ROBERT MACKAY.
This famous Sutherlandshire Bard, better known as Rob Donn, or Robert the Brown, was born in the parish of Durness in 1714. He is said to have composed verses between his third and sixth years, like some other poets, early lisping in numbers. For a long time before his death he filled the humble office of principal herd for his chief’s (Lord Reay) cattle. He died in 1778, when he was sixty-four years of age. Although most of his pieces cannot be said to be religious—some much the reverse—we are told that he was an elder in the national Presbyterian Church. His death was deeply regretted over the whole country, where his memory is still most warmly cherished.
His poetical works were collected and edited early in this century by the late Rev. Mackintosh Mackay, LL.D., who wrote a memoir of the bard. Sir Walter Scott directed Lockhart to review Mackay’s Poems eulogistically in The Quarterly Review, giving him a place among the real sons of the muse. The monument to his memory has inscriptions on it in Gaelic, Greek, and Latin, so that Rob Donn has had fair justice done him.
Mackay wants imagination and the overpowering feeling we find in two or three others of the Gaelic bards. But although he does not stand among the very first of the Gaelic poets, he is yet a powerful, refreshing, and influential singer, with a good deal of wit, point, and satire. He is a shrewd and sensible man, with a Wordsworthian tendency to exalt the commonplace into fit themes for poetry.
His Elegy on Ewen is one of his best-known pieces. The morning he composed it he heard of the death of Pelham, then Prime Minister to King George the Second; and he contrasted his death with the dying state of poor Ewen, in whose house he had stayed the previous night. Ewen could not converse with the bard, who, after kindling the fire in the morning for the dying man, composed the poem from which the following stanzas translated by a clansman of the bard—Mr Angus M. Mackay—are taken:—
’Tis thus thou dost instruct us, Death,
That we should turn ere yet too late!
The longest lives are but a breath,
Thou callest hence both small and great!
But these thy latest actions ought
To ope at once our slumberous eyes—
Thy sudden leap from Britain’s court
To this low nook where Ewen lies!
Long time, O Ewen, yes, long time,
Has dread disease foretold thy fate;
Now nigh Death’s door dost thou repine,
With no one to compassionate!
If unimproved the time has passed,
And many a crime been done therein,
Yet hope remains while life shall last,
O yet repent thee of thy sin!
If we believe thy word, O Death,
These lessons we shall ne’er let slip!
There is no mortal drawing breath
Too vile for thy companionship!
The solemn truth when will we learn,—
Death’s vision is both high and low—
From Ewen’s sores thou didst not turn,
Great Pelham felt thy mortal blow.
Thou makest grief in court and hall
When at thy touch earth’s glories fade,
The ragged poor man thou dost call
For whom no mourning will be made!
All men, O Death, thy face shall see,
And all be forced with thee to go!
Watchful and ready we should be
’Twixt Pelham high and Ewen low!
And all around thy victims fall,
Unseen thy sudden bullets fly;
The noises round us loudly call
That we should be prepared to die.
Thou that art lowest in the throng,
Hast thou not heard that Ewen dies?
And thou whom riches render strong,
That low in death great Pelham lies?
Friend of my heart, and shall not this
Make all our thoughts to heaven tend?
Society a candle is
That flames away at either end!
Where shall we find a humbler man
In Scotland than thy father’s son?
And in all Britain greater than
This Pelham, save the king, was none!
Long time, O Ewen, &c.
This old beggar did not yet lose his power of hearing, and feeling insulted by the manner in which his name was introduced into the moralising verses he snatched up a club towards the close of the song, and creeping behind the bard aimed a blow at him with all the strength of his withered arm. Rob barely escaped, and tried to soothe the enraged old man.
Mackay shows great detestation of greed in his poems. One is a dialogue between the world and the greedy man. The wants of the bard in his humble station were few and easily supplied, so he could contemplate with sorrow the growing spirit of selfishness that began to creep in along with advancing civilisation and change of habit. This spirit he rebukes in the following verse from an address to Lord Reay:—
Hadst thou by nature been a man of greed,
How soon had grown the tempting glittering hoard;
If thou to pity’s tears hadst deigned no heed,
And hard-wrung rents with human curses stored!
