DONALD MATHESON.
Matheson, a sacred bard of considerable originality and spiritual insight, was born in the parish of Kildonan, Sutherlandshire, in 1719. At that time there was much religious fervour and feeling in that part of the country as well as throughout the north in general. So the “Sacred Poetry of the North” towards the end of last century makes a pretty large volume. While Buchanan was tuning his sacred harp in the central Highlands, Matheson began his religious strains in the far north. Matheson cultivated a small farm, and lived to the age of sixty-three, his death taking place in 1782. He exercised great religious influence in his own parish—his power of satire contributing much towards this influence. A single poem of his was declared by the parish minister to have done more good than all his own preaching for a series of years. As a poet he stands as high as his countryman Rob Donn, with whom he has many points in common, although Matheson’s poetry [is decidedly sacred], which Rob Donn’s is as decidedly not. His Gaelic is frequently unintelligible to the western and southern Gael, which is one reason why his poems have not been in greater request among them. The following verse shows his manner in Gaelic:—
Ar sinnsear o thùs,
’Nuair chaill iad an lùth’s,
Gùn mhill iad an cùis
Air sùsdanan àill;
Tha’n truailleadh so lionmhor,
Dh’fhag mis ’anns an fhionan,
Mar chraobh a th’ air crionadh
Gun fhiogais gun bhlath.
English:
Our ancestors marred
At the very beginning,
Their strength and their case
In old ways of sinning;
The corruption widespread
In the vineyard has left me,
Like a poor withered tree—
Of all bloom it bereft me.
When Matheson’s Poems were first published early in this century, they were accompanied with a preface from the hands of the Rev. Dr Macdonald of Ferintosh and the Rev. John Kennedy of Killearnan, in which the natural gifts of the poet, and his great Christian graces are referred to in very high terms: “Though destitute of the advantages of education,” say the writers of the joint preface, “he was one of the most celebrated Christians in that or perhaps any other country. He possessed a clear and comprehensive view of Divine truth, and discovered a deep and practical experience of its power on the heart and life.” In the imperfect sketches of Matheson’s life which have been preserved there are strong indications of the religious and ecclesiastical discontent which prevailed among the laity in those northern districts at the time, and of the latent dissent which subsequently developed. It is interesting to read that “at one time the parish church being vacant, Matheson headed a deputation from the people to their Presbytery in quest of a minister. Finding the Presbytery stiff to move, ‘I could sooner accomplish my errand with the great Hearer of prayer,’ he said, ‘than with the Presbytery.’ One member, a clergyman of the unmitigated old Moderate school, or as our Anglican friends would express it, of the extreme High Church party, ridiculed him as not possessed of education or influence entitling him to be heard. ‘You may mock,’ he replied, but I can tell you the word of Scripture by which the Lord first wounded my conscience. I can also tell the word by which Christ was made precious to my soul;—I suspect that is more than you, sir, can say.’” If poor Burns had been fortunate enough to have a little of this spirit his contact with the graceless members of the Presbytery of Ayr might have had a happier issue for himself.
There were clergymen of considerable culture in Caithness and Sutherland in the days of Matheson. Interesting sketches of some of them will be found in local religious histories such as Auld’s “Ministers and Men in the Far North.” Kennedy’s “Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire” is another pleasant, gossipy work, in which the struggle of light with darkness is vividly pourtrayed. At the same time there were many spots in the central and western Highlands where the truths of Christianity were scarcely known. Among these places was Abriachan, on the north-west bank of the romantic Lochness, some ten miles west of Inverness. To this day it is difficult of access, notwithstanding the recently well-made winding road from the level of the loch to the villages. It is a wild and barren-like gorge, surrounded east and west by hills of a similar character. To the north lies a dreary moor, which declines in the direction of Beauly.
The character and habits of the people at the beginning of the eighteenth century harmonised well with the nature of the place where they fixed their habitations. From this rather inaccessible nest they carried on for years with impunity a regular system of smuggling. They had every natural advantage on their side; they were reluctant to give up a profitable though nefarious traffic, with the lawfulness of which their consciences were not much concerned; and so hitherto they had refused to submit themselves to the more civilised conditions under which the people around them began to settle. This was the sphere of labour assigned by the Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge to the poet-evangelist MacLauchlan, who was virtually the first to preach the Gospel to the people of Abriachan.