Poetic journeys across the land of Duncan Bàn
A NEW book grounds the poems of the Glen Orchy bard Duncan Bàn MacIntyre in Argyll’s Gaelic landscape.
Literature of the Gaelic Landscape, written by Edinburgh University’s former director of landscape architecture John Murray, ‘travels to the Breadalbane and Argyll of Duncan Bàn Macintyre, the Skye and Raasay of Sorley Maclean, and the Caithness and Sutherland of Neil M Gunn’.
‘For those who wish to brave the weather, the insects, the sheer drops, the morasses and the vast spaces, the book can be used as a field guide taking the same walks followed by the author,’ the publisher continues.
‘Through the eyes of Duncan Bàn Macintyre see Ben Dòbhrain and the journey of the deer to the holy spring, from the vantage point of Patrick’s stone. On Dùn Cana sit at the centre of the swirl of place-names in Sorley Maclean’s Hallaig. Journey around the north and east coasts of Caithness and Sutherland in the wake of the White Heather and the Seafoam, in the Silver Darlings.’
Duncan Bàn Macintyre (Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir), a contemporary of Robert Burns, was a leading Gaelic poet famed in his lifetime as Donnchadh Bàn nan Òrain or ‘Fair Duncan of the Songs’, whose granite monument dominates Glen Orchy and Loch Awe.
From his birthplace, Druimliart in Glen Orchy, Duncan Bàn could see the subject of his most famous song Praise of Ben Doran, Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain, grooved with its many dobharan or streams, the origin of the mountain’s name.
It is a song of high praise to a special place and the life it embraced, the author writes, giving an ‘extraordinary fertility of description’ of a deer hunt, 550 lines long organised in eight movements inspired by classical pipe music or ceòl mòr – great music.
The author relates a story where Duncan Bàn was asked by a man he met on a speaking tour in the north of Scotland: ‘Are you the man who made Beinn Dòbhrain?’ Donnchadh replied: ‘It is God who made her. I am the man who praised her.’
‘Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain was composed in the mid 18th century. When Donnchadh Bàn returned to the scene at the beginning of the 19th century, he found the place changed indeed, and was moved to compose his Cead Deireannach nam Beann – Final Farewell to the Bens.
‘His earthly paradise and its abundant natural life had vanished. All he had known had been replaced by sheep; literally in Gaelic, under sheep.
‘Tradition tells that Donncha composed his Last Farewell while sitting on a stone opposite the ruined chapel and graveyard at Annat. He was so agitated that the song had to be completed by his brother Malcolm.
‘Cead Deireannach nam Beann represents a turning point in Gaelic poetry and song. Poets in the 19th century ceased to be interested in the great landscapes of the 18th century. Narrower, personal and emotional sketches came into fashion owing to the social upheavals caused by the clearances. The notion of homesickness or cianalas developed by Macintyre in his farewell becomes widespread in Gaelic poetry.’
The book also places Duncan Bàn’s Song to a Gun Named Nic Coiseam (Òran do Ghunna dh’ an Ainm Nic Còiseim) which kept him company as a gamekeeper in Argyll, as well as his Song on a Hunting Fiasco (Òran Seachran Seilge) when a Spanish gun kept letting him down in Glen Lochay.
His Song to the Foxes (Òran nam Balgairean, literally Song of the Thieves) tells of a fine ewe he bought called Susie, who was a paragon of her kind providing the best wool, healthy lambs, plentiful milk and even fishing flies, until a fox killed her, forcing Duncan Bàn to go asking or ‘thigging’ for wool from his neighbours in Glen Etive. Local people still delight in quoting his Song of the Foxes:
‘My blessing with the foxes dwell
For that they hunt the sheep so well.
Ill fa’ the sheep, a greyfaced nation
That swept our hills with desolation.