But no, for when the yearly rents were paid,
It was more joy to thee a thousand-fold
To see a glad face in God’s image made,
Than the king’s image on the yellow gold!
Like many of the bards, Rob appears to have suffered from a sore affair of the heart. A yellow-haired Annie deceived him, and ran away with a fair carpenter from the south, and he sang Is trom leam an àiridh. It seems the courting was carried on at a shieling, a favourite place of resort for fond swains and tender maidens:
Oh, sad is the shieling,
And gone are its joys!
All harsh and unfeeling
To me now its noise,
Since Anna—who warbled
As sweet as the merle—
Forsook me—my honey-mouthed,
Merry-lipped girl!
Ach, ach, now I’m trying
My loss to forget—
With sorrow and sighing,
With anger and fret.
But still that sweet image
Steals over my heart;
And still I deem fondly
Hope need not depart.
So fancy beguiles me,
And fills me with glee,
But the carpenter wiles thee,
False speaker! from me.
Yet from Love’s first affection
I never get free;
But the dear known direction
My thoughts ever flee.
The above verses are Pattison’s translation. It is said that the deceitful “Anna” led an unhappy life afterwards, and never recovered her old spirits after the memorable parting at the “shieling,” of which the bard sings so pathetically.
While Rob Donn is not equal to Macdonald or Macintyre in the highest qualifications of the poet, he is their superior in power of satire. His two rival bards have confounded vituperative language with satire, but Mackay never. He is a great favourite with his countrymen, who are very proud of him, and have laudably done all they could to make known his poetry and perpetuate his fame.
In many respects Mackay is a typical representative of the northern counties, where the intense Celtic spirit and feelings of nationality which characterise Argyllshire Celts do not prevail so extensively. The Teutonic element brought in by the Norse is stronger in the North, and may partly account for this apparent lack of Celtic enthusiasm and of the usual Celtic grace of style. In his own way, though exercising his sportive muse in a more confined and humbler sphere, Rob Donn might be described as a sort of Highland Praed or Calverley.
The bard was in the service of two of his clan on whom he has composed well-known elegies. These two were Lord Reay and John Mackay. The elegy on the latter has been translated as follows by the clansman already referred to in a good sketch which appeared some years ago in a London periodical:—
Some keep the verbal law of man,
And yet hard creditors are they;
They store what legally they can,
What the law makes them, that they pay!
Though want and misery they see,
Not less through pity grows their sum;
Shut eyes and purse alike will be
Against the poor and needy one!
This bastard honour grows apace—
The creed of numbers beyond ken,
Who, greatly to their own disgrace,
Would rather owe to God than men!
Theirs will be loss beyond recall
When God shall sum up all their debt—
“Thou heededst not the poor man’s call,
I also will thy prayers forget!”
If thou another’s want didst know
Thou couldst not in thy goods rejoice;
Towards the poor thy heart would glow
Although his wants ne’er found a voice.
Ah, sooner lose a pound of gold
Than take to thee an ounce of sin,—
The waters shall bring manifold
For all thy treasures cast therein!
I saw the gentle who was poor,
And he was full of gloom and grief,
He passed the once wide-opened door
Where now no more he finds relief!
I saw the widow in her tears,
I saw the beggar hungering;
The orphan now unclothed appears
Unnoticed by the unpitying!
Who needs advice must want it now,
And see the prosperous times depart;
All clouded is the poet’s brow,
[With none to] reverence his art.
None seek to make the poor rejoice;
And when I ask why joys are fled,
They answer me with tearful voice—
“Alas! is not MacEachainn dead?”
I see the gathering of the poor—
Now poor indeed since thou art dead,
And closed for aye the open door
Where Love consoled and Bounty fed!
And strangers now are praised to me
As lib’ral—I knew only one—
But ah! the wandering stars we see
After the setting of the sun!