Fògradh, Fàisneachd, Filidheachd

Duncan B Blair, John Alick MacPherson

• Publisher: Cape Breton University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781927492437
• eBook ISBN: 9781927492451
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

Rev. Duncan B. Blair (1815-1893) was an excellent linguist, a good poet and a devout man. "As an accurate writer of Gaelic he had no superior, " espoused A. Maclean Sinclair. Blair composed sacred and secular poems, laments and songs and prose, many of which were published in Mac-Talla, the famous Gaelic newspaper published in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Among his contributions to Mac-Talla were a series of essays on the Highland Clearances. Blair's poems have been studied and presented elsewhere over the years, but less is known about his prose. Now, transcribed in the original Gaelic with English translations, Fògradh, Fàisneachd, Filidheachd / Parting, Prophecy, Poetry includes Blair's articles about the Clearances, an account of a 16th-century seer who some say foretold of the Clearances, essays about Blair's travels around the Maritimes and Ontario and a number of his poems, all as published in Mac-Talla.

POETRY

(30 October 1903)

Resurrection of the Highlands

“The Gaels will rise again,

They will not be in torment anymore,”

Bereft under the feet of mercenaries,

As weak powerless wretches;

People will traverse the hills,

And the straths of many glens;

Women and children will be seen

Revelling in dance and music.

The sheep and deer will flee

When they hear the shouts of the people,

They will run and not look behind them

As they all take flight;

The big shepherds of the flocks

Will gape in confusion;

And the lazy inept foresters

Will leap quickly over the stacks.

The land is long empty

With no one to cultivate it;

The people were driven away

And banished overseas;

White hornless sheep

Are on the straths and hills,

And lambs are romping and jumping

On the knoll where children were happy.

Where the gospel of grace

Was sung to us in fellowship,

As people gathered at prayer-time

Together on the Sabbath,

You can only hear the hollering of deer

As they bellow on every slope and hill,

And the barking of dogs on the moor

Where psalms used to be sung.

The wheels of providence will go round,

The top end will be down,

And the bottom side will be raised

By the eternal justice of the Trinity.

The old sites will be rebuilt,

The places abandoned long ago,

Villages deserted and empty

That are now full of heather and birds.

Friends of the Gaels are happy

Wherever they might be,

To seek an opportunity for the people

North and south without delay,

Hoping they will be given back

The land they themselves lost

When they were thanklessly evicted

With cruelty and bitter oppression.

All the children of the Gaels

Will gather shoulder to shoulder,

As happened in days of yore

When brave Calgacus and the heroes

Fought the fierce Agricola

And the might of the Roman army

In a bloody and bitter conflict

On the slopes of Mon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Notice
• CLÀR-INNSE/CONTENTS
• FOREWORD
• RO-RÀDH
• PARTING: EXPULSION OF THE GAELS
• FÒGRADH NAN GÀIDHEAL
• OTHER ARTICLES
• POETRY
• PHOTO SECTION
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR