by Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale, Skye
For many generations after the Reformation sacred poetry did not figure among the poems of the Highlands of Scotland. There were occasionally pieces of indifferent merit but none fit to captivate the attention of any generation to such an extent as to be handed down from one generation to another. From this we may conclude that there were few religious poets or that the Highlanders, almost as a whole, being under the power of a dead and formal religion, had no appetite for anything that savoured of vital religion. We are told that “even the verse-producing Bishop Carswell, who represented the earliest fruits of the Reformation there, has not left among his quaint effusions one sacred song.” About the year 1758 there was published in Glasgow the first religious poem of real merit, known as David MacKellar’s hymn. Of its author little is known except that he belonged to Glendaruel in Argyllshire. MacKellar’s poem was the precursor of many religious poems from many parts of the Highlands.
The best known of the religious poets who followed MacKellar was Dugald Buchanan, who was born at Ardoch, Strathyre, Perthshire, in 1716. In his Diary he tells us that his parents were God-fearing, especially his mother, who did all she could to bring him up in the fear of the Lord. We really have no sympathy with those who maintain that her system of teaching was not the best adapted to the needs of her child, on the grounds that it laid too much stress on what they are pleased to call “the more gloomy doctrines”, and made what would have been otherwise a happy childhood and youth, the saddest apology for such. The truth is that the Holy Spirit began to strive with him early, and he saw the holiness of that God with whom he had to do, and felt his natural corruption rising against that strictness of life, in thought, word, and action, which that holiness required, and which he could not render. His experiences were a long drawn-out period of endeavouring to be justified by the works of the law, by which no flesh can be justified in the sight of God, and when this failed it brought him to the verge of despair, so that for periods he gave up religion altogether. The work was slow in the case of Buchanan, but the Spirit which began the good work brought it forward to the day of Jesus Christ. But we are anticipating.
The subject of our sketch suffered a great loss in having his mother removed by death when he was only six years of age, for in that severe providence he lost the guardian of his most tender years. His father, who was the tenant of the Mill and also farmed Ardoch, and who was perhaps in easier circumstances than his neighbours, designed to give his son the best education that could be procured, and so sent him to the local school of the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. The profit which he derived in this school is demonstrated by the fact that at the age of twelve years he was engaged as tutor in a neighbouring family. It is sad to say that this family were notoriously wicked, with the exception of the mistress of the house, and that their young tutor was soon the ring-leader in all their forms of wickedness. For five months he remained in this house, growing more notorious in sin, and leading others in the way of sin, till he returned to his father’s house, where he had to be more restrained in his language, especially in his father’s presence. Here he had a narrow escape from drowning which, at the time, seemed to have no beneficial effect on him.
After this he went to Stirling, where he remained for two years, ever increasing in sin, and always experiencing much of the Lord’s merciful forbearance and sparing mercy. From Stirling he went to Edinburgh, where his companions were the wild and dissolute youth of the city, of his own age, who found in him a leader in their vicious ways. At last his father insisted that he should make choice of a trade, and, on the advice of friends, he became apprenticed to a house carpenter in Kippen. At Kippen he had companions of a different kind from those he had in Stirling and Edinburgh. The church being near, he attended regularly, and Mr Potter, the minister at that time, seemed to be truly preaching the Gospel. After two years he quarrelled with his master, left his service, and came to Dumbarton, where he engaged with another. Here he entered into a life of dissipation for a considerable time but could not get rid of the fact that there is a God, and he had a painful knowledge of the existence of his own conscience. Though being brought to the verge of despair he, for considerable periods, neglected the means of grace as means that were of no use to him, for he found nothing in them but condemnation. However, he got a measure of relief in May, 1742, in the twenty-sixth year of his age.
When he obtained this relief he makes a few reflections on his exercises during the previous fourteen years in which he adores the Lord’s goodness and long-suffering, is humbled for his own rebellion and unworthiness, and, from his own experience, brings forward the many false rests to which awakened sinners betake themselves, emphasizing the utter uselessness of these rests, and the fact that neither good education, good example, reproofs, warnings, nor any thing else but the almighty power of God can draw the heart to God. He says, “I used many means and self-endeavours to effect this but all was in vain, till the quickening Spirit of God came and wrought in me effectually.” On the 2nd January, 1743, which he calls “the Sabbath on which the Lord opened my eyes to see the Mediator in all His offices,” he called for his former unbelief, to see if it could object anything against this complete Saviour, but at this time unbelief durst not appear.
