William Livingston (poet)

[4] Livingston was a hyper patriotic Scottish nationalist, propagandist for the Gaelic language, war poet, and author of epic poetry.

"[6] Enraged by what he saw as, "a war of attrition against the Gaels", embodied in the Highland Clearances, Livingstone published, Vindication of the Celtic Character, which Donald E. Meek has described as, "an untidy and little known compendium of historical narratives and political rants", at Greenock in 1850.

He also laments the loss of the Chiefs of the Irish clans, who led their clansmen in war and provided, according to Donald E. Meek, "leadership of the old and true Gaelic kind".

[8] In his famous poem Fios thun a' Bhàird ("A Message to the Bard"), which denounces the mass evictions ordered upon Islay after the island was purchased by James Morrison and which was composed to the air When the kye came hame,[9] William Livingstone presents, according to John T. Koch, “a stark view of an Islay in which the human world has been all but banished from the natural landscape.”[10] Examples of William Livingston's work may be viewed in the Golden Treasury of Scottish Poetry.

[11][12] Towards the end of his life, Livingstone, according to Donald E. Meek, "produced a fascinating range of celebratory poems, commemorating friends, worthies of the Glasgow Gaelic circuit, and scholars such as Eugene O'Curry.