The literature of the Highlanders

by Nigel MacNeill

LAUCHLAN MACLAUCHLAN.

This bard-evangelist was born about the year 1729. He came of a family who occupied for generations a portion of the farm of Kinmylies, called Balmaclauchlan, near the town of Inverness. He was about sixteen years of age when the Rebellion of 1745 broke out, and remembered well seeing the wretched fugitives from that disastrous field of battle being cut down in their flight by the English soldiery. While quite a young man he was selected by the society already mentioned to be one of their evangelist-teachers at Culduthel, some three miles from Inverness. After a few years of successful labour there he was sent to Abriachan, where by the weight and general excellence of his character and the judicious exercise of his talents, the people soon became quite transformed. It is said that the godly people of the district used to travel ten and even twenty miles to hear the bard MacLauchlan exhort. He was twice married, but had no family by his first wife. In his second wife he found a truly congenial companion. While he was an admirer of the famous Hector Macphail, minister of Resolis, she was equally devoted to the no less famous James Calder, minister of Croy, the two being, along with Mr Alexander Fraser of Kirkhill, the most eminent ministers in the north at that time. The poet died in the year 1801, and his remains lie interred in the churchyard of Kirkhill. MacLauchlan was evidently a remarkable man in his day, and appears to have possessed very fair culture. An English letter of his addressed to his son, a divinity student, afterwards the Rev. James MacLauchlan of Moy, shows how well he could write English, and how well versed he had been in evangelical theology—“I say when two things are awanting, to go along with either the doctrines of law or gospel has little or no effect; i.e., when either wants a homely or particular application. It may be sound morality or sound gospel (even when both differ), yet so general that attentive hearers may hear, and never be made to cry out, What shall we do to be saved? Secondly, when law or gospel is not attended with the operation of the Spirit of Christ, what can be expected to be the consequence?... There is no wind so proper to winnow Christ’s corn as that of the gospel.... I might say a great deal on this subject, but one thing I find is, when some would maintain that never man spake like this Man, yet when Christ would address Himself with particular homeliness the very same lips would cry out, Crucify Him! Crucify Him! And this is come on the Church of Scotland, that she is now filled with a silly general strain of preaching when and where soundest fearing if truth is told so homely as to say like Nathan to David ‘Thou art the man,’ the speaker would become a prey; and if such is the case with such as can preach orthodox law and gospel, what can be said of such as can but lecture out harangues that are neither true morality nor gospel?... I think some, and no small part, of the distinction between a picture and the real being of grace is first in the begetting, next in the birth, then in the feeding, next in the growth, &c.” This letter, like his poetry, shows what a keen insight into human nature the bard possessed, and how well he understood the causes of the religious deadness of his day throughout the Church of Scotland. The poet makes here the “silly general strain of preaching” the cause of this deadness; elsewhere, in one of his poems he attributes the sad state of things in the Church to patronage. He was right in both cases. It was the patron that forced on the people preachers of the “silly general strain” stamp. The revival of religion in the first quarter of this century owes much to the good seed sowed by such earnest, faithful men, as MacLauchlan; and not a few of our ablest ministers of the present day have descended from such worthy ancestry. The late Rev. Dr Thomas MacLauchlan of Edinburgh, the eminent Celtic scholar and eloquent preacher, was a grandson of the poet-evangelist of Abriachan; and one of the doctor’s sons, Hugh, is possessed of poetical endowments and literary talents worthy of his great-grandfather.

It is very difficult to give satisfactory translations of any poetry, but Gaelic measures and turns of expression present peculiar difficulties. I have endeavoured in what follows to give renderings of some verses of all the poems of MacLauchlan that have come down to us. The longest is the “Elegy” on Macphail of Resolis; but much of his poetry is said to have been lost. After committing several of his poems to writing, the author, forming but a low estimate of his own abilities, committed the MS. to the flames.

We first give a few verses of the “Elegy” above referred to, although it cannot be said to be the best specimen of the poet’s productions—

MACPHAIL’S “ELEGY.”

Well may Resolis deeply mourn;

We share her sorrow o’er his urn;

Our holy feasts shall ne’er henceforth

Enjoy the great Light of the North.

No more we see that guiding Light;

Oft did he tell in words of might

The danger great to Albin nigh

In clouds of gloom athwart our sky.

Well in our slumber may we start:

He warned, ere hence he did depart,

That from the ominous day to come

He would be taken to his home.

As Lot was saved from Sodom’s fate

Ere God poured out His fury great,

So judgment from the Lord we dread

Since good Macphail, our guide, is dead!

In the “Elegy” we find several good verses bearing on the subject of patronage in the Church of Scotland. They show us how galling that yoke of Parliament was always felt to be; and how clearly Bible-cultured people, of no pretence to a knowledge of the mysteries of statecraft, discern the radical ills by which communities and individuals are fatally afflicted. It was only in 1874 that statesmen legislatively acknowledged the evils which were so patent to the poetic eye of MacLauchlan of Abriachan a century before:—

PATRONAGE.

