation of the lyrics to The Star Spangled Banner.
[60] Also, according to Michael Newton, "Professor Catrìona Persons of St Francis Xavier University of Antigonish presented a talk about a recently discovered item to the International Celtic Congress in Edinburgh in 1994.
The Grandfather Mountain games have been called "the best" such event in the United States because of the spectacular landscape and the large number of people who attend in kilts and other regalia of the Scottish clans.