John Lorne Campbell FRSE LLD OBE () (1 October 1906 – 25 April 1996) was a Scottish historian, farmer, environmentalist and folklorist, and recognized scholar of both Celtic studies and Scottish Gaelic literature. Along with his wife, American ethnomusicologist Margaret Fay Shaw, Campbell helped lay the foundation for both the modern Scottish Gaelic Renaissance and heritage language revival using Scottish Gaelic-medium education.
Early life
According to his biographer, Ray Perman, the family of John Lorne Campbell claimed descent from the Clan Campbell tacksmen of Craignish (), through a son of disinherited 16th century heir Tearlach Mòr. According to Penman, however, there is no documentary proof that the son of Tearlach Mòr ever existed.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 5.
The family is known, however, to have risen from modest beginnings due to the successful career "in trade" and in the British Army of General Sir Archibald Campbell, by whom the family estate at Inverneill was originally purchased, during both the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence. Despite his own descent from the General's younger brother Duncan, John Lorne Campbell always referred to Sir Archibald in later years as his "honoured ancestor" and kept a portrait of him hanging inside Canna House. Sir Archibald's silver teapot was similarly kept permanently displayed on the mantlepiece of Canna House, next to the teapot of the General's wartime enemy, Vermont Patriot Colonel Ethan Allen, which Campbell's wife, American ethnomusicologist Margaret Fay Shaw, had inherited from her own family.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 1-5, 148-149.
Campbell was born in an Edinburgh nursing home on 1 October 1906,Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 10. but taken almost immediately to Inverneill House on the west shore of Loch Fyne, Argyll, Scotland. His father was Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Campbell, 8th of Inverneill (1880-1954) (called "Young Inverneill", to differentiate him from his father, who shared the same first name and military rank). His mother was Ethel Harriet Waterbury, a wealthy and cultured American heiress,Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 1. from Morristown, New Jersey, whom Lt.-Col. Campbell had married in 1905 to bolster the estate's "flagging finances".Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 9-10.
In contrast to his family's tenants, who were mainly Gaelic-speaking Catholics and Presbyterians who attended religious services in nearby Tayvallich, Campbell was raised in the Scottish Episcopal Church and given a staunchly Unionist upbringing within the Scottish landed gentry of Argyllshire. Campbell later recalled that his family, like the other High Tory landowners of Argyll, felt a deep sympathy for the Anglo-Irish landlords and accordingly watched with horror the events of the Land War, the Easter Rising of 1916, and the Irish War of Independence.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 1-23.
He was educated at Cargilfield School in Edinburgh and then Rugby in England.
As he was expected to inherit the family estate, Campbell's coming of age in 1927 was celebrated with a feast and formal dance inside the massive stone barn at Taynish House. Campbell's Aunt Olive was in charge of organizing the party and invited not only friends and relatives, but also the estate tenants, most of whom her nephew had never met before. The tenants had secretly taken up a collection and gave Campbell a gold pocket watch and a pair of cufflinks. In return, Campbell recited a few words of Gaelic that he had learned for the occasion, "Tha mi gle thoilichte a bhith comhla ribha nochd." ("I am very pleased to be with you tonight.") Campbell was deeply touched by the warm response these words received.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 18-19.
Scottish nationalist Beginning in 1926, Campbell's interest in learning his heritage language was piqued during a visit to the Highland Games in Oban, where he overheard a conversation in Gaelic between four men from the Hebrides. Campbell later recalled, "I had never heard Gaelic spoken like that and I said to myself, 'That's something I should have!'"Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 22.
Later that year, Campbell began attending St John's College, Oxford, studying Rural Economy with a minor in Celtic studies. The study of Rural Economy was intended to help Campbell learn how to profitably manage his future inheritance, but in 1928, Campbell learned to his horror and devastation that the Inverneill estate was being sold. Even though this was the only way to cover his father's considerable debts, both the Argyllshire gentry and Campbell himself would always view the sale as proof that his father lacked confidence in his ability to successfully manage the estate. Campbell would always treasure the gold watch and cuff links given by the Inverneill tenants at his coming of age party as a reminder of what might have been.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 30-31.
