Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair - Protestant Missioner

Protestant Missioner

In 1729 Alasdair was appointed to a school at Finnan Island as a teacher by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and was the catechist of the same parish under the Royal Bounty Committee of the Church of Scotland. His position required him to teach at various locations throughout Moidart.

In 1738 he worked at Kilchoan and next year he found himself at Coire a' Mhuilinn, Ardnamurchan, where he composed one of his most famous poems: Allt an t-Siucar (The Sugar Brook). In 1741 he published a Gaelic/English Vocabulary, a volume of 200 pages, which was the first Scottish Gaelic vocabulary ever to be published. According to John Lorne Campbell,

"His Galick and English Vocabulary was commissioned by the S.P.C.K. for use in their schools in furthering their policy of replacing Gaelic by English as the vernacular of the Highlands and Islands... No doubt the reading MacDonald did in preparing this translation, for which he was ultimately paid the princely sum of £10, helped to develop his powerful command of the resources of the Gaelic language."

Campbell also states,

"Considering what the (still unpublished) early minutes of the S.P.C.K. in Scotland reveal of the Anti-Catholic, Anti-Jacobite, and Anti-Gaelic policy and activities of that body, Alexander MacDonald's employment in its service as a schoolmaster from 1729 to 1745 must be considered as totally inconsistent with his natural loyalties as a member of the Clanranald branch of the MacDonalds; and one can only feel that in his young days something must have gone wrong with his career to account for this."

His whereabouts during the year of 1744 are unknown - though he is thought to have "deserted his post to help rally the Jacobite clans" - and saw his son Ranald acting as a substitute in his teaching duties. Early in 1745 he was summoned by the Royal Bounty Committee in Edinburgh who had heard that he was composing immodest poems in Gaelic. According to Campbell,

"MacDonald did not altogether satisfy the Society, who resolved on his dismissal in a minute dated 14 July 1745, he having in fact abandoned his school since the preceding Whitsuntide, never to return to it again."