The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160733   Message #3814315
Posted By: GUEST,keberoxu
12-Oct-16 - 07:35 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Sleep Weel My Bairnie (Murdoch Maclean)
Subject: RE: Murdoch Maclean: Sleep Weel My Bairnie
Yes, there is a lot still to be learned about this poet.

I saw that as well, Felipa, the lengthy Scottish Gaelic song. The time period is the same, true. I lean toward thinking that they are two different men, and that the author of "Songs of a Roving Celt" did not emigrate across the Atlantic, although I have seen evidence that his poetry was published in North American periodicals on occasion. I honestly suspect that the MacLean who crossed the ocean was already there, in the West, while our Scots poet was serving in the Great War; I could be mistaken on that point.

I forget how I picked up the notion that Coill an Ríogh had anything to do with a hill, of course my Gaelic is non-existent.

On the WorldCat webpages, at least one of multiple entries was entered by someone who believed that Murdoch Maclean's middle name was Campbell, in a citation of The Wind in the Heather. Could be a conflation with a different author who actually had that name but wrote something other than poetry. Most entries for the Kintail poet give no middle initial or middle name.