Iain mac Mhurchaidh

Iain Mhurchaidh
Born	c. 1725
Died	c. September 1780, Camden, South Carolina (aged c. 55)
Place of birth	Scotland, Great Britain
Allegiance	Great Britain
Years of service	1745-1746, 1776–1780
Battles/wars	Jacobite rising of 1745 Battle of Culloden American Revolutionary War Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge (POW) Siege of Charleston Battle of Camden Battle of Kings Mountain (disputed)

Iain mac Mhurchaidh, alias John MacRae and, in American English John Murchison, (c. 1725 – c. September 1780), was a Scottish-born bard from Kintail, a member of Clan Macrae, and an early immigrant to the Colony of North Carolina. MacRae has been termed one of the "earliest Gaelic poets in North America about whom we know anything."

MacRae fought as a Loyalist military officer during the American Revolution. In between at least two stints being held by American Patriots as a prisoner of war in Philadelphia and Boston, Lieutenant and later Captain John Murchison led troops into combat at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, the Siege of Charleston, the Battle of Camden, and, allegedly, at the Battle of King's Mountain. His many war poems which celebrate the British cause during the Revolutionary War are an important part of the late 18th-century "Golden Age" of Scottish Gaelic literature and remain popular among speakers of Canadian Gaelic.

According to Michael Newton, MacRae the war poet so inspired the Gaels settled along the Cape Fear River to rise up and fight for King George III that American Patriots, "treated him with great severity."

In both Kintail and Strathglass, as well as in many Scottish Canadian communities founded by Loyalist refugees, Captain John Macrae's, "memory is held in such esteem over 200 years after his death", that Kintail seanchaidh John Finlayson of Drumbuie, alias Iain Smoc, told Calum Maclean in a 1955 interview for the School of Scottish Studies, that Macrae was, "an t-uasal a b' ainmeile bha riamh air a' Ghaidhealtachd", ("the most celebrated gentleman that ever lived in the Highlands"). During the 21st century, his song "Tha mi sgìth ‘n fhògar seo" ("I am weary of this exile"), was recorded for the soundtrack to the 7th season of the television series Outlander.

Early life

A romanticized Victorian era depiction of a Macrae clan member, painted by R.R. McIan.

Iain mac Mhurchaidh was born at Lianag a’ Chùl Doire, beside Allt a' Chaisil and the River Conag and between Lianassie and Dorasduain, in Kintail. The ruins of his former blackhouse still survive, as do the ruins of his later residence at Achadh Gharg beside the River Crò in Glen Lichd. Both sites are known through the local oral tradition and the latter is confirmed by Lord Seaforth's Rental Rolls.

He was the son of Murdoch, who was the son of Farquhar, who was the fourth son of Alasdair MacRae of Inverinate (Scottish Gaelic:Inbhir Ìonaid), a gentleman in the service of the Earls of Seaforth.

Through their mutual descent from Alasdair MacRae, 8th of Inverinate, Iain mac Mhurchaidh was the first cousin once removed of fellow Kintyre Gaelic poet Donnchadh MacRae], 9th of Inverinate, the scribe of the Fernaig manuscript.

The Clan MacRae, whose chiefs were hereditary constables of Eilean Donan Castle, were well known for their loyalty to the chief (Scottish Gaelic:Caberféidh) of Clan MacKenzie (Scottish Gaelic:Clann Choinnich). In view of their loyal and effective military service to the Mackenzie Chiefs in Gaelic warfare, Clan Macrae of Kintail were known as "an làmh làidir aig na Sìophartaich", or the Clan Mackenzie's "strong hand" or "shirt of mail."

According to Celticist Màiri Sìne Chaimbeul, Iain Mac Mhurchaidh, despite the existing Penal Laws against all who worshipped outside the Established Presbyterian Church of the realm, "belonged to a family which was highly educated, closely connected to the nobility, and sympathetic to the Jacobite cause and the Episcopalian Church."

Despite the sitting Chief's decision to side with the House of Hanover during the Jacobite rising of 1745, however, Clan Macrae was divided. A number of Macraes are known to have fought for Prince Charles Edward Stuart under George Mackenzie. Others joined the government's Independent Highland Companies under Captain Colin Mackenzie. In June 1746, the Mackenzie Company at Shiramore in Badenoch had over sixty Macraes, including an Ensign John MacRae.

The Macraes were strongly Jacobite and Iain's uncle Hugh Macrae and first cousin Alasdair fought in the Jacobite rising of 1715 and served in combat against Hanoverian forces at the Battle of Sheriffmuir and during the later Battle of Glenshiel. Some oral tradition sources in Kintail, as well as modern Celticists and literary critics, who have noticed allusions to the Rising and it's aftermath in his later poetry, believe that Iain mac Mhurchaidh, despite his extreme youth at the time, fought in the Jacobite Army at the Battle of Culloden and survived the no quarter given afterwards to the prisoners and the wounded. In contrast, the sword wielded by Iain mac Mhurchaidh at Culloden, which is currently on permanent display at Eilean Donan Castle, is of the type only issued at the time to Hanoverian soldiers.

