EVAN MACCOLL.
At the head of the Bards of the Victorian era stands Evan MacColl, who was born in 1808 at Kenmore, Lochfyneside, Argyleshire, where his father was a small farmer. Young MacColl eagerly seized on all the sources of culture within his reach, and at an early age became familiar with some of the chief works of English literature. He was born and educated in the midst of strongly Celtic influences and associations which continued to mould his mind and heart throughout his whole career.
In 1836 he published “The Mountain Minstrel; or, Clarsach nam Beann,” a series of English and Gaelic poems and songs. He is one of the best known of our living Gaelic bards. Fletcher of Dunans and Campbell of Islay, to whom the English and Gaelic parts of his volume are respectively dedicated, befriended the young bard, who had proved himself highly deserving of the patronage they extended to him. The genius of MacColl is entirely lyrical, very few poems of any length having come from his pen. His English songs are generally playful and pleasant, but do not show much depth of passion. His Gaelic poems have the same ring as his English pieces, but are more natural, and [show the bard] at his ease in the use of language. MacColl is a sweet and intelligent singer, but in real power of thought and expression he is not Livingston’s equal. The following verses show MacColl in his more vigorous style:—
“Ho! landed upon Moidart’s coast is Scotland’s rightful King!”
Such was the news to which the Gael once gave warm welcoming;
And soon, glad-buckling on their arms, stout chiefs and clansmen true
Have sworn in his good cause to try what good broadswords can do.
No cravens they to count the cost of failure; man alive!
We’ll never see their like again—the Clans of ’Forty-five.
Brief time hath passed till Finnan’s vale is all alive with men
From east and west in loyal haste proud gathering to their ken,
The royal standard is unfurled—their prince himself is there,
Their loving homage to receive, their dangers all to share;
Grey chiefs, who for his fathers fought, the fire of youth revive,
To stirring pibrochs marshalling the Clans of ’Forty-five.
Let no man say that to restore a deed proscribed they arm—
They think but of his loving trust, his Highland heart so warm,
His royal rights usurped—and they upon his princely brow
Would place his father’s crown or die. Too well they kept their vow.
Let men who prate of loyalty in this our day derive
Instruction in that virtue from the Clans of ’Forty-five.
Ay! let them think of brave Lochiel and Borrodale the bold—
Of Keppoch and Glengarry, too, those chiefs of iron mould—
The Chisholm, Cluny, Brahan’s lord, the Mackintosh so keen,
The Appin Stuarts and MacColls, the lion-hearts Maclean,
With many a Chief and Clan besides, who quickly did contrive
To make their names immortal in the famous ’Forty-five!
The poet, who entered the Liverpool Custom-House in 1839 through W. F. Campbell of Islay, M.P. then for Argyleshire, removed to Canada in 1850, where in a similar position at Kingston he remained until he was superannuated in 1880. The venerable poet, now in the eighty third year of his age, resides in Canada, where a son of his is an able Congregational minister, and a daughter known as a poetess of much merit.
None of the Gaelic bards had a wider acquaintance, nor a larger outlook of life than MacColl. But in the midst of all new associations and attractions, he remained at heart frankly and even sternly Highland. The following verse of an address (1878), to a well-known Highland patriot, Mr John Murdoch, illustrates this phase of his character:—
I think I see thy manly form,
Firm and unyielding as Cairngorm,
The poor man’s cause maintaining warm,
Just like a true-souled Highlander;
I see the scorn within thine eye
As some evicting Chief goes by—
One whose forbears would sooner die
Than dispossess a Highlander.
Before Celtic things were held in such esteem as they are now, or rather, perhaps, before their value was appreciated as recently, men of Celtic extraction like Macaulay and Charles Mackay wrote of the Highlanders and Highlands, not only without discrimination and sympathy, but without knowledge, and even in a spirit of savage contempt. The latter lived to express regret for his earlier conduct; the former had not the same opportunity of modifying his earlier impressions, and his Highland fellow-countrymen were not slow to declare their minds on the subject. Among those who sought to pay back the illustrious historian in his own coin was Evan MacColl. On the occasion of Macaulay’s death some one had written “Macaulay now is registered among England’s mighty dead!” On this MacColl wrote verses the first and last of which are as follows:—
Hech, sirs! “Macaulay’s registered
’Mong England’s mighty dead!”
Let us hope that he lies buried near
Her first mean-mighty Ned.
Scotland can never well forget
The zeal of those two men,—
The one to stab her with the sword—
The other with the pen.
But let that pass,—he’s there—John Bull
Is not so much to blame;
He lived to magnify John’s rule,—
John magnifies his name.
The wonder, after all, is how
John could be fooled so far
As a mere meteoric light
To worship as a star.
The warm and generous heart of the bard is revealed in much of his poetry. His little poem, Let us do the best we can, shows his sympathy with the struggling poor:—
Mark yon worldling lost in self,
Dead to every social glow;
Wouldst thou, to own all his pelf,
All life’s purer joys forego?
Truest wealth is doing good—
Doctrine strange to him, poor man!
If we can’t do all we would,
Let us do the best we can.
One of the best criticisms on MacColl’s poetry comes from the pen of Hugh Miller: “There is more of fancy than of imagination in the poetry of MacColl, and more of thought and imagery than of feeling. In point, glitter, polish, he is the Moore of Highland song. Comparison and ideality are the leading features of his mind. Some of the pieces in this volume are sparkling tissues of comparison from beginning to end.”