Duncan Livingstone

Duncan Livingstone (Donnchadh MacDhunlèibhe) (Torloisk, Isle of Mull, 30 March 1877 – Pretoria, Republic of South Africa, 25 May 1964) was a Scottish Gaelic Bard from the Isle of Mull, who lived most of his life in South Africa.

Family origins

The Poet's great-great-great-grandfather and namesake, Duncan Livingstone, although descended from Clan MacLea, fought for Prince Charles Edward Stuart under the command of Allan Maclean of Torloisk during the Jacobite rising of 1745. With Duncan also fought his brothers, brother-in-law, and his father, who was killed during the Battle of Culloden in 1746. According to the local oral tradition, Duncan Livingstone eloped with Anne MacLean, whose father Hector was the disinherited eldest son of Donald, 10th Chief of Clan MacLean of Coll and whose mother was Isobel, the only daughter of Ruairi Mear, 17th Chief of Clan MacLeod of Dunvegan. After their elopement, Duncan and Anne were granted the mill at Ensay by MacLean of Torloisk. According the family's oral tradition, Duncan Livingstone composed the popular Gaelic love song, Mo Rùn Geal Dìleas in honor of his wife.^[1] According to Donald E. Meek, however, Mo Rùn Geal Dìleas was composed by the Laird of Torloisk about his unrequited love for Lady Isabel of Balinaby, Islay, which ultimately rendered him, "a raving lunatic."^[2]

The bard's grandfather, Alexander Livingstone, was the uncle of the African explorer and missionary David Livingstone.^[3]

According to David Livingstone, their ancestors were members of the illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland long after the Scottish Reformation and only switched to Presbyterianism due to the excessive use of corporal punishment by their landlord. For this reason, the Livingstone family long afterwards referred to Calvinism as "the Religion of the Yellow Stick" (Scottish Gaelic: Creideamh a’ bhata-bhuidhe).

Life

Early life

Duncan Livingstone was born in his grandfather's Croft at Reudle, near Torloisk House on the Isle of Mull. His father, Donald Livingstone (Dòmhnall Mac Alasdair 'ic Iain 'ic Dhòmhnall 'ic Dhonnchaidh) (1843–1924) was a joiner and stone-mason. The Poet's mother was Jane MacIntyre (Sine nighean Donnchaidh mhic Iain) (1845-1938), a native of Ballachulish who was said to be the grandniece of the Gaelic poet Duncan Ban MacIntyre (1724-1812). The Bard was the third of seven children and the outlines of the house where he was born may still be seen today.^[4]

Duncan's parents had married in Glasgow in 1872. His mother had worked as a domestic servant. His father had lived in Canada and worked in the construction of timber houses. When Duncan was 18-months old, his family moved to Tobermory, where he was educated. He later recalled, however, "The scholars of my day were thrashed if they spoke Gaelic in the school or it's [sic] environs."^[5]

When Livingstone was 16, his family moved to 126 Talisman Road in Glasgow. Duncan first became a clerk and then a stonemason's apprentice. When the Second Boer War broke out, he learned that the Laird of Torloisk was raising a cavalry regiment and immediately enlisted.^[6]

War and Peace

During combat against the Boer Commandos, Duncan Livingstone was shot through the ankle and returned, lamed, to Glasgow. At this time, he carved the inscription Tigh Mo Chridhe, Tigh Mo Gràidh ("House of My Heart, House of My Love") on the lintel of the main door of Saint Columba Church of Scotland on St. Vincent Street in Glasgow.^[7]

On 3 March 1903, the poet left Southampton on the S.S. Staffordshire on a voyage back to South Africa. He never returned to Scotland and was soon joined in South Africa by his brothers John and Alex. The three brothers briefly owned a house building company in Johannesburg, but disbanded their partnership and the poet joined the Public Works Department. His brother John went on to prosper through gold mining, while Alex became a sugar cane farmer in Natal.^[8][9]

In 1911, Catriona (Katie) MacDonald, whose father owned the Torrans Farm and Kinloch Hotel near Pennyghael in Mull,^[10] and whose absence in Mull allegedly inspired Livingstone to write the Gaelic love song Muile nam Mòr-bheann ("Mull of the Mountains"),^[11] also emigrated to South Africa to become the Poet's wife.^[12] Katie is further believed to be referred to in the dedication of Livingstone's 1940 poem Cogadh agus Sìth ("War and Peace"): Do an chaileag a dh'fhàg mise a dhol gu cogadh ("To the girl I left to go to war").^[13] Duncan and Katie Livingstone were never to have children, however.^[14]

Later life

There was a lively community of Scottish Gaels in Pretoria when the poet first settled there and he, his wife, and both of his brothers were very active in both Scottish and Gaelic circles. Duncan and Alex Livingstone edited a Gaelic page in the Caledonian Society's journal. Duncan also founded the Celtic Society of Pretoria, which was a literary association consisting of forty members with Scottish, Irish, and Welsh origins. Also Duncan established a Celtic section in the State Library, Pretoria, which consisted, by 1954, of almost a thousand books.^[15]