Highland Scots families, similarly to the clans they belonged to, were divided during the Jacobite risings and relatives often fought on opposing sides. For example, it is very well documented that the poet's father, Murchadh mac Fhearchair mhic Alasdair', was captured by the Hanoverian military immediately after Culloden and was summarily hanged from an apple tree in the Mercat Cross of Inverness, most likely on 22 May 1746, under suspicion of being a Jacobite spy. It is said in the local oral tradition that the tree immediately ceased bearing fruit, withered, and soon died, which was seen as proof of the hanged man's innocence. Murchadh Mac Fhearchair was eventually cut down by "the beggars" and buried afterwards behind the Old High Church.

In interviews with John Lorne Campbell, Barra seanchaidh John The Coddy MacPherson recalled that Clan Macrae of Kintail were famous throughout Scotland for cooking high quality moonshine, or "peatreek" in Scots, from illegal pot stills (Scottish Gaelic:poit dhubh). Strathglass, where Macrae had many close friends and relatives whom he often visited, was known for the same widespread custom of illegal distilleries.

In several extant poems, Macrae, who once introduced himself as, "pòitear gòrach an uisge-bheath" ("the daft whiskey-drinker"), praised the custom of illegal distilleries and irrately denounced the efforts of local government officials after Culloden to forcibly stamp out the practice:

"Tha buaidh air an uisge-bheath,

Tha buaidh air nach còir a chleith;

Tha buaidh air an uisge-bheath,

Gu ro mhath teth is fuar e.

"Bidh uisge teth an coir' aca,

Siùcar geal na chnapaichean

'S fear and guide twice ris

Ga chur na lasair uaine."

"Whisky has a winning way,

It has a winning way that should not be hidden;

Whisky has a winning way,

Whether it is hot or cold.

"They will have hot water in a kettle,

White sugar in lumps

And a man sitting next to it

Lighting it in a green flame."

In a similarly themed poem, Iain compared a high quality pot still to a prized "brown cow", who, despite having only one "teat" in her "udder", produced such "sweet milk", that everyone wanted to buy her. He further commented that whenever the cow was "pregnant" with a "calf" of "the juice of the barley", everyone was excited, but also feared that the revenue men would arrive and leave everyone without the cow or her "milk".

Meanwhile, as a member of the minor Scottish gentry, MacRae lived a very privileged life compared with the vast majority of his fellow Gaels following the Battle of Culloden in 1746. MacRae served Kenneth Mackenzie, Chief of Clan MacKenzie, as a ground-officer, deer stalker, and forester throughout Kintail and Lochalsh.

In a September 1792 letter, Archibald Macrae of Ardintoul recalled, "John Macrae - the poet who died lately in America - was the last Forrester (sic)... the only day of my life I travelled the forest with him I got two deer with a single lead and saw plenty of them but since the Forester left the country about the year 1776 and no proper care taken of it, the deer has been gradually disappearing so that now there is scarce a deer to be seen."

This was a very comfortable and well-paid position. Furthermore, MacRae's wit made him so popular among both the Scottish nobility (Scottish Gaelic:flath) and commons that no formal dress ball or village ceilidh was considered complete without his presence.

Decision to emigrate

Rev. Dr. John Bethune (1751–1815)

Around 1773, MacRae received a letter encouraging him to emigrate from an t-Urr. Iain Beutan (Rev. Dr. John Bethune), a native of Glenelg and minister of the Barbeque Presbyterian Church] in would later become Harnett County, in the Colony of North Carolina. Although it is not known what Rev. Beutan's letter said, it is considered likely by literary scholars that he mentioned the abundance of wild game in the New World.

In Scottish culture, deer hunting was a traditional pastime for both nobles and warriors and eating fish or seafood was considered a sign a low birth or status. By this time, however, hunting was being increasingly treated as poaching by the Anglo-Scottish landlords. Iain mac Mhurchaidh had already composed a poem complaining that his hunting rights were being restricted and, for this and many other reasons, he decided on taking the minister's advice and emigrating to North Carolina.

As news spread of Iain Mac Mhuirchaidh's plans, his friends and relations were reportedly very distressed. Three noblemen with massive holdings in Ross-shire lavishly entertained MacRae at dinner and offered him any farm on their estates he desired, but to no avail.

MacRae, however, had no intention of going alone and composed many Gaelic poems and songs in which he urged his friends and relations to join him. In those poems, like many other Gaelic poets of the era who favored voluntary emigration, MacRae complained that warriors were no longer valued and that greed had come to mean more to the Chiefs and the Tacksmen than honor, family, or clan ties:

"Ghabhadh iad, an àite an diùnlaich,

Slaochaire liùgach 's e beartach.

Ghabhadh iad an àit' an t-seòid

An t-òr ge b' ann à spòig a' phartain."

"They would take instead of brave men

A craven lout as long as he is rich.

They would take instead of the hero

The gold though it would be taken out of the claw of the crab."

