DUNCAN BAN MACINTYRE

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 September 1931, Page 3

DUNCAN BAN MACINTYRE

A PROPOSED MEMORIAL. A movement of interest to Highlanders in all parts, of the world has been sei afoot with the object .of erecting a memorial to the greatest of all Gaelic bards and song writers, Duncan Ban Maclntyre. The scheme, which has been initiated by the Glenorchy Club, aims at erecting a cairn over the ruins of the bard’s humble birth-place at Dalmally, Argyllshire, at a cost of £250, and a public appeal for subscriptions is being made. Duncan Ban (or “Fair-haired”) was born in 1724 and died in 1812. Beginning life as a forester on the Bicadalbane estate, he joined a fencible regiment and, much against, the .Jacobites''in the 1745 rising, being pre-

sent at the Battle of Falkirk, which he celebrated in a poem. Maclntyre wrote Gaelic in a style which competent judges agree has not been equalled since the time of Ossian, and his published works were all taken down in writing by others from the bard’s oral dictation. One of his finest pieces “The Last Farewell of the Hills” was written when Maclntyre was seventy-eight. He died in Edinburgh, aged eighty-eight, serving for years before as a member of the historic old Edinburgh City Guard.