Donald Lamont: his Life and Work

Thousands of pages of undiscovered Gaelic prose – unread for many years, but now brought to light by the National Library of Scotland. The volumes in question are the Gaelic Supplement to the Church of Scotland magazine Life and Work, and they come from the collection of the Rev. Donald Lamont (1874–1958), who edited the Supplement between 1907 and his retiral in 1950. As Lamont states in the handwritten introduction to the first volume, any unsigned contribution was composed by himself.
 
Donald Lamont was a native of the island of Tiree. Like many able young Highlanders at the time, he was educated at Rainings School, Inverness, before going to the University of Edinburgh. Ordained minister in Glen Urquhart in 1902, he transferred to Blair Atholl in 1908, the parish where he remained, with the exception of a spell as a forces chaplain in World War I (he served at Gallipoli in 1915–16), until he retired from the pulpit in 1946. The Prose Writings of Donald Lamont, full of pithy, lively writings by a master of the Gaelic essay, was published as a volume for the Scottish Gaelic Text Society in 1960. His fellow Tirisdeach Professor Donald Meek sums up Lamont’s work as follows:
 
Under Lamont’s ceaselessly provocative pen, the Gaelic Supplement became the main vehicle for thematic and stylistic experimentation in Gaelic; it carried sermons, essays and short stories. Lamont had a particularly lively imagination, and was not afraid to create ‘factional’ characters and scenarios, and to use these to carry the message he wanted to communicate. He was obviously aware, to a remarkable degree, of the opportunity he had, as a clerical writer, to contribute constructively to the well-being of the Gaelic language. His concept of a Gaelic Supplement was not one that ran in the rails of ecclesiastical convention, restricted by doctrinal rigidity and enslavement to purely homiletic styles.

Here is a list of the Gaelic Supplements online:

 

1907–1911

1912–1918

1919–1924

1924–1927

1928–1931

1932–1935

1936–1940

1940–1947

1948–1950

 

Donald Lamont graduated M.A. from Edinburgh in 1898. Among his fellow classmates was none other than Alexander Carmichael’s daughter Ella (1870–1928). A small notebook, numbered CW22, is, according to the cataloguer the Rev. John Mackechnie, in Lamont’s hand. It contains a poem to Ella, about whom Donald Lamont was to write so movingly in Carmina Gadelica iii, xxi–xxiv, beginning:

 

Ella Carmichael was my friend for more than thirty years, my first sight of her being in the Quadrangle of Edinburgh University, when she came to attend Professor Mackinnon's Celtic class, and my last when I went to see her a few days before her death ; and in all these years she was one of the half-dozen friends that I liked best in the world. She was one of those people with whom it is easy to keep one's friendship in good repair, even though one does not see them often. There were fairly long periods of time within these thirty years when I had but few opportunities of meeting her, but that did not matter — the door of her heart and home always remained unlatched, and one could enter without formality or apology and take up the threads of intimate talk where they had been dropped years before.

 

She seemed to me to have changed less between young womanhood and middle life than any other woman I have known, so that one's first impression of her never had to be revised even in small details. This applies even to her physical appearance, as well as to her mind and character. In the middle 'nineties Ella Carmichael was a very beautiful young woman, singularly gracious and dignified, with an air of distinction and charm. …

 

For our Gaelic readers, we give a transcription of the poem’s contents below

 

To

Ella C. Carmichael

this poem

is

respectfully dedicated.

 

/

 

Och! och! ’s truagh mar tha mi

’S mi smuainteachadh ort

’S mo cheann ann an tuaindeal

’S mo chridhe cho goirt.

 

O na faighinn mo dhurachd

’S mi shiubhladh air falbh

’S cha bhithinn na ’b’fhaide

Ri obair cho searbh.

 

’S ged tha mi n’am shuidhe

Ann an cuideachd cho math

Far bheil iorghuill is cabhag

Am meag fhear agus bhan

 

/

 

Tha duin’ ionnsuichte seolta

A comhpairteachadh sgoil

Ach ’s mor m’fheagal gu bheil ‘Seoras’

Le mor fhoghlum air bhoil’

 

Ged tha mise ’s an ait’ so

Ann an cruth ’s ann an dòigh

Tha mo smuaintean ’is m’aire

A ghnàth air an oigh

 

Tha i maisach ’is sgiamhach

Agus cùinn [ciùin] anns gach dòigh

Ion-ghradhach ’is coimhneil

Neo-dhàn’ agus còir

 

/

 

B’e mo dhurachd bhith dluth dhi

Ri comhradh ’s ri ceòl

’S cha ’n iarrainn a fàgail

Fhad sa bhitheas mi beo

 

Ach tha n’uine dol seachad

Le cabhag ro-dhian

’S ann a seachduin no dha

Cha’n fhaic mis’ a fiamh

 

Se ni tha g’am fhagail

Cho bronach ’s cho truagh

Bhi caithibh na h-ùine

Cho fada so uait

 

/

 

O nach bochd nu[a]ir tha ’n samhradh

A nis a tighinn cho dlùth

’S an geamhradh dubh dorcha

A tionndadh a chùl

 

Gu feum mis’ mar an ceudna

Bhi fagail Dhunèdin

’S dol air imrich leam fhein as

Gu tìr a tha céin

 

Cha’n e bhith fagail Dhunèdin

Le mhaise ’s le sgèimh

A tha cho cràiteach ’s cho duilich

O ’s fhada ma ’s e

 