In yet another poem, he accused the gentry of rackrenting their tenants into poverty and denying not only the hunting but also the fishing rights traditionally commanded under dùthchas (lit. "birthright", fig. "customary law"):

"H-uile cùis dha theannachdainn;

An t-ardachdainn 's e ghreannaich sinn,

Lìon mhòr a bhi gan tarring,

'S iad a' sailleadh na cuid èisg ornn."

"Everything is becoming more difficult,

The raising of the rents has dismayed us,

Big nets are being hauled

And they salt the fish so we can't get it."

Iain mac Mhurchaidh always concluded his poems by arguing that the Gaels would do well to emigrate to the New World and abandon such a corrupted nobility.

In one such poem, he bade farewell to his fellow Gaels in Glen Cannich and Strathglass, whom he highly praised, according to Colin Chisholm of Lietry, for, "their well known hospitality and convivial habits; [and] the musical sweetness and modest demeanor of their matrons and maidens, uncontaminated by modern fashions and frivolities."

According to Celticist Màiri Sìne Chaimbeul, "A ship was chartered to take the emigrants over to Carolina. She anchored near Sgeir na Caillich ('Rock of the Old Women') in Lochalsh. This rock was also famous as the place where a small skirmish had once taken place between the fleet of the Kintail men and the MacDonalds of Glengarry, during which many of the MacDonalds were lost, including their Chief, with no losses at all on the Kintail side."

After making the final arrangements for his departure, Iain hosted the Captain of the emigrant ship to dinner at his house. According to an 1882 article in The Celtic Monthly, "His guest, seeing his table better provided with good things than was the ordinary lot of common emigrants, enquired of his host if he was always able to have such a spread for himself. Being answered in the affirmative, the captain told the bard that he would not be able to have such in America and, at the same time, advised him to stay at home. His wife and many of his friends he was leaving behind him also urged him to do this. Being undecided as to what in the circumstances, he should do, his friend Ardintoul pointed out to him that, if he turned home after all that he had said, sang, and done, he would live despised ever after as a weak-minded coward. The thought of being held dishonoured and a coward decided the matter."

According to Màire Sìne Chaimbeul, "On the morning the ship sailed, crowds of people came to say goodbye. They gathered on the hills above Auchtertyre, where they would see the ship clearly until it disappeared through the Sound of Sleat. According to local tradition, just before boarding, Iain Mac Mhurchaidh gave his sword as a gift to his friend and neighbour, Macrae Morvich, thinking he would have no use for it in America. On the day of his departure, his daughter, who later married Finlay Macrae, of Fadach in Glen Elchaig, stayed behind. As the emigrants looked for the last time at the home they were leaving, filled with anxiety about the voyage and their future, Iain composed Song 25 to raise their spirits and embolden them to face the challenges ahead":

"Sguiribh dhe na cubarsnaich,

Nuair thèid sibh fo siùil a-staigh;

Am barail leibh an tionndainn mi

Ri dùthaich bhochd na h-èiginn?

"A mhnathan, sguiribh den arraban,

Bhon thàrr sinn fo na sparran aic';

Am barail dhuibh an taiseachainn

Gu leaghadh ann an èiginn?"

"Stop arguing,

When you go in under the sails;

Do you think I will turn back

To the sad country of poverty?

"Women, stop distressing yourselves,

Since we have obtained a place under her beams;

Do you think I would become soft

Melting in the face of hardship?"

Revolutionary War Poet

Targe and broadsword from the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion

Iain mac Mhuirchaidh had arrived in North Carolina by at least 1774. By 1775, he had amassed enough wealth to purchase two plantations, 250 acres known as "Rice Path" in Cumberland County and the second consisting of 550 acres along the Little Peedee River in Anson County.

According to Celticist Màiri Sìne Chaimbeul, "The 'Inventory of Property belonging to Mrs Janet Murchison Widow of the late Captain John Murchison of the North Carolina Highlanders' attached to her petition shows that the family was well provided for: they owned black cattle, hogs and sheep, and grew crops including corn, wheat, rye, oats, flax, and cotton. The household items mentioned indicate a level of prosperity and comfort, whilst the number of draught horses suggests that they had several people working for them, possibly some of their fellow Kintail emigrants as indentured servants for a fixed number of years to earn land for themselves. The sad inclusion of 'a young negro girl's at the end of the list of possessions, though shocking to modern eyes, would presumably not have raised any concerns at the time."

Following his emigration Iain mac Mhuirchaidh is believed by some scholars to have composed the Gaelic lullaby Dèan cadalan sàmhach, a chuilean a rùin ("Go to sleep peacefully, little beloved one").

Marcus Tanner has called Iain mac Mhurchaidh's arrival in the New World, "a real case of bad timing", as he, "had hardly gotten himself established before he was fighting his fellow Americans."

