Margaret Campbell was born at the farm of Clashgour in Glenorchay. Her father’s name was Peter Campbell. She was married a second time to a Cameron at Fort-William, when she became much reduced in circumstances. She published a little volume of songs in 1785; a second edition, which relieved her embarrassments a little, in 1805. Her Laoidhean Spioradail appeared in Edinburgh in 1810, a volume which seems to have escaped Reid’s notice. The hymns are thirty-four in number. An English appendix gives an abstract of the themes with which the hymns are occupied. The metre is not always very regular, but a few of the pieces show some poetic vigour.
REV. PETER GRANT.
Next to Dugald Buchanan, the author whose hymns are best and most widely known, is the late Peter Grant, a Baptist minister in Strathspey, who published the first edition of his hymns as early as 1813. As he tells us in one of his poems, he was deeply impressed with the extent of practical heathenism among the Highlanders. He complains, as Bishop Carsuel in the sixteenth century did before him, that the Highlanders loved the tales of Fingal and Ossian more than the Gospel, and that they spent all their spare time in the recital of these vain heathen stories. Carsuel gave his own generation a liturgy, and Grant to his a series of Gospel hymns; and it need scarcely be asked which of them was the more successful. The hymns became immediately widely popular, and edition after edition was called forth, and they have maintained their popularity to the present day. Grant is not a powerful poet, but he is a very sweet singer. His hymns and poems have a holy fragrance about them that is quite captivating. The simplicity of the conception and the naturalness of the style at once affect and enchain the heart. Grant succeeds where a hymnist of more ambition and power would fail. The warmth of his earnest nature is felt in every stanza he has written. He died full of years and honours, beloved by all who knew him. A sweet poem of his begins with the experience of a child emerging in heaven:—
’S leanabh solasach mi
Gle og chaidh á tim;
Chaidh mo threorach o’n chich do’n uaigh;
’S ged bu ghoirid mo thim
Gabhail fradbarc do’n tir,
’S mor th’agam ri innse do’n t-sluagh.
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