METRICAL TRANSLATIONS
FROM
The Modern Gaelic Minstrelsy.
ALEXANDER MACDONALD.
Alexander Macdonald, who has been termed the Byron of Highland Bards, was born on the farm of Dalilea, in Moidart. His father was a non-juring clergyman of the same name; hence the poet is popularly known as Mac-vaistir-Alaister, or Alexander the parson's son. The precise date of his birth is unknown, but he seems to have been born about the first decade of the last century. He was employed as a catechist by the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, under whose auspices he afterwards published a vocabulary, for the use of Gaelic schools. This work, which was the first of the kind in the language, was published at Edinburgh in 1741. Macdonald was subsequently elected schoolmaster of his native parish of Ardnamurchan, and was ordained an elder in the parish church. But the most eventful part of his life was yet to come. On the tidings of the landing of Prince Charles Edward, he awoke his muse to excite a rising, buckled on his broadsword, and, to complete his duty to his Prince, apostatised to the Catholic religion. In the army of the Prince he bore an officer's commission. At the close of the Rebellion, he at first sought shelter in Borodale and Arisaig; he afterwards proceeded to Edinburgh, with the view of teaching children in the Jacobite connexion. The latter course was attended with this advantage; it enabled him by subscription to print a volume of Gaelic poetry, which contains all his best productions. Returning to his native district, he attempted farming without success, and ultimately he became dependent on the liberality of his relations. He died sometime subsequent to the middle of the century.
Macdonald was author of a large quantity of poetry, embracing the descriptive, in which his reading made him largely a borrower; the lyrical in which he excelled; the satirical, in which he was personal and licentious; and the Jacobitical, in which he issued forth treason of the most pestilential character. He has disfigured his verses by incessant appeals to the Muses, and repeated references to the heathen mythology; but his melody is in the Gaelic tongue wholly unsurpassed.