At the beginning of the American Revolution Allan Maclean of Torloisk dispatched Brigadier General Donald MacDonald and Major Alexander MacLean of the 84th Regiment of Foot to North Carolina on a covert mission. After successfully bluffing their way through an interrogation by the North Carolina Committee of Safety, both British officers arrived in the Cape Fear Valley. After meeting with local Loyalist militia leader Allan MacDonald of Kingsburgh, the husband of formerly Jacobite heroine Flora MacDonald, General MacDonald and Major MacLean issued an appeal to all Scottish Gaels in the Colony to take up arms on behalf of the Loyalist cause. Proclamations were sent out demanding that, "all the King's loyal subjects... repair to the King's Royal Standard, at Cross Creek ... to join the King's Army; otherwise, they must expect to fall under the melancholy consequences of a declared rebellion, and expose themselves to the just resentment of an injured, though gracious Sovereign." The latter statement would have been understood by North Carolina Highlanders as a threat that those who refused military service would be treated to both the land confiscations and the "arbitrary and malicious violence" used in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, which is still referred to in the Highlands and Islands as Bliadhna nan Creach ("The Year of the Pillaging").

Beginning what would later be dubbed "The Insurrection of Clan Donald", on 1 February 1776, Brigadier General MacDonald raised the Royal Standard in the Public Square of Cross Creek. Nightly balls were held and all other means were used to instill the military spirit. Meanwhile, Iain mac Mhuirchaidh was one of the first North Carolina Gaels to enlist.

Even though Loyalist Gaels in North Carolina were often accused at the time accused of ingratitude by their Patriot neighbors, according Michael Newton, they themselves felt very differently; "Gaelic poetry of the Jacobite period discussed the conflict in the following terms: the ultimate reason for taking action is consistently presented as a moral imperative – (còir), 'right, what one should do', (ceart) 'what is right, just', and (dlighe) 'what is due (to and from one)' being the operative terms. The Gaelic worldview, and sense of right and wrong, had been forged during centuries of life in a kin-based society with a strong sense of hereditary right and loyalty to leadership."

When Loyalist forces gathered at Cross Creek on 15 February 1776, they numbered about 3,500 men. According to John Patterson MacLean, "When the day came, the Highlanders were seen coming from near and from far, from the wide plantations on the river bottoms, and from the rude cabins in the depths of the lonely pine forests, with broadswords at their side, in tartan garments and feather bonnet, and keeping step to the shrill music of the bag-pipe. There came, first of all, Clan MacDonald with Clan MacLeod near at hand, with lesser numbers of Clan MacKenzie, Clan Macrae, Clan MacLean, Clan MacKay, Clan MacLachlan, and still others – variously estimated at fifteen hundred to three thousand, including about two hundred others, principally Regulators. However, all who were capable of bearing arms did not respond to the summons, for some would not engage in a cause where their traditions and affections had no part. Many of them hid in the swamps and in the forests."

According to tradition, as the loyalist Gaels gathered around the Royal Standard] in the Public Square of Cross Creek, the formerly Jacobite heroine Flora MacDonald, "made to them an address in their own Gaelic tongue that excited them to the highest pitch of warlike enthusiasm", a tradition known among the Highland clans as a, "brosnachadh-catha" or an, "incitement to battle."

Reconstructed bridge, Moores Creek National Battlefield, Pender County, North Carolina.

As the Loyalist Gaels marched towards the Atlantic coast, they were closely followed and then expertly ambushed at one of the only crossings of Moore's Creek by equally battle-hardened North Carolina militiamen who, like the Gaels, had also fought in the British Army during the French and Indian War under the command of Colonel James Moore.

In response to the ambush, on the early morning of 27 February 1776, Iain mac Mhurchaidh fought in the famous Highland charge across the partially dismantled bridge at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge while shouting, "An Righ Seòras agus chlaidheamhan mòra!" ("King George and great swords!")

The Loyalists were cut down by Patriot fire and Macrae was among those who survived to afterwards be taken prisoner. His either son or foster son, Murdo Macrae, fought alongside him and was mortally wounded.

While held with the battle's other Loyalist leaders as a prisoner of war, first in Philadelphia and then under parole at Sharpsburg, Maryland, and feeling a deep sense of regret for ever having emigrated to British North America, Iain mac Mhurchaidh composed the song Tha mi sgìth dhe'n fhòghairt seo ("I am weary of this exile").

Loyalists' Monument, Moores Creek National Battlefield, Pender County, North Carolina.

As the war continued, however, the storied loyalty of the Scottish Gaels to King George III, built as it was upon belief in the military invincibility of the British Empire, fear of New World land confiscations from those who refused military service, and upon the traditional honor code of Gaelic warfare, began cracking far wider than many historians realize. Large numbers of Highland soldiers were deserting their Loyalist regiments and joining the Continental Army. In his diary, Major Iain Dòmhnallach (John MacDonald) of the Maryland Loyalists, describes in considerable detail the lengths to which he had to do to keep his men from defecting to the Patriot side and bringing arsenals of ammunition with them.

