With me the hero to the grave attend,
And sing the songs of mourning round his bier,
Through his own grove his praise we will proclaim,
And bid the place forever bear his name.
The idea may come to many readers as a surprise that if Jerome Stone had been spared to perform the part of translator of the Gaelic ballads and small epics of the Finnic mythus, he would probably furnish the world with “translations” which would not be nearer the “originals” than Macpherson’s have been. The reference here is not to Macpherson’s Gaelic published subsequently, but to the Ossianic compositions which became such a source of general Celtic inspiration during the latter half of the eighteenth century.
JOHN SMITH, D.D.
This writer was among the most cultured and distinguished of those who about a hundred years ago devoted time, means, and talent to the study of Gaelic literature. The labours of the Rev. Dr John Smith of Campbeltown, as an author and translator of prose and poetry, were varied and abundant. He produced a Life of Columba the Apostle of the Highlands; a work on The Functions of the Sacred Office, which received the high commendation of Dr Bickersteth; and a work on Gaelic Antiquities and the History of the Druids, which is still sought after, and which exhibits considerable research and good literary powers. These works, in English, enable us to judge of the qualities of the man in general; but it is with his Gaelic works that we have chiefly to deal. He was one of those who helped to translate the Old Testament into Gaelic, edited a version of the Gaelic Psalter, another of the Shorter Catechism; and was the translator of some religious works, such as Alleine’s Alarm. When engaged on the last-mentioned production, which he undertook to translate at the request of a lady, he took portions of the “Appeals to the Unconverted” with him into the pulpit, being too busy to prepare sermons of his own, with the result that a spiritual revival took place in the congregation, and anxious hearers flocked to the pastor for spiritual comfort which he felt himself totally unable to supply. It is said that this experience led to an emphatic spiritual change in himself.
How Smith was moved to interest himself in Gaelic poetry is well described in his own language in a letter to the Highland Society Committee: “(31st January 1798), I can only say that from my earliest years I was accustomed to hear many of the poems of Ossian and many tales respecting Fingal and his heroes. In the parish of Glenurchay, in which I was born, and lived till the age of 17, there were many at that time who could repeat a number of Ossian’s poems; and there was particularly an old man called Doncha (rioch) Macnicol, who was noted for reciting the greatest store of them. That any of them had been translated, I did not know till I became a student in philosophy, when, in the year 1766 or 1767, I read Mr Macpherson’s translation, with which, beautiful as it is, I was by no means so much charmed as I had been with the oral recitation of such as I heard of the poems in the original language. The elegance of the modern dress did not, therefore, in my opinion, compensate for the loss of the venerable and ancient garb.” When it became doubtful whether Macpherson would publish the Gaelic originals, Smith formed the design of publishing as many as he could of the originals, which “at that time would not be a few.” “But,” he proceeds, “finding there was no encouragement to be expected for such a work, and that those which I had already collected would not defray their own expence, nor have been ever published had it not been for the liberal support and patronage of the Highland Society of London, I gave up the pursuit of Gaelic poetry; about which I became so careless that I never took the trouble of transcribing or preserving several pieces that had fallen into my possession.” Smith is not the only one to whom the “pursuit of Gaelic poetry” and Celtic studies became a painful and barren enterprise.
It appears that Duncan Kennedy, a schoolmaster at Lochgilphead, busied himself in collecting, transcribing, and editing in his own peculiar manner all the old Highland lays he could find in Argyllshire, and that some of his materials found their way into Smith’s possession. It is understood that the latter refers to Kennedy in the following sentences: “(1802), I remember well,”—Kennedy was still alive,—“that a man who had given me the use of a parcel of poems, without any restriction, had long threatened a prosecution for publishing what he called translations of his collection of poems, and alleged he had a claim to a share of the profits. I believe, however, upon enquiry, that he understood the profits were only a serious loss, as I had been persuaded to run shares with a bookseller in the publication, which to me turned out so bad a concern (when my income was but thirty pounds a-year), that I could never since think of Gaelic poetry with pleasure or with patience, except to wish it had been dead before I was born.” In this same letter Smith declares that a little while before he had used the last copy he had of his Translations “in papering a dark closet that had not been lathed, in order to derive some small benefit from what had cost” him so much. Macpherson reaped the first crop of the ancient lays of the Celtic world of romance; piled a fortune out of it; became a member of Parliament; bought a Highland estate on which he erected a monument for himself; and arranged for the burial of his body in Westminster Abbey. Some of his imitators found the path of Celtic studies and poetry one of thorns, poverty and misfortune, and obscure graves, without a cairn to mark their resting-place.