User:OtherDave/notes

Congresses

• Add special/executive session dates, Congresses 1 - 34. Done.
• For congresses 35 - 108, add or revise session dates (regular, special, executive). Done.

No more work on Congress stuff for me; others chose a different format for the most recent dozen or so congresses; they can apply it to the eighty prior ones.

For Ferdinand Waldo Demara

Magazine references:

• Life, January 28, 1952, 'The Master Imposter' (need to verify title)
• Life, July 6, 1959, 'Trip with the Master Imposter' (need to verify title; author Robert Crichton)
• Time, February 25, 1957, 'Ferdinand the Bull Thrower' http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936819,00.html
• Argosy, August, 1960 (vol. 351, no. 2), 'The Great Imposter Strikes Again' (probably by Crichton)

For Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair

To-dos, open questions, etc.

• Was Maighstir Alasdair a minister of the Scottish Episcopal Church?

Definitions, nomenclature, etc.

• Gaelic name: Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill (Alexander MacDonald)
• birlinn (subject of a poem; also spelled berlin): a type of galley, a half-decked rowing boat (Birlinn Chlann Raghnaill)
  • Verses and Hugh MacDiarmid translation at [An Leabhar Mor / The Big Book of Gaelic]

Notes from Clan Donald Society of Edinburgh

Alasdair's songs: Oran Nuadh - A New Song, Oran nan Fineachan Gaidhealach - The Song of the Highland Clans and Oran do'n Phrionnsa - A Song to the Prince, the last of which, is included after this article, show clearly the enthusiasm with which Prince's arrival was awaited by the Highland Jacobites and in particular the Bard himself. According to John MacKenzie (Eachdraidh a' Phrionnsa, p.254n), these poems were sent to Aeneas MacDonald, the Banker, Kinloch Moidart's brother, in Paris, who read them in English to the Prince, thus encouraging to come to Scotland.

Alasdair's songs: Oran Nuadh - A New Song, Oran nan Fineachan Gaidhealach - The Song of the Highland Clans and Oran do'n Phrionnsa - A Song to the Prince, the last of which, is included after this article, show clearly the enthusiasm with which Prince's arrival was awaited by the Highland Jacobites and in particular the Bard himself. According to John MacKenzie (Eachdraidh a' Phrionnsa, p.254n), these poems were sent to Aeneas MacDonald, the Banker, Kinloch Moidart's brother, in Paris, who read them in English to the Prince, thus encouraging to come to Scotland.

MacMhaighstir Alasdair's Nature Poetry and Its Sources

• This article consistently refers to the poet as Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair. (note the space)

Celtic Collection at St. FX

• Seems to have MacMhaighstir Alasdair's vocabulary.
• Could they tell whether the poet is typically known as Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair?

from Lyca Celtica

This celebrated Gaelic poet was born in the first half of the 17th century. In the Highlands and Western Isles he is invariably styled Mac Mhaighstir Alastair--ie. the son of Mr Alexander. Alastair the Elder resided at Dalilea in Moydart of Argyll, and was both Episcopal clergyman and official tacksman. He was a man of immense strength and vigour and his muscular Christianity may be inferred from the saying current in Moydart that "his hand was heavier on the men of Suainart than on the men of Moydart." Alexander Macdonald had a good education for his time--first under his father, and later, for a year or so, at Glasgow University. Poverty, however, compelled him to leave Glasgow and retire to Ardnamurchan, where, as his biographer, Mr Pattison, says, he lived, teaching and farming, and composing poetry, until the advent of the year 1745. In this momentous year he left not only his farm and his teaching, but even his eldership in the Established Church,and forsook all to join Prince Charlie, and to take upon him the onus of a change to the detested Roman Catholic faith. He was a Jacobite of the Jacobites, and his fiery and warlike songs were repeated from mouth to mouth throughout Celtic Scotland. It is supposed that he had a commission in the Highland army of the Prince, though whether he served as an officer is uncertain; at any rate, after the battle of Culloden he had to share the privations of his leaders, and he lived in hiding in the woods- and caves of the district of Arisaig. On one occasion, when lurking among these caves with his brother Angus, the cold was so intense that the side of Macdonald's head which rested on the ground became quite grey in a single night. When the troubles were over he went to Edinburgh, where he taught the children of a staunch Jacobite, but soon returned to his beloved West, where he remained till his death. Macdonald's first published book was a Gaelic and English Vocabulary (1741), nor was it till ten years later that his poems were published in Edinburgh--said to be one of the earliest volumes of original poems ever published in Gaelic. Pattison declares that he is the most warlike, and much the fiercest of the Highland poets; and altogether ranks him as, if not the foremost, certainly second only to the famous Duncan BAn MacIntyre. His poem called "The Birlinn of the Clan-Ranald" is by this critic, and most others, ranked as the finest composition in Modern Gaelic; certainly many Highlanders prefer it even to the "Coire Cheathaich," or the still more famous "Ben Domin of Duncan Bàn. Assuredly no one could read this poem "Of the hurling of the birlinn through the cold glens of the sea, loudly snoring," without being stirred by its vigour and power. The portion here given is merely a fragment, for the original is much too long for quotation--indeed, it is said to be the longest poem in Gaelic, except such as are Ossianic. For a full account of Macdonald and his poems, including the translation of the greater part of "The Manning of the Birlinn," see Pattison's Gaelic Bards.