Just as had been the case during the Jacobite risings, the line between Loyalists and Patriots ran right through Highland Scots families living in the New World. For example, Sergeant Donald MacDonald, the son of Loyalist Brigadier General Donald MacDonald, joined the Continental Army unit commanded by General Francis Marion very soon after the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. He was later described as "cool under the most trying difficulties and brave without a fault". When asked why by General Peter Horry, Sergeant MacDonald, a veteran of the Jacobite Army during the 1745 rising, recalled how friendly and welcoming North Carolina Patriots had been following his own immigration from Scotland. He also explained how outraged his Patriot neighbors were whenever they were told of the no quarter given to the prisoners and the wounded after the Battle of Culloden and quoted one Patriot friend as saying, "O! That we had been there to aid with our rifles, then should many of those monsters have bit the ground!" Sgt. MacDonald concluded his story when he recalled about the aftermath of the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, "Instead of murdering the prisoners as the English had done at Culloden, they treated us with their usual generosity. And now these are the people I love and will fight for as long as I live."

About Sergeant MacDonald, who was killed in action at the Siege of Fort Motte on May 12, 1781, American historian James Patterson MacLean has written, "His resting place is unknown. No monument has been erected to his memory; but his name will endure so long as men shall pay respect to heroism and devotion to country."

Similarly, David Stewart of Garth wrote in a post-Battle of Yorktown letter, "I have been told by intelligence officers, who served in the last war, that they found the Highland emigrants more fierce in their animosity of the mother country than even the native Americans."

Iain mac Mhurchaidh accordingly paid a very heavy financial price for his Monarchist beliefs. In 1780, the North Carolina General Assembly taxed his property in Moore County at three times its value. This unjust over-taxation, but, far more importantly, the Highland concept of family honor and the duty to revenge fallen relatives; even at the risk of starting a protracted blood feud; is why the combat death of Iain mac Mhurchaidh's son, Murchadh mac Iain, at the 1776 Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge must be taken as the main explanation for the transplanted Kintail Bard's refusal to give up the fight.

Macrae was released in a prisoner exchange, it is believed, in November of 1778. His name then appears as a Lieutenant receiving pay in British-occupied New York City until 24 October 1779. In late December 1779, he boarded a troop transport bound for an attack on Savannah, Georgia, only for the fleet to be scattered by tropical storms. After being separated from the other transports, Macrae was again taken prisoner by American privateers and conveyed in irons to Boston. This time, his incarceration was extremely harsh, "in a loathsome gaol and almost starved of food." His signature accordingly appears with those of other Loyalist officers on a petition to the Continental Congress. Some historians believe, rather than during his previous imprisonment in Philadelphia and Maryland, that it was in Boston that Macrae composed the song "Tha mi sgìth dhe'n fhòghairt seo" ("I am weary of this exile").

He was exchanged for the second time and served under the command of Sir Henry Clinton at the 29 March through 12 May 1780 Siege of Charleston. He then accompanied the Army commanded by Lord Cornwallis during the Southern campaign that resulted in the British victory at the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. In September 1780, Macrae was promoted in rank by General Cornwallis from Lieutenant in the 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser's Highlanders to Captain and issued orders to recruit local Gaels into a similar unit to the Independent Highland Companies that fought on the Government side in 1745.

Death

The Kershaw House, Georgian mansion first built, 1775–1780, by Joseph Kershaw, merchant and leading citizen of Camden, South Carolina, became the headquarters for the occupying British Army, 1780–1781.

Iain mac Mhurchaidh, according to tradition, fought again as a Loyalist soldier under the command of Major Patrick Ferguson and Captain Abraham de Peyster on 7 October 1780, at the Battle of King's Mountain, which has since been described as "the war's largest all-American fight".

Even though this battle has traditionally, "been characterized as a confrontation between Loyalist Highlanders and Scotch-Irish revolutionaries", there were in reality many native Gaelic-speakers fighting on both sides. According to one source, Iain mac Mhurchaidh, in a revival of, "the diplomatic immunity of the ancient Celtic bards", walked between the opposing armies during the battle and, in an attempt to convert his fellow Gaels among the Patriot militia and the Overmountain Men to the Loyalist cause, he sang the song, "Gur muladach a tha mi" ("Iam sorrowful").

In the song, which is alleged by some historians to have cost its singer very dearly, Iain mac Mhurchaidh called the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution against King George III every bit as unnatural as disrespect against one's earthly or heavenly father. The Bard also threatened that Patriots who did not submit to King George would be treated like both real and suspected Jacobites throughout the Highlands and Islands had been treated during the infamous "Year of the Pillaging" after the Battle of Culloden in 1746:

"Siud an rud a dh'èireas:

Mur dèan sibh uile gèilleadh

Nuair thig a' chuid as trèine

Dhe'n treud a tha thall;

Bidh crochadh agus reubadh

Is creach air bhur cuid sprèidhe,

Chan fhaighear lagh no reusan

Do Reubalaich ann.

Air fhad 's dhan gabh sibh fògar

Bidh ceartas aig Righ Deòrsa,

An seòl 'chaith sibh ann.

Ach is culaidh ghrath is dhèisinn

Sibh fhad 's dhan cùm sibh streup ris

'S gur h-aithreach leibh 'na dhèibh seo

An leum 'thug sibh ann."

