John MacRae

John Macrae the Gaelic poet, was very celebrated and his songs are still well known in Kintail and Lochalsh. These songs are of very high poetical merit, and this together with the strong and effective local colouring they possessed, helps to account for the deep and lasting impression which the poet made on his countrymen, and the prominent place which his name occupies among the traditions of Kintail. He decided to go to America and on the day of his departure many of his friends accompanied him to the Heights of Auchtertyre in Lochalsh and the spot is still pointed out where he took farewell of them. The War of Independence broke out in America and he cast in his lot with the loyalists, whose cause soon became the losing one, and after sharing in the hardships and defeats of the British Armies, he at last perished a fugitive among the Primeval Kintail, in which he expresses with much beauty and pathos the yearning of his soul to return to the scenes and the friends of happier days.

John Macrae, the famous Gaelic poet. The poems deal chiefly with the pursuits and delights of such a country life as he himself led among his native flens and mountains, many of which he has invested with associations which must continue classic and sacred to his countrymen so long as any of them are left in Kintail to speak the Gaelic tongue. He died in the American War of Independence.