The Gaelic Literature of Argyle

...Poetry

The tales told by Neil Munro often allude to the Gaelic literary activity of the area, especially that of the poets. This is particularly evident in John Splendid, for example, where Munro frequently refers to Gaelic song and verse. Gaelic poetry, like Gaelic prose, has a long history in the county, and it is pre-eminently with poetry that the literary activity of Argyll is connected in the popular mind. A literary tour of the places associated with Argyll poets would take us to the native areas of some of the greatest poets of Gaelic Scotland. Starting in the north, we would look across to Dalilea in Island Finnan, the early stamping ground of the formidable poet, Alexander MacDonald (c.1698-c.1770), otherwise known as Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, who served his reluctant time as a schoolmaster in Ardnamurchan, before becoming Prince Charles’s Gaelic poet-laureate, and lampooning the Campbells with his barbed wit. Later, after the ‘Forty-five, MacDonald was active in Inverness-shire, becoming baillie of Canna. MacDonald is widely regarded as the greatest of the eighteenth-century Gaelic poets, certainly in terms of intellectual fire. His volume of poems, Ais-eiridh na Seana Chànoin Albannaich, was the first volume of verse by a Gaelic vernacular poet to be put in print. It appeared in 1751, but because of its Jacobite sentiments, it was burnt by the public hangman in Edinburgh. Only a few copies of the original printing of the book have survived. MacDonald’s poetry had a profound influence on his contemporaries in Argyll, notably (it would seem) Argyll’s best known poet, Duncan MacIntyre.

from The Gaelic Book by Hugh Cheape

(Publication of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers)

The mid-eighteenth century saw the publication of the first book of original Gaelic verse and, in terms of the language, essentially the first published vernacular and the genesis of a written tradition in Scottish Gaelic. Published in Edinburgh in 1751, and reputedly burnt as seditious by the public hangman at the city Cross, Alexander MacDonald's Ais-eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich, no An Nuadh Oranaiche Gaidhealach, or `The Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Language, or New Gaelic Songster' might well have encouraged another Jacobite rising with its powerful propagandist tone. MacDonald (c.1698-1770), known to tradition as Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, dominates the stage of Gaelic literature; a learned, inventive and complex author, his work seems to have defied proper editing, due particularly to the powerful scatalogical element which led in successive editions of his poems through to 1924 to major omissions amounting to a form of censure. The same author published one of the first vocabularies, Leabhar a Theagasc Ainminnin, printed in Edinburgh in 1741 to the order of the SSPCK.

From The Moidart Timewarp

1726 - 1750 1729 Alasdair mac Mhaighstir, the poet born at Dalelea where his father was Minister, was appointed by SSPCK from 1729 to a number of schools in Ardnamurchan. He privately converted to Catholicism and had for some time been comng under suspicioon for his Jacobite leanings. He left Corryvullin on Ardnamurchan in 1745 and joined the Prince. Moidart Among the Clanranalds, p138 Charles MacDonald, Ed John Watt.

