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

Alexander Carmichael and his Civil List Pension

Recently we have unearthed a couple of letters dealing with the Civil List Pension that Alexander Carmichael was eventually rewarded in 1903 but which was backdated to the year before. Given that Carmichael had spent his whole professional working life as an excise man, as had been employed as a civil servant from 1856 until 1897, it would be something of a surprise if he had not been rewarded for his dedication. But Carmichael was certainly not a ‘career’ man and had turned down many opportunties for promotion in the excise in order that he could stay in his beloved Uist. Rather, his passion – if it may be so called – was in collecting oral traditions of various varieties and this is the very thing for which he (and his wife) received recognition and for which he got his just reward of a Civil List Pension to the tune of £50 per annum (or around about £3,000 in today’s money). The man behind the petition (which resulted in a memorandum being drafted) and later sent to 10 Downing Street was none other than Carmichael’s colleague and friend, the Rev. Dr. George Henderson (1866–1912), sometime a lecturer of Celtic at the University of Glasgow until his death. Why the government of the day had dragged its heels for a year remains unclear but its eventual reward would no doubt have been a cause of celebration in the Carmichael household.

Private 10 Downing Street
Whitehall, S.W.
22 March 1902.

Sir
In reply to your letter of the
17th March I am desired by Mr
Balfour to say that the Memorial
which Mr Jolly set him recommended
Mr Carmichael, not for the grant
of a Companionship of the Bath, an
honour the grant of which does not
rest with the First Lord of the Treasury,
but for a Civil List pension, and
that he will be happy to note
your testimony respecting Mr Car-
michael’s merits as a collector of
Celtic Folk-lore. I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant
F.S. Parry

The Revd. G. Henderson

Almost a year later the Rev. Dr. George Henderson, while staying at Eddrachilles Manse in Sutherland, received the news that he had probably been hoping for in the intervening months:

10 Downing Street

Whitehall, S.W.
26th March 1903.


Dear Sir
With reference to my
letter of the 15th Nov. last,
I am now desired by Mr.
Balfour to say that it
has given him great
satisfaction to be able
to recommnded to the King
that a Civil List Pension
at the rate of £50 pa.
should be awarded to
Mr. Alexander Carmichael
& his wife, for their
joint heirs & for the
life of the survivor,
and that His Majesty
has approved this recom-
-mendation.
The pension will date
from 1st April last.

I am,
Dear Sir,
Very truly yours.
M G Ramsay

The Revd
Dr. Henderson

References:

CW MS 510, Letter, dated 22 March 1902, from F. S. Parry to Rev. Dr. George Henderson.

CW MS 510, Letter, dated 26 March 1903, from M. G. Ramsay to Rev. Dr. George Henderson.

MacKinnon, Donald, ‘The Rev. George Henderson, M.A., Ph.D., B.Litt.’, The Celtic Review, vol. 8, no. 31 (Jan., 1913), pp. 245–49.

Image: Rev. Dr. George Henderson from The Celtic Review.