"The following is what will happen

If you do not all surrender

When strongest forces arrive

Of those who are now yonder,

There will be hanging and injury

And your wealth will be plundered,

No law or reason will be available

To any rebels at all.

For as long as you have parted ways

King George will be in the right,

I do not think it any light matter,

The side you have chosen.

But you are a cause for spite and abomination

As long as you resist,

And you will be sorry after this

For the choice you have made."

It would be a serious mistake, however, to assume that Ian mac Mhurchaidh was a man who fought and died seeking at all costs to maintain the existing status quo in both the British Isles and in the New World. Elsewhere in the same poem, he called for the political reforms once promised by, "the King over the Water", Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, and over which the Jacobite risings had been fought, to urgently be implemented by King George III. These reforms included devolved parliamentary government rather than increasing political centralization in London since 1688, minority language rights, the granting of freedom of religion, voting rights, and civil rights to all who worshipped outside of the Established Churches, and in later years, freedom of the press. Ironically, despite the radical differences between Monarchism and American-style Republicanism and Federalism, many of these same political reforms had already been co-opted by American Patriots.

Revolutionary War British military graves, St. David's Episcopal Church and Cemetery, Cheraw, South Carolina.

Until very recently, Iain mac Mhuirchaidh was widely believed to have died either during or soon after the Battle of King's Mountain. According to one source, he died in captivity while held in a dank "subterranean prison". Other historians believe that he was "probably killed by the American Patriots", after being, "betrayed by the Highlanders who were fighting for the rebels... because of his inflammatory poetry". According to another tradition, Iain Mac Mhurchaidh, "suffered an excruciating death", at the hands of Patriot-allied Natives, who allegedly tied the Loyalist bard's limbs to four horses, which were then startled, tearing Iain Mac Mhurchaidh apart.

American researchers and historians have always been more skeptical, particularly as North Carolina Patriots had no subterranean prisons like the one described. Surviving documents reveal that, if Captain Murchison's song was in fact sung at the Battle of Kings Mountain, it must have been performed by someone to whom the author had taught it. This is because, according to Celticist Màiri Sìne Chaimbeul, "The truth is somewhat more mundane. In his wife's petition, we read that Iain's health, which has been badly affected by the harsh treatment he received in prison, began to fail, and the news that his eldest son, probably named Murchadh, had been killed in the fire which had destroyed his home farmhouse seems to have been the final blow. He fell ill at Cheraw Hills and his wife, Janet, rushed to his bedside at Camden where he died a few days later, in September 1780, before the Battle of King's Mountain, which took place on 7 October."

Following her husband's death, Janet Murchison was left with three children. She was first prevented by Patriot officials from crossing back through the lines and was then rendered destitute when the family's two plantations and all their contents were confiscated and sold as enemy property. This is the most likely reason why there is no gravestone for her husband in the oldest cemetery in Camden. Mrs Murchison and her children continued to, "remain under the protection of His Majesty's Army" following the Battle of Hobkirk's Hill and during General Cornwallis' retreat down the Cape Fear River and up until until the British military evacuation of Charleston. Janet Murchison then arranged for passage on a troop transport bound for London. Through the influence of both Governor Josiah Martin and Lord Cornwallis, who wrote of how deeply they held her late husband in esteem, Janet Murchison was granted an annual pension, which she continued to receive until her death in Edinburgh on 15 March 1821.

Reburial service in Camden of a British soldier whose remains were discovered in 2022.

In 2022, the remains of 13 Revolutionary War soldiers were discovered in shallow graves at the Camden Battlefield, 12 of whom were Continental Army soldiers and one being a soldier from the British Army's 71st Regiment of Foot. All 13 were subsequently reburied in 2023 with full military honours, with handpicked pallbearers from the Royal Highland Fusiliers of the British Army travelling to the United States in order to take part in the funeral.

Legacy

"Tory Refugees on their way to Canada" by Howard Pyle

Following the end of the war, Moore County and many other regions of the new United States which had been mainly settled by Scottish Gaels, were almost depopulated, as Gaelic-speaking Loyalists fled northward, often under extremely brutal conditions, towards what remained of British North America.

Among these so-called "United Empire Loyalist" refugees was Iain mac Mhurchaidh's close friend Rev. Iain Beutan (John Bethune). Like Iain mac Mhurchaidh, Rev. Beutan fought as a Loyalist military chaplain and was taken prisoner following the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge. Ironically, and despite their former minister's Loyalism, the Gaelic-speaking congregation at the Barbeque Presbyterian Church in Harnett County, North Carolina, was known for the rest of the American Revolution as, "an island of Whigs in a sea of Tories."