From the School of Celtic Studies, Dublin

[The State of the Art] Scottish Gaelic Verse, by Colm Ó Baoill, University of Aberdeen

...In the mid-eighteenth century a window is opened to Lowland and English literature and we find new poetic ideas, like the nature poetry of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c.1668-c.1770). A highly literate exception to many rules, Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair has left us a large body of verse, some of it published by himself in 1751, and it exemplifies the new wider scope of Scottish Gaelic verse: in addition to nature poetry there is satire, social comment, love poetry, and his famous Jacobite poetry, which includes praise poetry strongly influenced by the old heroic tradition. We still await a reliable edition of his work, though J. L. Campbell edited a good deal of the Jacobite verse in 1933. And we still await a comprehensive biography, although Ronald Black published in 1986 an excellent account of the poet's earlier years, up till 1745.

From [SLAINTE: Scottish Libraries Across the Internet]

[Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair]

Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair (Alasdair Macdonald) was born about 1695 in Ardnamurchan where his father, a near relative of Clanranald, was an Episcopalian minister. He received a good education and is said to have studied at Glasgow University. In 1729 he was appointed by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge as teacher of a Charity School at Island Finnan, and he continued in this and other centres for about fifteen years. With his duties as schoolmaster he combined the office of Catechist, an office to which he was appointed by the Presbytery of Mull.

Sometime in the '40s he turned Catholic and became an enthusiastic propagandist for Prince Charles in whose army he served as captain, fought in various campaigns and was on the march to Derby. He wrote a number of passionate Jacobite songs, one with the refrain:

O hi ri ri he is coming O hi ri ri our exiled king Let us take our arms and clothing And the flowing tartan plaid

He also of course wrote other poems not connected with the '45. His Oran an t-Samhraidh (Song of summer) has a wonderful freshness with which Duncan Ban Macintyre may have been competing in his poem of the same title. He also wrote Oran a Gheamhraidh (Song of winter). He had a wonderful range of vocabulary and splendid distinctive detail.

However the poem for which he is most famous (as Duncan Ban Macintyre for Ben Doran) is the Birlinn (or Galley) of Clanranald. In this poem there is detailed description of the leading seamen some of whom may have been historical persons. There is a lot of technical detail. The poem begins with A Blessing of the Ship, followed by a Blessing of the Arms. Then there is an Incitement to Rowing to the Sailing Point. There are sixteen men seated at the oars. Perhaps the most dramatic (even melodramatic) part of the poem is the storm in which the sea is disturbed to an extraordinary extent:

The whole sea turned to porridge Foul and turbid With the blood and filth of splayed sea-beasts Turned red and horrid

The poem with its detail and drama is one of the major poems in Gaelic and if Duncan Ban Macintyre wrote of glens and the deer, Macdonald wrote of seamen and the sea and a tremendous storm in equally fine detail.

During the last twenty years of his life Macdonald lived in Glenuig, Knoydart, Morar and Arisaig. He died about the year 1770 and is buried at Arisaig (see photo above of Arisaig Graveyard).

A translation of the storm scene from the Birlinn can be found in Iain Crichton Smith's Collected poems (Carcanet 1992). A number of Macdonald's poems including Song of summer, Song of winter and some of his Jacobite songs can be found translated in Professor Derick Thomson's Gaelic poetry in the Eighteenth Century - a bilingual anthology (The Association for Scottish Literary Studies 1993).

Ian Crichton Smith

Version as of 12/3/06

Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c. 1695 – 1770), also known in English as Alexander MacDonald or occasionally Alasdair MacDonald, was a Scottish poet. His father, also named Alasdair, was known as Maighstir Alasdair ("Master Alexander"), "Maighstir" being used at the time to denote a clergyman. In English, Maighstir Alasdair is known as the Reverend Alexander MacDonald. The poet's Gaelic name means "Alexander, son of Master Alexander."

Maighstir Alasdair (Rev. Alexander MacDonald) who was minister for Finnan's Island, lived at Dalilea in Moidart, where Alasdaic mac Mhaighstir was likely born. There were no schools in the area and so it is thought that the younger Alasdair was educated by his father, who was a Masters graduate of the University of Glasgow, throughout his early years.

The Bard is said to have enjoyed a fine grounding in the Classics and this is borne out by his poems. Alasdair followed in the footsteps of the Maighstear and attended the University of Glasgow. He is said to have left prematurely and married young.

