Matheson Collection > Modern Gaelic bards

NEIL MACLEOD. 95
NEIL MACLEOD.
THE SKYE BARD.
BORN 1843.
THE chief representative Gaelic bard of to-day is
Neil MacLeod, who was born in Glendale, Isle of
Skye, in 1843. He was early distinguished for
poetic talent, and so was his father, for he is a son
of Donald MacLeod, popularly known as "Am Bard
Sgitheanach," who published a collection of Gaelic
poetry in 1811, when only twenty years of age.
Eviction and clearance had already devastated many
parts of the Highlands, but the ruthless methods of the
depopulator had not yet been applied to Neil MacLeod's
native parish, so in " An Gleann 's an robh mi og " he
gives us a pleasing picture of the social life in a
Highland glen in his happy boyhood days ; but there is
another picture, and with pathos, feeling, and beauty of
expression and sentiment the bard sings of " the change
'twixt now and then," and in haunting strains laments
the desolated land and banished people.
Though books were few in the Highlands in the fifties
and sixties of the nineteenth century, young MacLeod
was the happy possessor of a copy of Mackenzie's
" Beauties of Gaelic Poetry," which became his
auspicious and inseparable friend, and kindled within
him the desire, as Burns said, " to sing a sang at least."
Round a glowing peat fire. Highland villagers pass
the long winter evenings relating and listening to the
legendary lore and traditions of their country. In such
meetings the future bard took great delight, and his
memory became a storehouse of quaint lore and
Ossianic poetry.
" Beyond the Parish School," writes Professor Magnus