/

 

Ach tha ’n tìm gu bhith seachad

’Is feumaidh mi sgur

Bho’n tha fhios agad fhein air

Mo thinneas gu túr

 

Gach sonas ’is solas

Gu robh gu brath na do sheilbh

’S gu ma fada fada beo thu

Ann a slaint’ agus foirm

 

Leig leam so a ràdh ruit

Gu càirdeil ’s gu fior

Gu bheil agamsa gràdh dhuit

A tha domhain agus sior

 

/

 

Slàn-leat ma tha ’n drasda

’S gun deanadh gràdh agus seirc

Thusa leantainn a’n comhnuidh

‘Gach la chi ’s nach fhaic’

 

Feumaidh gur e Seòras MacEanruig no George Henderson (1866–1912) a th’ ann an ‘Seòras’. Thoiribh an aire mar a bha an Laomainneach ag obair mar Examiner ann an Cànanan agus Litreachas Ceilteach ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann eadar 1903 agus 1906.

 

Sources:

Donald Meek, ‘The Gaelic literature of Argyll’, Association for Scottish Literary Studies

Donald Lamont about Alexander Carmichael, here and here.

 

Image:

Eaglais Sgìre Bhlàr Athall/Blair Atholl Parish Church

Portrait of Ella Carmichael

In 1974, the Department of Celtic at the University of Edinburgh was presented with a portrait of Alexander Carmichael’s only daughter, Elizabeth (Ella) Catherine (1870–1928), by Michael Carmichael, MRCVS, of Tigh-a-Bhet, Fort William, nephew of Ella and a grandson of Alexander Carmichael. Some years ago, Professor William Gillies, holder of the Chair of Celtic at the University of Edinburgh, wrote a short piece about her portrait. We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Gillies for his permission to reprint in part what he wrote about the portrait that now hangs in the same room as that of her father’s portrait by William Skeoch Cumming (mentioned in a previous blog) in the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies.

Seated towards the left at a desk, the sitter turns to face the onlooker with one hand on the back of her chair, the other resting on the desk and holding a scroll.  She wears a long evening gown and necklace of green stones. There is a clock, candle and part of a picture visible in the background. The artist creates the impression of an intense and artistic personality.

Ella Watson (born Elizabeth Catherine Carmichael) was a leading light in Highland and Celtic circles in Edinburgh from her student days in the 1890s until her death in 1928. She was, moreover, one of the stalwart ladies of Gaelic scholarship – both directly, through her personal contributions to the discipline, and indirectly, as the daughter and amanuensis of the Gaelic folklore collector Alexander Carmichael, as the wife of William J. Watson, Professor of Celtic at Edinburgh, and as the mother of James Carmichael Watson, who succeeded his father in the Chair of Celtic.

Born in her father’s native Lismore, she spent most of her early childhood in the Uists, where he was an Inland Revenue Officer. Although she received her secondary schooling in Edinburgh, she never lost her sense of belonging to the Highlands, nor her facility in speaking Gaelic. In 1892 she started at the University, and distinguished herself in Professor Mackinnon’s Celtic classes between then and 1895. Her involvement in promoting Gaelic causes began in 1894, when she helped to found the Celtic Union. She also showed crusading zeal in another area: finding herself debarred as a woman from joining the University Celtic Society, she promptly founded the Women Students’ Celtic Society, which flourished until the mores of a later age enabled an honourable merger to take place.

Despite her more sociable commitments, she did not neglect her Gaelic literary studies. After helping her father transcribe and edit the material for his Carmina Gadelica (published in 1900) she was a prime mover in the scheme to launch the Celtic Review, a scholarly journal which she then edited from 1904 to 1916, in a highly creditable way.

In 1906 her marriage necessitated a move to Inverness, where Watson was Rector of the Royal Academy; but they returned to Edinburgh three years later on his appointment as Rector of the Royal High School, a post he filled until his translation to the Chair of Celtic in 1914. The Watsons’ home (at first in Spence Street, and latterly in Merchiston Avenue) became a hospitable resort for all with Highland or Celtic connections. Even so, Mrs Watson found time to continue with her scholarship and good works. After her father’s death in 1912 she worked for many years on a revised edition of Carmina Gadelica, which appeared, shortly after her death, in 1928.

Of her two sons, the elder died in childhood, but the younger, James, fulfilled his mother’s deepest hopes, carrying all before him academically, and matching her enthusiasm for Gaelic language and literature. Her death, after a period of illness, came at a relatively young age; it deprived her of the joy of seeing her son follow in his father’s footsteps, though it also spared her the tragedy of his premature death on war service in 1942.

A Jack Yeats crayon sketch of Ella Carmichael, executed in 1902, and reproduced as frontispiece to Carmina Gadelica, Volume III, emphasizes her slightly intense, girlish beauty. The University portrait is of a slightly later date. The work of C. H. Mackie, it conveys something of the serenity, idealism and loving kindness which stand out in the reminiscences of all those who knew her.

Reference:

Gillies, William, ‘Elizabeth (Ella) Catherine Carmichael Watson (c. 1871–1928)’, in John H. Burnett et al. (eds.), The University Portraits. Second Series (Edinburgh: Eyre Spottiswoode, 1986), pp. 204–6.

Image: Ella Carmichael (oil on canvas) by Charles Hodge Mackie, RSA, RSW. (1862–1920). Signed 'Mackie' bottom right corner. 48" x 38". Full length. University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection.