Allan MacDonald

The Reverend Allan MacDonald (Scottish Gaelic Maighstir Ailein, An t-Athair Ailean Dòmhnallach) (25 October 1859, Fort William, Scotland – 8 October 1905, Eriskay) was a Scottish Roman Catholic priest during the Victorian era. During the later phases of the Highland Clearances, Fr. MacDonald was also an activist for the reform of the absolute power granted to Anglo-Scottish landlords to both rackrent and evict their tenants en masse and at will under Scots property law. Furthermore, Father Allan MacDonald was a radically innovative poet with a permanent place in the literary canon of Scottish Gaelic literature and a nationally respected folklorist and collector from the oral tradition in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Allan MacDonald was born in Fort William, Lochaber into a middle class family descended from Somerled, King Robert the Bruce, John of Islay, Lord of the Isles, and the first seven Chiefs of Clan MacDonald of Keppoch, while also being closely related, through their shared descent from the Keppoch Tacksmen of Bohuntine, to the iconic Nova Scotia Canadian Gaelic poet Allan The Ridge MacDonald. Despite this proud warrior ancestry, however, Allan MacDonald was raised to only speak English by his upwardly mobile parents. While studying for the priesthood in both Blairs College in Aberdeen and at the Royal Scots College in Spain, the already multilingual Allan MacDonald chose to also begin studying Scottish Gaelic, his ancestral heritage language, and was later to become both a fluent speaker and writer in the language. After returning to his homeland and being ordained to the priesthood in the immediate aftermath of repeal of the Penal Laws, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and the 1878 restoration of the Hierarchy for the formerly strictly illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland, Father Allan was assigned to the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles during the final decade of the Highland Clearances. This was during the height of the Highland Land League agitation and Fr.