According to literary historian Ronald Black, Duncan Livingstone's poetry was doubtlessly assisted by the Gaelic broadcasts which he began making from South Africa for the BBC during the early 1930s. His first poem to be published was A fàgail Aifric in 1939. He published three other poems in Gaelic about the Second World War and also wrote a lament, in imitation of Sìleas na Ceapaich's iconic lament Alistair à Gleanna Garadh, for his nephew Pilot Officer Alasdair Ferguson Bruce of the RAF, who was shot down and killed during a mission over Germany in 1941.^[16]

Catriona died in September 1951 and Duncan, who adored her, never recovered from the blow.^[17] In response, he composed the poem Cràdh, which has since been dubbed, "a fine lament... for his wife."^[18]

He spent his retirement both writing and playing bowls.^[19]

Livingstone contemptuously mocked the collapse of the British Empire after World War II with the satirical Gaelic poem, Feasgar an Duine Ghil ("The Evening of the White Man"). In Dactylic hexameter lines similar to the odes of Friedrich Hölderlin, Livingstone argued that the Christian God had given the Europeans their colonies during the Scramble for Africa to elevate the quality of life for the native African population. Instead, European colonialists had been corrupted by the twin vices of pride and greed; and the rapidly escalating loss of their colonies after World War II was divine justice and retribution.^[20]

The rise of the National Party and its policy of Apartheid troubled Livingstone deeply. The Poet's nephew, Prof. Ian Livingstone, recalls, "I visited Duncan (from Uganda) at his hotel (the Union Hotel, Pretoria) in 1959. He was resident there. Later, when I was back in Uganda, he sent me a long poem, in English (10 pages) on Sharpeville, where some 77 Africans had been shot dead by police (mostly in the back). This had obviously affected him greatly. Unfortunately, I don't have the copy anymore."^[21]

The Sharpeville massacre also inspired Livingstone to write the poem Bean Dubha' Caoidh a Fir a Chaidh a Marbhadh leis a' Phoiles ("A Black Woman Mourns her Husband Killed by the Police"), in a mixture of the Scottish Gaelic and Zulu languages.^[22]

Death

He died in Pretoria on 25 May 1964 and lies buried in Rosetta Street Cemetery.^[23]

Duncan Livingstone left his books and papers to the State Library in Pretoria. A manuscript of 140 unpublished poems, mainly in Gaelic except for few verses in English and Scots, is preserved as MSB 579 in the National Library of South Africa in Cape Town.^[24] They also reveal that, similarly to his contemporary, South Uist Bard and World War II veteran Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh, Duncan Livingstone made an English-Gaelic literary translation of Thomas Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard.^[25]

Legacy

In a paper about The Gaelic Literature of Argyll, Donald E. Meek describes Livingstone as a, "very fine modern Gaelic poet", who, "wrote some splendidly prophetic verse on the twentieth-century challenges which were to confront white rule in South Africa. He thus has a claim to be included in any forthcoming survey of the Gaelic literature of Africa!"^[26]

In an essay, Scottish professor Wilson MacLeod described Duncan Livingstone as a "poet of significance", who became a perceptive critic of the British Empire, which was best illustrated by his attitude towards its collapse in Feasgar an Duine Ghil. MacLeod notes, however, that Livingstone's anti-colonialist attitude was rare among post-Culloden Gaelic poets, the vast majority of whom were "Pro-British and Pro-Empire", including Aonghas Moireasdan and Dòmhnall MacAoidh, who considered the expansion of the British Empire, "a civilizing mission rather than a process of conquest and expropriation". According to Wilson MacLeod, poetry composed by the Scottish Gaels did not until very recently draw the connections and parallels between their own experiences and those of other Colonized peoples throughout the world.^[27]

References

1. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 726.
2. Edited by Donald E. Meek (2019), The Wiles of the World Caran an t-Saohgail: Anthology of 19th-century Scottish Gaelic Verse, Birlinn Limited. Pages 386-387, 469-470.
3. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 726.
4. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 726.
5. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, pp. 726–727.
6. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
7. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
8. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, page 727.
9. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
10. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
11. Edited by Donald E. Meek (2019), The Wiles of the World Caran an t-Saohgail: Anthology of 19th-century Scottish Gaelic Verse, Birlinn Limited. Pages 252-255.
12. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
13. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 728.
14. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
15. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
16. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
17. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
18. Derek S. Thomson (1983), The Companion to Gaelic Scotland, page 164.
19. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
20. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, pp. 72–75, 728.
21. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, pp. 728–729.
22. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, pp. 74–79, 728.
23. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 727.
24. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, p. 728.
25. Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, Polygon. Page 780.
26. The Gaelic Literature of Argyll Archived 15 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine by Donald E. Meek.
27. Theo van Heijnsbergen and Carla Sassi, Within and Without Empire: Scotland Across the (Post)colonial Borderline, p. 75.

External links

• Duncan Livingstone's "Bean Dubha' Caoidh a Fir a Chaidh a Marbhadh leis a' Phoiles" ("A Black Woman Mourns her Husband Killed by the Police") performed by Mischa Macpherson