The Reverend Allan MacDonald (Scottish Gaelic: Maighstir Ailein, An t-Athair Ailean Dòmhnallach) (25 October 1859, Fort William – 8 October 1905, Eriskay) was a Scottish Catholic priest and activist during the later phases of the Highland Clearances. He was a religious and secular poet in Scottish Gaelic and a respected folklorist and collector from the oral tradition in the Highlands and Islands.
Born into a middle class family he was raised to only speak English by his parents.Roger Hutchinson (2010), Father Allan: The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 3-18. While studying for the priesthood, MacDonald chose to also begin studying Gaelic, his ancestral heritage language, and was later to become both a fluent speaker and writer.Roger Hutchinson (2010), Father Allan: The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 41-66. After ordination MacDonald was assigned to the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles during the final decade of the Highland Clearances.Roger Hutchinson (2010), Father Allan: The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 67-73. This was during the height of the Highland Land League agitation and MacDonald became inspired by the Irish Land War. Under orders from his bishop, a leading activist for tenant's rights, reasonable rents, security of tenure, free elections, and against religious discrimination that were keeping his parishioners in the Outer Hebrides critically impoverished.Roger Hutchinson (2010), Father Allan: The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 74-188.
In 1889, MacDonald published a Catholic hymnal of traditional hymns in Gaelic, which is still in use.John Lorne Campbell, The Sources of the Gaelic Hymnal, 1893, The Innes Review, December 1956 Vol. VII, No. 2, pp. 101-111. He died of pneumonia, pleurisy, and influenza in Eriskay at the age of only 45.Roger Hutchinson (2010), Father Allan: The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 189-191.Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press, Glasgow. Page 9. Celticist Ronald Black wrote that had MacDonald, a pioneer of symbolist and modernist poetry in Gaelic, not died prematurely, "the map of Gaelic literature in the twentieth century might have looked very different."Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Pages 47.
Early life
Allan's father, John MacDonald () (1821–1873), was born into a family of carters near Grantown-on-Spey and was employed for many years by the General Post Office as a heavily armed guard, whose orders were to defend the "Marquess of Breadalbane" Royal Mail Coach from highwaymen along the route between Fort William, Glencoe, Blackmount, and Glasgow.Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Page 4.Roger Hutchinson (2010), Father Allan: The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 5. After marrying Margaret MacPherson, a Strathspey shepherd's daughter, in Fort William in 1852, John MacDonald saved enough money to buy an inn at 179 High Street in the town.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 3–9. Allan was the third surviving child of his parents and was born in an upper room of his father's inn on 25 October 1859. He was named after his recently deceased paternal grandfather, Allan MacDonald () (1782–1859).Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 9. MacDonald later recalled how, during his early life, both the town of Fort William and the surrounding countryside had undergone a language shift from Gaelic to Highland English. He accordingly described the Fort William of his childhood as, "half Lowland and half Highland."Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 13. According to Roger Hutchinson, MacDonald's later statements about the complete Anglicisation of Fort William during his childhood were an exaggeration. Census records from the era reveal that 70% of Fort William's population reported the ability to speak both the English and Gaelic languages. However, English was the language of commerce and was seen as a means of future advancement so John and Margaret MacDonald, being innkeepers, had made a choice to teach only English to their children.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 13-18.
MacDonald's lifelong fascination with the Scottish folklore of the Highlands and Islands, an interest his father also shared, began as a child in Fort William. He believed as a child in local stories about the each-uisge, or "water horse", of nearby Loch Linnhe, whose back could magically expand in order to accommodate all the children who wished to ride him. But then, the water-horse would gallop off into the nearest lake to drown and eat the children on his back. MacDonald later recalled, "Many's the horse I wouldn't get on as a child for fear it would be the each-uisge."Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Pages 5–6.Amy Murray (1920), Father Allan's Island, Pages 210-211. MacDonald's lifelong passion for the Scottish traditional music played upon the Great Highland bagpipe also dates from his childhood in Fort William. He told his friend Frederick Rea "that he was born at the foot of Ben Nevis so his love of the traditional pipes was not to be wondered at. I noted how his eyes lighted up at the music of a strathspey, and, at a pibroch, his rugged, weather-beaten countenance became suffused with colour and he drew himself to his full six feet height at its warlike strains."Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 108.