In 1729 Alasdair is appointed to a school at Finnan Island as a teacher by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and was the catechist of the same parish under the Royal Bounty Committee of the Church of Scotland. His position required him to teach at various locations on the island.

In 1738 he worked at Kichoan and next year he found himself at Corryvullin where he composed one of his most famous poems: All an t-Siucar (The Sugar Brook). In 1741 he published a Gaelic/English Vocabulary, a volume of 200 pages, which was the first Scottish Gaelic vocabulary to be published.

His whereabouts during the year of 1744 are unknown and saw his son Ranald acting as his substitute for teaching duties. Early in 1745 he was summoned by the Royal Bounty Committee in Edinburgh who were dissatisfied with his response and consequently made further investigations of past conduct which resulted in his dismissal by July of that same year.

At that time, however, Alasdair had come to find new interests. Aware of the probably landing of Prince Charles Edward Stuart — the young pretender — Alasdair hastened to welcome his royal kinsman upon his arrival at Loch nan Uamh from Eriskay. When they first met Alasdair did not recognise the prince, who was disguised, and made free with him until a warning glance of a fellow clansman told him of the prominence of the person in his company.

Songs penned by Alasdair such as: Oran Nuadh — A new Song, Oran nan Fineachan Gaidhealach — The Song of the Highland Clans and Oran do'n Phrionnsa — A Song to the Prince, serve as testament to the enthusiasm shown by the Jacobites of the Highlands towards the arrival of the Prince as well as the Bards own passion for the event. These poems were sent to Aeneas Macdonald, the brother of Kinloch Moidart, in Paris and were read — in English — to the Prince so as to encourage him to come to Scotland. Therefore Alasdair may have indirectly contributed to the starting of the Forty-Five. He was among the first to find their way to Glenfinnan to witness the raising of the Standard on August 19, 1745 which signalled the beginning of the insurrection and he is said to have sung his song of Welcome : Tearlach Mac Sheumais. Afterwards he "Became the Tyrtaeus of the Highland Army" and " The most persuasive of recruiting sergeants".

His first commission was a captaincy in the Clan Ranald Regiment where he was placed in command of 50 "cliver fellows" who were recruited by himself in Ardnamurchan and he found amongst his other responsibilities, an appointment to teach the Prince Gaelic due to his "skill in the Highland Language". Alasdair served for the duration of the campaign which ended with the crushing defeat of Culloden and following which both he and his elder brother Angus sheltered for a time amongst the woods and land of their own country. As the search for the Prince intensified it became a necessity for him to take his family into the hills as his house was plundered by the Hanoverian redcoats to such an extent that even the family cat was killed lest it might provide sustenance for his wife and children. After a period of nomadic wandering, during which his wife gave birth to a daughter, the family found shelter among relatives in Glencoe and here they remained until the Indemnity Act of 1747.

Curiously he became the Bailie of Canna during the summer of 1749 and remained there with his family until 1751 when he travelled to Edinburgh with the purpose of publishing his volume of poems entitled: Ais-Eiridh na Sean Chánoin Albannaich — The Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Language. "It is", as he says, "very characteristic of his reckless courage that he published these poems, breathing rebellion in every line, and pouring the vials of his wrath upon the whole race of the Georges, five years after the battle at Culloden." The publication caused such outrage amongst the authorities that the unsold copies held by the publisher were seized and burnt at the Cross in Edinburgh by the common hangman. Alasdair expected to be prosecuted and attempted to settle at Bignaig in Glen Uig but had soon fallen foul of the estate management moved again to Inverie in Knoydart. Again he did not remain there long and again moved to Morar and finally to Arisaig; Initially at Camus-na-talmhuinn and then at Sandaig.

He frequently travelled to South Uist, where he had a close friend in John MacCodrum, the famed Bard to Sir James MacDonald of Sleat, whom he admired greatly. Alasdair was described as a fine singer, of tall height and broad chest, handsome in feature and fair in hair. Among his attributes were sincerity, honesty, loyalty to his friends and to his own convictions. He "Owed little or nothing either to his predecessors or his contemporaries" in the field of poetry and may be said to rank first among all Bards of the Gaeldom perhaps with only Sorley MacLean of more recent fame as an exception.