Читать книгу A Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography - Various - Страница 80
ОглавлениеMacColl, Evan
MacColl, Evan, Kingston, Ontario, was born at Kenmore, Lochfyne-side, Scotland, on the 21st of September, 1808, where he is well-known as the “Mountain Minstrel.” He early developed a taste for poetry, and in 1837 contributed to the Glasgow Gaelic Magazine. The poet gives a very striking account of his first attempt at Gaelic verse. He took into his confidence a young friend, a capital singer, taught him a song without mentioning that he was the author of it, and got him to sing it the same evening at a neighbour’s house at Kenmore. It was received with great applause. From that hour Evan MacColl felt himself a bard and became supremely happy. Some time after he published a small volume of poems in Gaelic, and another in English, which were reviewed by Dr. McLeod, Hugh Miller, the celebrated geologist, and other British critics, in the highest terms of admiration. In 1831 Mr. MacColl’s father, with the rest of his family, emigrated to Canada, but Evan remained behind, and eight years afterwards he accepted a position in the Customs at Liverpool. In 1846 he published a second volume of poems which was even more highly appreciated than the first. Of this work, Dr. Norman McLeod wrote: “Evan MacColl’s poetry is the product of a mind impressed with the beauty and grandeur of the lovely scenes in which his infancy has been nursed. We have no hesitation in saying that this work is that of a man possessed of much poetic genius. Wild, indeed, and sometimes rough are his rhymes and epithets; yet there are thoughts so new and striking—images and comparisons so beautiful and original—feelings so warm and fresh—that stamp this Highland peasant as no ordinary man.” In 1850, in consequence of ill-health, he visited Canada, and while here received an appointment to the Customs at Kingston. He never solicited any favour from the Conservatives, and the overthrow of the Mackenzie government in 1878 effectually quenched his hopes of preferment, and two years afterwards he was superannuated. No man ought to know Mr. MacColl better than his friend, Charles Sangster, a poet of considerable repute, who speaks thus of him in his article in Wilson’s work on Scottish, bards: —
“In private life he is, both by precept and example, all that could be desired. He has an intense love for all that is really good and beautiful, and a true and manly scorn for all that is false, time-serving, or hypocritical; there is no narrow-mindedness, no bigotry in his soul. In the domestic circle, all the warmth in the man’s heart—the full flow of genuine feeling and affection—is ever uppermost. He is a thoroughly earnest man, in whose daily walks and conversation as well as in his actions, Longfellow’s ‘Psalm of Life’ is acted out in verity. In his friendship he is sincere; in his dislikes equally so. He is thoroughly Scottish in his leanings. His national love burns with intensity. In poetry, he is not merely zealous, but enthusiastic, and he carries his natural force of character into all he says and does.”
All his virtues he inherited from his parents. Among Evan MacColl’s old country friends have been John Mackenzie, of “The Beauties;” the late R. Carruthers, LL.D., Hugh Miller, the brothers Sobeiskie Stewart, at Eilean-Aigais, and drank with them out of a cuach, once the property of Prince Charlie; Dugald Moore, author of “Scenes before the Flood,” and “The Bard of the North;” Alexander Rogers, the author of “Behave yourself before Folk,” Rev. Dr. Norman McLeod, Dr. Chambers, Bailey, the author of “Festus;” Leighton, author of “The Christening of the Bairn;” J. Stuart Blackie, the great Edinburgh professor; James Logan, author of “The Scottish Gael;” Fraser, of Fraser’s Magazine, and Hugh Fraser, the publisher of “Leabhar nan Cnoc.” He is a member of the Royal Canadian Literary and Scientific Society, founded by the Marquis of Lorne, and was the guest several times of his lordship and the Princess Louise at Rideau Hall, Ottawa. MacColl has been twice married. Of a family of nine sons and daughters, Evan, the poet’s eldest son, has been educated for the ministry, and is now pastor of the Congregational Church at Middleville, Ontario. His eldest daughter’s productions have merited a very high admiration, and the more youthful members of his family give promise of proving worthy of the stock from whence they sprang. John Massie, of Keene, a brother poet, not having heard from the “Bard of Lock Fyne” for over six weeks after having written him a letter, thus addressed the Limestone City: —
Say, Kingston, tell us where is Evan?
Thy bard o’ pure poetic leaven!
And is he still amang the livin’?
Or plumed supernal,
Has taen a jink and aff to heaven,
There sing eternal!
Or if within your bounds you find him,
A’ bruised and broken, skilfu’ bind him;
Or sick, or sair, O! carefu’ mind him,
Thy darling chiel!
And dinna lat him look behind him
Until he’s weel.
But if he’s gane, ah, wae’s to me!
His like we never mair shall see,—
Nae servile, whinging coof was he,
Led by a string,
But noble, gen’rous, fearless, free,
His sang he’d sing.
Hech, sirs! we badly could bide loss him,
For should this world vindictive toss him.
Or ony hizzie dare to boss him.
Clean gyte he’d set her;
The deil himsel’, he daur’dna cross him,
Faith, he ken’d better!
Let any man, o’ any station,
But wink at fraud, or wrong the nation,
E’en gowd, nor place, ’twas nae temptation
To sic a chiel,—
He’d shortly settle their oration,
And drub them weel.
Or let them say’t, be’t high or low,
Auld Scotia ever met the foe,
That laid her in the dust fu’ low,
Right at them see him!
Professor George still rues the blow
MacColl did gie him.
Is history in Fiction’s grip,
Does Falsehood let her bloodhounds slip,
Crack goes his castigating whip,
With patriot scorn!
Macaulay laid upon his hip.
Amidst the corn.
Does English critic meanly itch,
To cast old Ossian in the ditch,
And trail his laurels through the pitch
Of mind benighted;
Our bardie gies his lugs a twitch
And sees it righted.
In a’ this warld, there’s no a skellum,
Nor silly self-conceited blellum,
But Evan, lad, wad bravely tell ’em
The honest truth;
E’en if he kend that they should fell ’im
Withouten ruth.
Ye feathered things in mournfu’ tune,
Come join my waesome, doleful croon;
Ye dogs that bay the silver moon,
Your sorrow show it;
And a’ ye tearfu’ starns aboon,
Bewail our poet.
What though this grasping world, and hard,
May barely grant him just reward,
Still shall his genius blissful starred,
Effulgent shine,
And endless ages praise the bard
Of fair Loch Fyne.
Mr. MacColl has many admirers in Canada, in proof of which he has lately issued the third edition of his poems here, and they are having a good sale. His Gaelic Lyrics, lately issued in Edinburgh, is also attracting attention among his countrymen on this side of the Atlantic.