Campbell graduated in 1929 and receiving an MA in 1933. During this time, Prof John Fraser engendered a strong love of the Scottish Gaelic language and Scottish folklore. In the Oxford Gaelic Society, which Campbell also belonged to during the 1920s and early '30s, the 17th century Classical Gaelic literary language was taught by reading the Irish bardic poetry collection Foras Feasa ar Éirinn by Fr. Geoffrey Keating, while the Scottish Gaelic vernacular was taught using the prose collection Caraid nan Gàidheal by Rev. Dr. Norman MacLeod.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 22-23.
In 1933, Campbell published the groundbreaking book Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, consisting of 32 Gaelic song-poems that he had tracked down with Prof. Fraser's assistance in both the Bodleian Library and the British Museum. These were analyzed for political content and published with facing translations into English blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter. At the time, the real cultural, political, and religious reasons for the Jacobite rising of 1745 had been obscured by the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, who both depicted, "the Highlander as a romantic hero fighting for a lost cause."Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 23-26. In response, Campbell set out to give, "a voice to the voiceless - ordinary men who had never been allowed to speak for themselves".Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 26.
In the introduction, Campbell expressed very harsh criticism of what were then widely held stereotypes, such as that speakers of Celtic languages are overwhelmingly melancholy, ignorant, but noble savages, or that the Scottish Gàidhealtachd was completely isolated from the literature and culture of the outside world. In reality, Campbell explained, the Jacobite war poetry of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald, 1st of Arisaig) shows a very clear understanding of the political and dynastic issues at stake and abounds with learned allusions to both Classical mythology and the Christian Bible. Even the contemporary poetry of Duncan Ban MacIntyre, who was illiterate in his own language, is similarly filled with allusions to the Fenian Cycle of Celtic mythology, stories from which James Macpherson would later adapt into Ossian and use to capture the whole world's imagination.John Lorne Campbell (1979), Highland Songs of the Forty-Five, Arno Press. Pages xvii - xxxvi.
In a very public rejection of his own ancestors' support for the House of Hanover and their role in the defeat of the Jacobite Army, Campbell also wrote, "the Rising of 1745 was the natural reaction of the Jacobite clans and their sympathisers in the Highlands against what had been, since the coming of William of Orange in 1690, a calculated genocidal campaign against the religion of many and the language of all Highlanders." Despite these deliberately provoking words, the book received favorable reviews.
In the mid-1930s, Campbell began living on the Hebridean island of Barra with the author Compton Mackenzie. On Barra, which Ray Penman has since described as, "a classless society",Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 33. Campbell's childhood trauma over the lack of a caring father figure was eased by his close friendship with local seanchaidh John The Coddy MacPherson. During their conversations, whenever Campbell stumbled over his Gaelic phrases and retreated back into speaking English, MacPherson would hold up his hand and say, () ("Say that again, John.")Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 35.
Also while on Barra, Campbell and Mackenzie founded the Sea League to fight for the rights of local fisherman. They also organised a successful tax strike by all Barra motor car owners as a protest against the Government's failure to properly maintain the island's roads. The tax strike led to many similar campaigns of civil disobedience and direct action, which gained wide publicity and forced the Civil Service to make substantial changes that drastically improved the efficiency of both government and postal delivery in the Western Isles.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Pages 33-46.
Personal life
On an extremely wet and rainy evening in 1934, Campbell was introduced as "Young Inverneill" to his future wife, American ethnomusicologist Margaret Fay Shaw, by the manager of the Lochboisdale Hotel on South Uist.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 47. Campbell later recalled, "As so often happens, we didn't take to each other at first, but we got to know each other and we were working in the same little world."
Their courtship was slow and awkward, but in March 1935, Margaret Fay Shaw brought Campbell to meet her family in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania. She later recalled that he spent the whole visit chasing butterflies in the nearby forest or typing up articles in his room. The whole Fay Shaw family accordingly decided that Campbell must not be seriously interested in Margaret and no one was more shocked than she was when Campbell proposed marriage on the last day of his visit.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 48.
In June 1935, John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw were married by Rev. Calum MacLeod in the manse of John Knox Presbyterian Church in Glasgow. Neither family attended and the bride was given away by family friend Fred Moir. At the groom's insistence, the entire ceremony was conducted in the Scottish Gaelic language and the bride was relieved to learn that she had only to say, "Tha" ("Yes"). The Campbells spent their brief honeymoon in the Lofoten and Vesteraalen Islands of Norway before returning to Scotland.Ray Perman (2013), The Man Who Gave Away His Island: A Life of John Lorne Campbell, Birlinn Limited. Page 60.
Folklorist, naturalist, and Laird of Canna