Rob Donn

[4] He remained illiterate[1][2] and never learnt to speak English, but was strongly influenced by the poetry of Alexander Pope, which he heard in translation into Gaelic by the local Church of Scotland minister, the Rev.

His own poetical abilities were picked up on very early by Iain MacEachainn MacAoidh, the Clan Mackay tacksman of Strathmore, who would patronise the former cattle drover.

According to Derick Thomson, Iain Mac Eachainn, "was both Rob Donn's employer and his friend, sharing a love of hunting, poetry, and humanity.

Rob Donn considered the Act to be so insulting that he urged Clan Mackay to change its allegiance from King George II to Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

However, Rob Donn made an extremely, "uncharacteristic choice", for the writer of an elegy or work of praise poetry in Scottish Gaelic literature.

Although sometimes moralistic, Rob Donn's poetry sometimes also contained bawdy images, which were bowdlerised by later collectors; especially by Presbyterian ministers, who were major figures at the time in collecting and publishing Scottish Gaelic literature from the oral tradition, while also similarly censoring it.

John Thomson, who succeeded Murdo MacDonald as minister of the parish of Durness, and who allowed his daughter to transcribe Rob Donn's works uncensored and from the Bard's own dictation.

For example, Rob's Strathnaver dialect was sometimes deliberately rewritten into a more standardised form of Scottish Gaelic,[1] which destroyed certain of the effects and rhythms.