After being released in a prisoner exchange and serving as military chaplain to the 84th Regiment of Foot, Rev. Bethune ministered to his fellow Gaels at Montreal, Williamstown, and in the many Canadian Gaelic-speaking settlements in Glengarry County, Ontario. Rev. Bethune is accordingly credited with organizing the first Presbyterian congregations in Canada, where his many descendants include the Academy Award-winning actor Christopher Plummer. Rev. Bethune is also suspected, due to his known friendship and long imprisonment with the Kintail Bard in Philadelphia, to have helped bring Iain Mac Mhurchaidh's songs, "to Canada where they are still found today."

According to Marcus Tanner, Iain Mac Mhurchaidh's, "poems were [also] brought back to Scotland years later by others who had learned them." A fellow Loyalist Gael also named John MacRae, who was known in Gaelic as both Iain mac a’ Ghobha, ("the blacksmith's son") and Fear na Leth Làimh ("the man with one arm"), and who lost his arm in combat during the American Revolution, is particularly credited with memorizing Iain mac Mhurchaidh's poems and bringing them back to his native district of Kintail, in Scotland. In his own request for financial compensation from the Crown, "the blacksmith's son" recalled that he had owned fifty acres of land in Anson County, North Carolina, before it's similar confiscation and sale by American Patriots.

According to Michael Newton, the memory of Iain mac Mhurchaidh was often invoked for decades after his death by fellow Gaels in both Scotland and Canada, particularly in response to the mass evictions known as the Highland Clearances. Iain mac Mhurchaidh was accordingly mentioned to contrast the post-Culloden loyalty of Highland soldiers to the British Empire, as well as their many sufferings and sacrifices, with what was seen as the gross ingratitude that both His Majesty's Government and the Anglo-Scottish landlords had subsequently shown towards Highland military veterans and their families.

Meanwhile, despite the post-Revolutionary War redirection of emigration by the Gaels from Scotland to Canada, a large Gàidhealtachd community continued to exist in North Carolina, from whence many pioneer families carried Scottish Gaelic editions of their Family Bibles, Metrical Psalmbooks, and the Westminster Shorter Catechism with them as they migrated West.

According to Michael Newton, "Many Highlanders remained in North Carolina, certainly enough to retain a distinctive community that continued to thrive and speak Gaelic. In addition, Patrick Campbell mentions Highlanders from Appin coming to North Carolina in 1791, and there is evidence of further migrations from 1803 to 1820. A number of Gaelic colonists who had settled in the Caribbean left for the United States, usually the Carolinas, in the 1820s."

Unlike in Nova Scotia, however, where a distinctive Canadian dialect of Scottish Gaelic continues to be both spoken and written, the North Carolina Gàidhealtachd only survived, according to Marcus Tanner, "until it was well and truly disrupted", by the American Civil War. This is why, even though it is a certainty that Patriot war poetry in Gaelic did exist and that other local Gaels were similarly inspired to rise up and fight for the Continental Army by Patriot Bards, unlike in Canada, almost nothing was collected or written down from the local oral tradition before the post-Civil War language shift that caused the North Carolina dialect of Gaelic to die out.

It is accordingly deeply ironic that one of the only surviving pro-Patriot Gaelic poems from the American Revolution was composed, not in the United States, but in Scotland. The Patriot Bard skillfully invokes the two traditional attributes of an unworthy Scottish clan chief, raising the clan's rent needlessly and spending all the money on overpriced luxuries for himself, and then lays those very attributes at the doors of both the Scottish nobility and King George III.

The poem, The Lament of the North was composed in 1783, the year that saw both the end of the American Revolution and the beginning of the Highland Clearances in the poet's native Inverness-shire. The author was Cionneach mac Cionnich (Kenneth MacKenzie) (1758–1837), a bard from Clan MacKenzie who was born at Castle Leather near Inverness and who died at Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland. In the poem, Cionneach mac Cionnich reviles the Scottish clan chiefs for becoming absentee landlords, for both rackrenting and evicting their clansmen en masse in favor of sheep, and for "spending their wealth uselessly", in London. He accuses King George III both of tyranny, excessive greed, spending taxpayers money on foppish clothes, and of steering the ship of state into shipwreck. MacCionnich also argues that truth is on the side of George Washington and the Continental Army and that the Gaels would do well to emigrate from the Highlands and Islands to the United States before the King and the landlords take every farthing they have left. The poem appeared in MacKenzie's poetry collection, Òrain Ghaidhealach, agus Bearla air an eadar-theangacha.

More recently, journalist and civil libertarian June Callwood wrote very critically of the legacy of Canada's foundation by Loyalist refugees, who revered Iain Mac Mhurchaidh as a folk hero. The legacy of the United Empire Loyalists, who preferred order to liberty and George III to George Washington, is why modern Canadian people, according to Callwood, are allegedly willing to passively accept and even loudly defend a level of police misconduct and government infringement upon their civil liberties that would be unthinkable in American culture.

According to Callwood, "At a hint of trouble, the Canadian custom is to call out the Army, jail all suspects, all relatives of suspects, all associates of suspects, all whose names or addresses resemble those of suspects, and, human nature being what is is, all to whom none of the above applies but who have offended the authorities. No nonsense about habeas corpus; suspects go to jail and stay there. In Canada, 85 percent of those charged with indictable offenses are convicted. Small wonder: in Canada courts allow illegally obtained evidence."

