In the fourteenth century, which gave Dafydd ap Gwilym to Wales, we find Gaelic becoming more definitely a conscious literary language. But the Dafydd of Scotland came more than a century earlier, being born at the end of the twelfth century. This was the famous Muireadach Albannach (Murdoch the Scot), several of whose poems figure in the Dean of Lismore's book, and whose effect on succeeding bards was only less powerful than Dafydd's on his Welsh successors. The Dean's book has poems, too, by two woman poets: Efric, wife of the last of the famous MacNeills of Castle Sween, and Isabel, Countess of Argyle. Efric's lament for her husband contains some touching lines; e. g.:—
"There's no heart among our women;
At the sport, no men are seen;
Like the sky when windless, silent
Is the music of Dun Sween!"
Sir Duncan Campbell, "Duncan Mac Cailem, the good knight," son of Sir Colin, is another of the poets in Dean Macgregor's collection; but perhaps we ought to pause here to say a word of the Dean himself. "Sailing in among the inner Hebridean Isles," says Mr. MacNeill, "we find in the fertile island of Lismore—'the great garden'—a man in the fifteenth century often referred to in Gaelic literature: the Rev. Mr. James Macgregor. A native of Perthshire,... with a heart filled with the enthusiasm and perfervid spirit of his countrymen, he and his brother got up the collection of songs and ballads" to which we have had occasion so often to refer. But we must pass on now to the later period of Gaelic literature, in which the modern developments have their beginning. The Scots Gael entered on a new phase, we are told, with Mary MacLeod (Mairi ni'n Alastair Ruaidh), who was born at Harris in 1569, and died a centenarian in Skye in 1674. Mairi was as perfect an example of the folk-minstrel as Celtic literature can provide; for she could not even write, although her prosody is elaborate, and her metres often intricate and original to a degree. The first of the distinctively Jacobite bards, who flourished at the end of the seventeenth and through the eighteenth century, was John MacDonald, whose 'Battle of Inverlochy' has been vigorously translated by Professor Blackie. Hector Maclean; Roderick Morrison, called An Clarsair Dall, or the Blind Harper; John Maclean, whose songs were heard by Dr. Samuel Johnson and Boswell on their journey to the Hebrides; and John MacCodrum (a poet whose wit and satiric powers remind us not a little of more than one of the Welsh satirical bards), are among the poets of this time who specially deserve note.
In the eighteenth century, Gaelic Scotland produced some remarkable religious poets, including David MacKellar, author of the well-known 'MacKellar's Hymn'; John Mackay; Donal Matheson, who had satirical as well as religious power; Lauchlan Maclauchlan; and Dugald Buchanan.
The great link between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries is Duncan Ban Macintyre, "a name loved throughout the Highlands and Islands." The Hunter Bard of Glenorchy, as he is often called,—though his best title is the affectionate Gaelic "Duncan of the Songs,"—was born on the 20th of March, 1724, at Druimliaghart in Glenorchy, Argyll. His first song was composed on a sword with which he was armed at the battle of Falkirk—where he served on the Royalist side as substitute for a neighboring gentleman.
"This sword," says his biographer, Thomas Pattison, "the poet lost or threw away in the retreat. On his return home therefore the gentleman to whom it belonged, and whose substitute he had been, refused to pay the sum for which he had engaged Duncan Ban to serve in his stead. Duncan consequently composed his song on 'The Battle of the Speckled Kirk'—as Falkirk is called in Gaelic—in which he good-humoredly satirized the gentleman who had sent him to the war, and gave a woful description of 'the black sword that worked the turmoil,' and whose loss, he says, made its owner 'as fierce and furious as a gray brock in his den.' The song immediately became popular, and incensed his employer so much that he suddenly fell upon the poor poet one day with his walking-stick, and striking him on the back, bade him 'go and make a song about that.' He was however afterward compelled by the Earl of Breadalbane to pay the bard the sum of 300 merks Scots (£16, 17s. 6d.), which was his legal due."
Duncan ended his days in Edinburgh, where he died in 1812,—one of the last links of the moving record of the early eighteenth century and its Jacobite associations.
Duncan was a contemporary of Macpherson's, and with Macpherson and his 'Ossian,' to which a special article is devoted elsewhere, we may well leave our chronicle, forbearing to touch on the debatable ground of later and contemporary Celtic literature in Scotland. Enough to say that Duncan Ban Macintyre has no lack of worthy followers in Gaelic poetry, and that with the Anglo-Celtic development, associated with such names as Dr. Norman Macleod, Professor Blackie, Robert Buchanan, George MacDonald, William Black, and, among new-comers, Miss Fiona Macleod and Mr. Neil Munro, there seems every prospect that the Gaelic spirit promises to achieve greatly in the new centuries to come.
The first selection is from the 'Sean Dana,' or Ancient Poems, collected, or rather written (from oral legendary lore and ballads), by Dr. John Smith, late in the eighteenth century.