The literature of the Highlanders

by Nigel MacNeill

DUGALD BUCHANAN.

The Highlands produced several religious poets of considerable merit during the eighteenth century, although the areas of living religious activities were undoubtedly very limited. Chief among them was Dugald Buchanan, whose hymns have taken a very high place. He has been compared to Cowper, but he reminds us more of the celebrated Welsh bard Goronwy Owen, who has much in common with Buchanan. It is curiously suggestive that the sacred bard of Anglesea and the sacred bard of Rannoch, the religious representative poets of their respective countries, should be found composing highly spiritual poems, and at the same period writing elaborate ones on the awful theme of the “Day of Judgment,” while the polished Addison and ethical Johnson were delivering their well-finished articles on mere moral platitudes to a highly conventional generation. Perhaps the Highlanders have received, apart from the Bible, no greater gift than the holy and sublime strains of the muse of Buchanan, who impressed his personality and character on all the Gaelic-speaking portion of his countrymen who in his days were in the throes of painful political changes, and about to enter on a new era of severe trial and uncertainty. Much of what the world has admired in the Highland character since is due to the formative and healthy influence of Dugald Buchanan’s hymns.

Dugald Buchanan was born in 1716 on the farm of Ardoch, Perthshire, where his father rented a farm and was the owner of a small meal mill the remains of which are still standing. His people were deeply religious people, of whom he speaks with much affection and respect in the autobiographical sketch which he left written in English. It is remarkable to find such people in Balquidder at that period—in the country of Rob Roy, who the year before the poet was born had marshalled his men on the field of Sheriffmuir under the banner of the Pretender.

Young Buchanan was educated in one of the schools belonging to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which was formed in 1701. There he received a good education, which was afterwards supplemented by attendance on some classes in Edinburgh University, while he was superintending the printing of the Gaelic New Testament. And this last fact reminds me that I have recently counted more than twenty well-known Gaelic bards who received University education; so the general cry of illiteracy is not applicable to the majority of them who at least were trained in the rudiments of learning.

Buchanan was afterwards appointed by the Presbytery of the bounds to be catechist and evangelist in the district of Rannoch, where he laboured with much acceptance and success. He died of virulent fever in June 1768, when he was fifty-two years of age. His death was profoundly mourned by every family in the district. His widow survived till 1824, and one of his daughters died as recently as 1854.

It is said that Buchanan composed a good deal of poetry that has never been published. He published his religious poems or hymns in 1767. They are eight in number, the longest, “The Day of Judgment,” is 408 lines in length. This poem is also his best. It is dramatically vivid and very sublime. Indeed, Buchanan is the only Gaelic bard that exhibits much sublimity. He was a man of culture, of even judgment, and of true insight into human nature. There are many evidences of his acquaintance with the literature of his own and other times. While he knew something of Shakespeare and other masters of English literature, he became especially a student of the living religious thought of the England of his day. The writings of such men as Philip Doddridge and Isaac Watts helped to feed his spiritual needs and to colour the products of his own genius.

The works of Buchanan have maintained their popularity to the present day. In 1875 the twenty-first edition of his poetry appeared, accompanied by a new sketch of his life by the Rev. Allan Sinclair, late Free Church minister of Kenmore. In November of the same year, a monument, in the form of an obelisk of Peterhead granite, was erected to commemorate his name and genius at Kinloch-Rannoch.

The poems of Buchanan, in whole or in portions, have been frequently brought before the English-speaking world. Macgregor, Maclachlan of Canada, Pattison, Sinclair, Blackie, and Macbean have attempted translations with varying successes. As in the case of the finest lyrics on less sacred themes, the translation of these hymns presents peculiar difficulties which can only be fairly overcome by translators whose own spirits are in holy unison with the language and sentiments of the author. It is quite evident that such a master-translator as Professor Blackie cannot feel at home among religious truths and experiences, with which his sympathies are not very warm. What Buchanan calls “conversion” Blackie would describe as a new point of “ethical departure,”—a cold and philosophical conception of an all-important event which could scarcely charm the hearts of religious folks of the poet’s type. Only the pens of a Mason Neale and like-minded men can glide along sympathetically on these sacred heights of holy thought and life.

The first of the hymns is called The Majesty of God, which begins in octosyllabic verse as follows:—

O what is God! or what His name!

Angels in glory cannot know;

Where he is veiled in dazzling light

No thought or eye can ever go.

This is one of the less popular of his hymns, the theme being of a more abstract nature than that on which he dwells generally.

The hymn which stands second in the order of publication is called The Sufferings of Christ. This [beautiful production] has greatly impressed Highland religious thought, and that before the Gaelic Scriptures were yet entirely translated or in the hands of the people. The form of verse chosen is very happy, and one into which the Gaelic language flows with liquid ease and beauty. Its spirit and manner may be imperfectly gathered from the following lines:—

It is my Saviour’s sufferings

My song will now proclaim,

That High King’s life of humbleness

In birth and death of shame;

The miracle most wonderful

That e’er to men was told:

God who was from eternity—

An infant born behold!

The poet then rehearses in tender and mellifluous strains the more suggestive events of the Lord’s earthly life, and ends in a few verses of extreme beauty, pathos, and simplicity, detailing the agonizing circumstances of His death and crucifixion. The air to which the hymn is usually sung is very pretty and plaintive, and is a great favourite in the Highlands. At a time when living Gospel preaching was far from general, the rehearsal of this and other similar productions on Sunday in many humble Highland homes, helped to keep alive the flame of spiritual life.