After this he went on sorrowing and rejoicing until after the Rebellion of 1745, when he was in an unexpected manner plunged into the miry clay. In that year the greater part of his relations were involved in the Rebellion, and, although the subject of our sketch was not among them, yet some of his relations, who were innocent, were put to death on the evidence of false witnesses. This heartily grieved him, and he could not forgive the perpetrators of these dastardly deeds, but harboured a spirit of revenge. Thus he lost the light of God’s gracious countenance and was plunged in darkness. It was years afterwards that he again basked in the light of God’s gracious countenance. This shows the grave danger of harbouring thoughts of revenge against any of our fellow-creatures, for such thoughts are sinful and will be followed by dire consequences. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” (Psalm 66: 18.) This continued with Dugald Buchanan till 1750 when his bonds were loosed under a sermon on 2 Cor. 4: 8, in which he attained to a fuller assurance of being in Christ. Shortly afterwards he turned to teaching, and travelled in Strathyre, the Braes of Balquidder, and Lochearnhead. He proved a successful teacher, and, through the influence of the manager of the confiscated estates, he was settled as a schoolmaster in Drumcastle, near Kinloch Rannoch, where, along with his work as a teacher, he addressed himself to the religious needs of the people, with the result that many were called effectually out of a state of nature into a state of grace, and the whole of the district, which had been notorious for its lawlessness, became the abode of a law-abiding and peaceful people. It is said of Buchanan that he was “elegant in address, evangelical in doctrine, and full of zeal for the salvation of souls.” Such were the abilities and usefulness of Buchanan that the Presbytery of Dunkeld were approached to license him as a preacher and pastor in Rannoch, an office for which he was well qualified, more so than some members of the Presbytery to which the approach was made; but owing to technical difficulties, real or imaginary, the proposal fell through.
For the last eighteen years of his life he left no written account of his life, but carried out his duties faithfully as a teacher and preacher. One notable event of this period of his life was the seeing through the press of the first edition of the Gaelic New Testament, translated by the Rev. James Stewart of Killin in 1767. It was at this time also that he published, for the first time, his own Gaelic spiritual poems. He continued his useful and pious labours till he was struck down by a fever, and entered into the rest that remains for the people of God on 2nd June, 1768, in the fifty-second year of his age. A monument has been erected to his memory, but his spiritual poems are his real and lasting monument.
When we come to assess the value of his poems, the number of which are eight, it would seem that he was well accustomed to English poetry and other literature which he found suggestive in composing his own. The longest of these is ‘The Day of Judgment.’ In this poem his description of eternity is unsurpassed by any other poet:
“If I should count each glimmering star,
Each leaf and blade that ever grew,
All drops in ocean’s store that are,
And sands that ocean’s shore bestrew,
And if for each I counted so
A thousand years had passed away,
Eternity would be as though
It had begun but yesterday.”
In all his poems his aim was not to tickle the fancy of the thoughtless but to awaken the careless and the indifferent out of their thoughtlessness and spiritual sloth, and he succeeded well. His labours, through his poems, were greatly blessed to many, not only when they first appeared but throughout the world to many generations who came after him. Even at the beginning of the present century his name was a household word wherever there were Protestant Highlanders who understood the language in which his poems were originally written.
As to the popularity of the poems we may here quote the words of one well-qualified to judge:— “As a poet, Buchanan ranks in the highest class. Endowed with great power of imagination, and full of moral and religious enthusiasm, his poetry is at once fervid, lofty, and animated; and invariably calculated to promote the cause of religion and virtue. Those distinguishing qualities have rendered him the most popular poet in the language; and we may safely assert that his popularity will endure as long as the language in which he has written is understood.” It is of these poems that Dr Duff, the celebrated missionary to India, when writing late in life, says, “As a youth I remember hearing large portions of his two most celebrated poems, ‘The Skull’ and ‘The Day of Judgment’, often read and repeated by good people in the parish of Moulin. Some of the sentiments and even expressions have even now stuck to my memory.” These poems went through several editions and were well-known not only in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland but in foreign lands, in Australia, Nova Scotia, and among Highland colonies in Canada. In Sutherlandshire as well as in his native Perthshire they were read and recited, and thus the flame of fervent piety was kindled and kept burning. Professor Magnus MacLean says, “With the exception of the Bible and Shorter Catechism, no other book has exercised such a commanding influence over the religious imagination of the Highlanders or been printed so frequently as his Spiritual Songs. What the sublime conceptions of Milton and John Bunyan were to the devout thought of England those of the sacred bard of Rannoch have been to that of Gaelic Scotland. They have woven themselves into the warp and woof of Highland religion and coloured all its contents.” Literature of the Highlands, p. 114. With regard to the last sentence we might be inclined to substitute that evangelical religion had entered into the warp and woof of Dugald Buchanan’s soul, and thereby coloured all the contents of Highland religion. An excellent translation of Dugald Buchanan’s Poems into English, by Lachlan MacBean, appeared in 1919. It is not an easy matter to translate from one language to another, especially when poetry is involved, but the translator, in this case, has done his work well.