39024: The Death of Donald of Luachair (English)

An account of Donald of Luachair; there may be some confusion between generations.

Dugald Macaulay the tacksman at Brenish had a large family. The three eldest went to University and their mother went to visit them. Travel was not as easy in those days and while on her visit she developed tetanus and died. Dugald was left with a large family on the farm in Brenish. A young girl came to keep house for him and she fell pregnant and their child was called Donald of Luachair. His father raised him and when he had grown up his father gave him the Luachair farm.

This girl would not marry Dugald, for whatever reason, but he married another and had a family of boys. There were three Donald’s in that family and they all had different mothers. Young Donald was an ancestor of DR Macaulay the medical officer who is in Leurbost. They left Uig for Lemreway or Orinsay. In the old days the Uig sheilings were over there, the family was later cleared and settled on the north of Loch Erisort. That was how they came to be living in Leurbost.

Young Donald was a very progressive individual. When he died he was coming across Loch Hamnaway with the boat’s rudder in his hand. It was a clear day and they were rowing, and he died sitting steering the boat. Perhaps he died of heart problems as he was very old.

When Nicholson the farm tenant in Carnish who shared boundaries with him in Kinchusil heard that Young Donald had died, he asked: “Does anybody know” he said “if anybody checked if there was a tuft of grass from Ceann-Chuiseil in his pocket?”

Young Donald was an incredibly pleasant person and somebody wrote a song for him, a lament, and that song was recorded in the Celtic magazine in Glasgow in 1880 or 1882.

Rev D Macaulay