Our Mother, by State’s wiles untaught,

A thoughtless slumber low has brought;

Dark perils grew before her face,

In watchless and unfaithful days.

Her true-soul’d witnesses are rare;

The gospel now so few declare;

Our secret griefs we cease to hide

Since conscience everywhere has died.

Though Patronage had her interred,

Like Lazarus unsepulchered,—

Forsaken in the bonds of death,

All stinking with corruption’s breath;

Yet when her Head the word has spoken

The stone is raised; Death’s power is broken;

The Patron’s power disappears,

And we’ll have praise instead of tears.

The “State of the World,” or the worldly, is another poem of considerable merit. It not unlikely represents much of the style of thinking and manner of the bard in his preaching addresses. Indeed our religious bards in general give us a good deal of general preaching and exhortation in their productions. Buchanan has done so; so has Macgregor; while Grant’s hymns, as well as those of Dr Macdonald, are very much evangelical sermons in verse. The following translation is as literal as the exigencies of rhyme and metre can admit:—

THE WORLDLY.

When proudly they stand

On the heights of the world

The storm then descends

And below they are hurled!

When they are least anxious

They’re hurried away,

For iron misfortune,

Will brook no delay.

When life’s breath is going,

At grim Death’s command,

Think not thine own power

Had helped thee to stand,

Think not those weak hands

Had preserved thee thy strength;

Thy frail members yield

To Death’s summons at length.

Of better blood boast not,

Vain child of the sod;

We are all from that Adam

First fashioned by God,

We are all from that Adam,

In him our life lay;

And all have to carry

These bodies of clay.

In this clay, soul-fashioned,

We march to the tomb,

Leaving loved ones behind us

When entering its gloom.

How much, then, thou takest

Of all this world’s good?

Some few yards of linen,

Some few deals of wood.

There are eight lines of a little poem called “An Samhla,” or The Comparison, which reminds us of the generally subjective state of mind which the Highland men were wont to cultivate so assiduously. In Morrison of Harris and in Macrae of Petty we see the extreme spiritual self-analysis which they carried on. I also give a rendering of a few verses of a fair poem on those given to riches. It has the same preaching ring that we find in the one on the state of the world:—

THE COMPARISON.

I’m like a barrel sealed,

Whose stores the others cannot see;

The gazer scans in vain;

Good wine or poison it may be:

But strike thou in some spot

Where all the staves are not so sound,

Soon thou shalt see the stuff

Outpouring on the ground.

THE TRUE RICHES.

I mourn for you that follow ill,

Ye who misspend the days of youth;

The cup of sin you daily fill,

And grieve afar the God of Truth:

He keeps you while you fast advance

In fleshly pleasures’ passing train;

But yours will be inheritance

With heirs of everlasting pain.

If thou wouldst follow Him each day,

Be meek and mild—extinguish pride;

To sinful lusts do not give way,

And all dark habits cast aside.

Though great thy faith be and thy pray’r,

They cannot ease thy grievous load,

Unless thine be a covenant share

In the soul-sealing work of God.

Behold her of Samaria:

Deep in her soul the poison flowed;

But when the face of Christ she saw

Her heart turned from the guilty road.

A drink before that spring supernal

She sought with lips all parched and sore;

He gave her of the life eternal,

Which slaked her thirst for evermore.

Though MacLauchlan has not left much to prove that he possessed the gift of satire, yet it seems that some of his poems helped his preaching considerably in extirpating the habit of card-playing once so universal in the Highlands—it used to be carried on at baptisms, weddings, and even late wakes. Highlanders have had a terrible dread of being satirised by the bards. To have come under the satiric tongue of the poet acted like a social excommunication; and bards frequently availed themselves of this power to accomplish ends different from that to which MacLauchlan had set himself in the following verses:—

CARD-PLAYING.

Oft I gazed with saddened feeling

On the weak that went astray;

Men of outward name and promise

Whom I sought to teach the way.

When I entered they were sitting

The enjoyment to begin,

At the table where the Christian

Cannot shun committing sin.

They would rather have my absence

For they felt a glow of shame:

Stopping then they promised never

To take up the godless game.

With a pack of Satan’s leaflets

There the husband’s hands between,

They lost time and vainly wasted

Light at wicked work, I ween.

MacLauchlan’s poems have been considered at greater length than the mere quality of his poetry might warrant because they shed light on the life and manners of the Highlanders during a particular time in a circumscribed district, and because hitherto they, in common with those of several other religious bards, have received no attention whatever. On the other hand, the great bards of the secular life have been very abundantly written upon and their merits exhibited.