The next is the greatest of his poems or hymns—The Day of Judgment. The poet begins in his usual Scriptural simple style, but as he proceeds the treatment and the language become elevated and majestic. We seem to see the dramatis personæ acting their gorgeous parts on the canvass of the poet’s grand conceptions. The verses beginning with “’N sin fàsaidh rudhadh anns an speur,” are regarded as very sublime. But there is no translation of this poem that will convey anything like a fair impression of the original. The following verses may give some idea of the manner of the poem:—

Then, like the morn enkindling red,

A glowing spreads throughout the skies;

Where Jesus comes a glare is shed

By heaven’s burning tapestries.

The clouds all suddenly unfold

To make for the High King a door;

And we the Mighty Judge behold,

Whose glory streams forth evermore.

The rainbow glows around his form,

His voice resounds like mountain-floods;

Outflashing o’er the sullen storm,

His lightning eye pours from the clouds.

The sun, great lustre of the skies,

Before His glorious Person pales;

At length her failing brightness dies

Before the light His face unveils.

Her robes of gloom she will uptake,

The blood-red moon drops down in space;

The mighty heavenly powers shall shake,

Outcasting planets from their place.

Like tempest-shaken fruit on trees,

So shall they tremble in the skies;

Like heavy rain-drops on the breeze,

Their glory like a dead man’s eyes.

The poetical conceptions of Buchanan on this subject have woven themselves into the theological ideas of the Highlander, like those of Milton into the religious thought of England.

The Skull is well-rendered by Professor Blackie, whose version begins thus:—

I sat all alone

By a cold grey stone,

And behold a skull lay on the ground!

I took in my hand,

And pitiful scanned

Its ruin, all round and round.

Without colour or ken,

Or notice of men,

When a footstep may trample the ground;

A jaw without tooth,

And no tongue in the mouth,

And a throat with no function of sound.

In thy cheek is no red,

Smooth and cold is thy head,

Deaf thine ear when sweet music is nigh;

In thy nostrils no breath,

And the savour of death

In dark hollow where beamed the bright eye.

No virtue now flashes

’Neath eyelids and lashes,

No message of brightness is sped;

But worms to and fro

Do busily go

Where pictures of beauty were spread.

And the brain that was there

Into ashes or air

Is vanished, and now hath no mind

To finish the plan

It so boldly began

And left—a proud folly—behind.

From that blank look of thine

I gather no sign

Of thy life-tale, its shame or its glory;

Proud Philip’s great son

And his slave are as one

When a skull is the sum of their story.

The poem called Winter begins in this manner:—

The summer has ended,

The winter is nigh us;

The foe of all living

Comes to spoil and to try us;

Mars all that is lovely,

And tramples it under—

Full ruthless to all things,

He rages for plunder.

His wings he spreads o’er us,

The sun behind pushing;

While fiercely to scourge us

His brood is forth rushing;

The white-pinioned snow from

The sky is forth flying,

The hailstones like shot

From the stormy north hieing.

When he breathes upon it,

Its soul leaves the flow’r;

His lips the proud bloom

Of the garden devour;

The robes of the uplands

And forests he tears them;

His ice-flags of azure—

The choked streamlet wears them.

His breast’s frozen whistle

Wakes loud the commotion

Of the waves as they surge

O’er the barm-swollen ocean!

The sleet he congeals

O’er the moors in their whiteness,

Clean scouring the stars

Till they dazzle with brightness.

The poet, after this introduction, goes on to moralise at great length, drawing his lessons from the seasons and their changes. His poems are eight in number, and altogether constitute but a very small volume.

The titles of the other poems not referred to above are—The Dream, The Hero, and Prayer. An excellent sketch of his life and conversion written by the author himself in good English, has been translated into Gaelic, and is found frequently prefixed to the Hymns. This [account the author] solemnly signs, and prays that this transaction of his signing himself as the Lord’s consecrated servant on earth may be ratified in heaven. Buchanan tells us that he was an anxious hearer at one of the sermons which the distinguished evangelist George Whitefield preached at Cambuslang on the occasion of the latter’s visit to Scotland.

Buchanan, in conception and utterance, shows more than the other Gaelic bards the effects of his acquaintance with English literature. The religious subjects which were the theme of his poetry partially account for this. When in Edinburgh Buchanan became acquainted with several distinguished men in the Scottish capital—among others, the celebrated David Hume, who was much impressed by the culture and character of the Sacred Bard of Rannoch.

CHAPTER XIII.
BARDS OF THE ANGLO-GAELIC ERA.

“Here one thing springs not till another die,

Only the matter lives immortally.”

—Sylvester’s Du Bartas.

The authors whose works come under notice in this chapter may be described as belonging to the Anglo-Gaelic era of Highland history, when the influence of English thought, movements, and manners began to penetrate into the most sequestered corners of the north west. This influence came in through the two channels of the religious literature of English Puritanism and Imperial politics. When the Highlander came under the spell of the former in such works as those of Bunyan, he no longer cherished alien feelings towards Bunyan’s fellow-countrymen, many of whose struggles and sufferings were akin to his own; nor did he want any longer to nurse a spirit of mere Gaelic separatism that might conflict with the national purposes of the latter. We, therefore, find traces of English reading and culture in all the Gaelic poetry that has been produced since the commencement of this era. Even very early last century there is evidence that English thought began to exercise some influence on the compositions of the Highland poets. As already pointed out, English literature contributed not a little to the development of Dugald Buchanan’s sacred muse. The chief Gaelic poets of this period were fairly well educated, and knew the English language well. Several of them were clergymen who had gone through a course of training in Scottish Universities.

There are three elements of sadness that enter into the poetry of this period—first, the sorrowful cry of baffled Jacobitism; second, the vain cry of enthusiasts over the disappearance of Gaelic habits and customs; and again, the intense wail of a fatherland spirit over the depopulation of the Highlands. Along with greater devotion to the cultivation of erotic poetry these are the themes of the bards of this era, who feel painfully conscious that the ground of this transition period is fast slipping away from under their feet.