Am Bratach No. 195
January 2008
editor@bratach.co.uk

Rob Donn descendant gives talk at Farr ceilidh

American Ellen Beard, a former labour lawyer turned student of Gaelic at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, who has the distinction of been descended from the Mackay bard, Rob Donn (1714-1778), spoke of his poetry and of her family connection to the illustrious poet at a special ceilidh organised by George Gunn, writer-in-residence at Strathnaver Museum, Elliot Rudie and their associates at the museum. It was held in the Farr Bay Inn, Bettyhill, just over a month ago. Song and poetry illustrations were given by fellow student, Lena MacLean, an Australian now living on Harris.

Ms Beard said that her great-grandmother, Barbara Murray, was born in 1851 on a croft in Sangobeg, in Durness, one of eight children in a Gaelic-speaking family. “As I understand it, her father, Donald Murray, was descended from Rob Donn’s daughter, Christine — who married a man named Hugh Murray,” she explained.

“Last year I did some research on the Clearances in Durness parish and I can’t imagine how anybody could live on one of those little crofts that were nothing but stones which had to support a family of ten. So, three or four of the sisters left. First they went to Glasgow to go into domestic service and then they emigrated to Chicago in the 1880s to find work. My great-grandmother was the only one who ever married, so when I go back to Durness now I can see the house where they lived and I can visit the graveyard at Balnakeil, but there are no Murrays living there any more.

“My grandfather and my great aunt both lived in Durness around the turn the twentieth century with their grandparents...and he told my mother stories about playing in Smoo Cave and gathering eggs on the cliffs.” Her great-aunt went back in the 1930s to take care of the old people, because she was their closest relation, even though she lived in Chicago. “So the last relative I had in Durness died in 1943. But my mother and I had been back and we met people there in the 1970s and also in the 1990s that knew some of my relatives, so I really felt that I had a connection there and I still feel it.
“Why is Rob Donn important to us today?” she asked.

“According to Ian Grimble he created the last and most complete picture of ancient Gaelic society that survived in Scotland, before the glens were depopulated by emigration and the Clearances.

“Although Rob Donn never learned to read or write he left over two hundred poems published in three collections — over three times as many poems have survived than the work of any other ancient Gaelic poet.

“His poems were still in the oral tradition in this area, at least in Durness when the School of Scottish Studies were travelling around.

“According to Ian Grimble he also composed more of his own original airs than any other eighteenth century poet, certainly more than Robert Burns, who apparently only composed one.”