Seminary studies Blairs College On 15 August 1871, 12-year old Allan MacDonald entered the minor seminary at Blairs College in Aberdeen.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 19–42. At the time he arrived, he spoke only English.Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Page 7. Both living conditions and discipline were very spartan at Blairs College during the 1870s. So much so, that MacDonald often said in later years that, after what he had experienced at Blairs College, all the hardships of being a priest in the Outer Hebrides looked luxurious by comparison.Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Page 69.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 44. MacDonald would maintain, "a cordial dislike", of the Blairs College rector, Peter Joseph Grant, for the remainder of his life. His other instructors included James A. Smith, the future Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. The main linguistic focus was upon the study of Ecclesiastical Latin. Seminarians who wished to also learn Gaelic, were given Ewen MacEachen's Gaelic dictionary and his literary translation of Thomas a Kempis's Imitatio Christi as textbooks. They were then encouraged to pursue their study of Gaelic on their own time.Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Page, 63–64, 69. Other languages that were taught included French, Spanish, and Italian, which were intended to prepare the seminarians at Blairs for further studies at the Scots Colleges in Paris, Douai, Rome, and Valladolid. Geography was also taught using a globe, as were, "philosophy in all its branches", and theology.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 44–45.
Both of MacDonald's parents died during his studies at Blairs College. Iain Ailein Òg died at his Fort William hotel of tuberculosis and chronic gastritis on 25 March 1873. He was only 58 years old.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 47–48. His widow, 45-year old Margaret MacPherson MacDonald, also died at Fort William of pulmonary congestion on 20 December 1875.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 48–49. The surviving MacDonald siblings immediately left home and dispersed. 12-year old Elizabeth "Lizzie" MacDonald was taken in by her maternal great-uncle Alexander MacIntosh, who had similarly taken in her fatherless mother three decades earlier. After completing school in Fort William, Elizabeth MacDonald joined her older sister Charlotte MacDonald as a domestic servant in Glasgow. Their teenaged brother Ronald MacDonald moved to Glenshiel in Lochalsh, where he began working as a hired farm hand.
Valladolid In September 1876, MacDonald was advised by his professors to continue his training at the Royal Scots College in Madrid. He began the journey to Spain shortly before his seventeenth birthdayRoger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 49. and arrived at Valladolid after a railway journey via Paris and Bordeaux.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 51. According to John Lorne Campbell, "At Valladolid there were several Highland students and they used to produce a holograph Gaelic magazine, of which at least one copy has been preserved. MacDonald contributed to this, apparently under several pseudonyms, for his handwriting appears frequently in the surviving copy."Roger Hutchinsonname="Ronald (2010), Black The2002 LifePage and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Pages 53–54.
In March 1882, a 22-year old MacDonald returned to Scotland after five years in Spain.Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 66. MacDonald would always look back with fondness on his years of seminary studies in Spain and composed a Gaelic poem Rannan do Mgr Mac an Tòisich ("Verses to Fr John MacIntosh of Bornish") on his time there.Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Page 249.Edited by Ronald Black (2002), Eilein na h-Òige: The Poems of Fr. Allan MacDonald, Mungo Press. Page 248.
Ordination Following his return, MacDonald's examiners reported to Archbishop Charles Eyre that they were, "well satisfied, not only with his theoretical knowledge, but also with the prudence and good sense with which he applies this knowledge to particular cases." Allan MacDonald was, in the words of rector David MacDonald, "without any canonical impediment, except want of age."Roger Hutchinson (2010), The Life and Legacy of a Hebridean Priest, Birlinn Limited. Page 67. Allan MacDonald was accordingly ordained to the priesthood at St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow by Archbishop Eyre on 9 July 1882.
Career Priestly ministry in Oban