MACDONALD, ALEXANDER

Highland Scottish patriot, Gaelic poet, and lexicographer (Gaelic name, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair);b. Dalilea, Argyllshire, 1700?; d. Sandaig, Invernesshire, 1770? He was the son of Alexander MacDonald, nonjuring minister of Ardnamurchan, Scotland. The younger MacDonald is known to have been employed (1729–45) by the Protestant society for promoting christian knowledge and to have served in his native district as catechist and schoolmaster. The aims of this society were so wholly at variance with the sentiments of MacDonald's chief, Allan MacDonald of Clanranald, and his Catholic fellow-clansmen, that one can only conclude that Alexander worked for it because of some personal quarrel.

Around 1730 he was asked to prepare for the society a Gaelic-English vocabulary in an effort to introduce English more widely into the Highlands. After revision by the Presbytery of Mull, this work, A Galick and English Vocabulary, the first Scottish-Gaelic vocabulary to be separately printed, was published at Edinburgh (1741). MacDonald's increasing absences from his school and his alleged composition of "Galick songs, stuffed with obscene language" caused his dismissal from the society on July 4, 1745.

Prince Charles landed (July 25, 1745) at Loch nan Uamh not far from Ardnamurchan. About this time MacDonald is said to have been received into the Catholic Church. He served throughout the Rising of 1745 as an officer in the Jacobite army [see jacobites (english)]. There is strong internal evidence that he was the "Highland Officer" who wrote the "Journall and Memoirs of P. C.'s Expedition into Scotland, etc. 1745–6." If so, he was one of the first persons to greet the Prince, whose Gaelic tutor he became, and he received the first commission given by the Prince in Scotland. After the Battle of Culloden (April 16, 1746) he became, in effect, an outlaw.

After the Act of Indemnity (1747), MacDonald was appointed Baillie of the Island of Canna by Clanranald. He visited Bishop Forbes in Edinburgh (1747, 1748), and in April of 1751 brought him an account of the Hanoverian atrocities on the islands of Eigg and Canna. His book of Gaelic poems, Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich (The Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Language), published at Edinburgh probably during this visit in 1751, was reportedly destroyed by official order because of its vehement Jacobite sentiments; only one copy of a 1764 reprint is known to exist.

MacDonald's Gaelic verse is distinguished by the vigor and breadth of its vocabulary, its depth of outlook, and the passion with which it expresses the Highlanders' attachment to the Jacobite cause. MacDonald had great if uneven talent for descriptive poetry; he merits a high place in the literature of abuse, though his ribald verses are sometimes obscene. His Ais-Eiridh, the first book of original verse in Scottish Gaelic, has influenced the style and vocabulary of Scottish Gaelic poets even to the present. He left poems in manuscripts, since included in nine later editions, the latest in 1924.

Bibliography: a. macdonald, Poems, tr. A. and a. macdonald (Inverness 1924). j. reid, Bibliotheca Scoto-Celtica (Glasgow 1832). j. l. campbell, "Some Notes on the Poems of A. MacDonald," Scottish Gaelic Studies, 4 (1934) 18–23; "Some Words from the Vocabulary of A. MacDonald," ibidem, 6 (1949) 27–42; "The Royal Irish Academy Text of Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill, " ibidem, 9 (1961) 39–79; "A. MacDonald: Portrait of a Traditionalist," Scots Magazine, 24 (1935) 61–76; tr. and ed., Highland Songs of the Forty-Five (Edinburgh 1933).

[j. l. campbell]