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.