Callwood continues, "The Supreme Court of Canada recently rejected the tradition in English law that that an accused person has the right to remain silent. In Canada, if you don't reply to the police, you go to jail. Juries in the 1970s twice found a man innocent of the crime with which he was charged. Each time higher courts ruled he should go to jail anyway -- and he did. Those arrested for offending the government customarily are held without bail, without being allowed to notify relatives or lawyers, without visits from anyone but teams of interrogators, without appearing before judges, and without being informed what the charge might eventually be. Canadians who looked as though they might disagree with the government have been deported to the country of their birth, or their parents' birth; also without trial."

In contrast to Americans, "whose natural response to an invasion of rights by the State is to fill Washington with demonstrators", in Canada, much to the alleged shock of Vietnam War draft refugees who had believed they were emigrating to "a Liberal utopia", Canadians who oppose "even brutal use of authority" by the Government, have only two choices, "The State or the United States."

For these and many other reasons, many people from Canadian Gaelic-speaking communities, ironically including many descendants of Loyalists, have permanently crossed the border and made new lives in the United States. For example, after joining the mass migration from Atlantic Canada to the American city of Boston, Massachusetts and it's suburbs during the late 19th and early 20th-century, which one contemporary writer compared to a gold rush, Mrs. Catherine MacInnes from Cape Breton made and published a Scottish Gaelic literary translation of the lyrics to The Star Spangled Banner.

After recording Gaelic songs in Depression era Nova Scotia with his wife, American ethnomusicologist Margaret Fay Shaw, John Lorne Campbell wrote in the book Songs Remembered in Exile, that he considered the Canadian government foolish to continue encouraging Highland Scottish immigration, as Scottish Canadian communities were unable to keep their young people from emigrating to the United States.

Since it was given on long-term loan in 1992 by John Macrae's descendent, Iain R. MacLennan of Waipukurau, New Zealand, a sword alleged to have been carried by the exiled bard at the Battle of Culloden, the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, and at the Battle of Kings Mountain has been on permanent display at Clan Macrae's former seat at Eilean Donan Castle.

Today, local pride in the Scottish Highland heritage of local pioneers remains very common in North Carolina. One of North America's largest Highland games events, the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, are held there every year and draw in visitors from all over the world. The Grandfather Mountain games have been called "the best" such event in the United States because of the spectacular landscape and the large number of people who attend in kilts and other regalia of the Scottish clans. It is also widely considered to be the largest "gathering of clans" in North America, as more family lines are represented there than any other similar event.

Also, according to Michael Newton, "Professor Catrìona Persons of St Francis Xavier University of Antigonish presented a talk about a recently discovered item to the International Celtic Congress in Edinburgh in 1994. The four verse song seems to have been composed in North Carolina about the time of the Civil War and mentions the dance the Reel of Tulloch, suggesting that the members of the Highland community were still engaged in traditional Gaelic song and dance to some degree at that time."

Since it's creation in in 1892, the Mòd, a Scottish Gaelic cultural, literary, and language revival festival with adjudicated competitions modeled upon the Welsh Eisteddfod tradition, has also been introduced since 1988 into the Scottish diaspora in the United States through the efforts of the American Scottish Gaelic Society. In addition to the U.S. National Mòd, there are also regional mòds held in New York City, the Baltimore/Washington, DC region, North Carolina, and Kentucky. Despite his role in fighting as a Loyalist during the American Revolution, the U.S. National Mòd award for best original poetry submission in Scottish Gaelic is named in honor of Iain Mac Murchaidh.

Further reading

Books

• Black, Ronald I.M. (ed.) (2001), An Lasair: an anthology of 18th-century Scottish Gaelic verse. Edinburgh.
• Edited by Màiri Sìne Chaimbeul (2020), Iain mac Mhurchaidh: the Life and Work of John MacRae, Kintail and North Carolina, Scottish Gaelic Texts Society.
• Newton, Michael (2001), We're Indians Sure Enough: The Legacy of the Scottish Highlanders in the United States, Saorsa Media.
• Newton, Michael (2015). Seanchaidh na Coille / Memory-Keeper of the Forest: Anthology of Scottish Gaelic Literature of Canada. Cape Breton University Press. Preface by Diana Gabaldon. ISBN 978-1-77206-016-4.
• Edited by Natasha Sumner and Aidan Doyle (2020), North American Gaels: Speech, Song, and Story in the Diaspora, McGill–Queen's University Press.

Periodicals

• Charles W. Dunn, "A North Carolina Gaelic Bard," North Carolina Historical Review 36 (October 1959).
• James MacKenzie, "The Odyssey of John MacRae," State magazine (Raleigh), (1 Dec 1971).
• Michael Newton, "In Their Own Words: Gaelic Literature in North Carolina", Scotia, (2001), pp. 1–28.

External links

• Tha mi sgìth ‘n fhògar seo (I am weary of this exile) performed by Alasdair Whyte.
• NCpedia; MacRae, John