Mac an t-Saoir
Sons of the carpenter — and the clan that gave Scotland its greatest Gaelic nature poet
MacIntyre means son of the carpenter in Gaelic — a craft surname that belonged to a proud Argyll family whose greatest son, Duncan Ban MacIntyre, composed poetry about the Highland landscape that has never been surpassed.
The MacIntyre name — Mac an t-Saoir in Gaelic, literally son of the craftsman or son of the carpenter — is a craft surname that became attached to a specific Highland family. The MacIntyres of Glenorchy held their lands in the mountain territory of Argyll, between Loch Etive and the Glen Lyon country, a landscape of outstanding natural beauty that inspired their most famous son to compose some of the greatest nature poetry in any Celtic language.
The MacIntyres were tacksmen of the Campbells of Breadalbane — that is, they held their land as tenants of the great Campbell family, paying rent in service and kind rather than in money. This relationship of dependence was common in the Highland social structure and made the MacIntyres, like many smaller clans, susceptible to eviction when the economics of Highland landowning changed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The clan's traditional territory was centred on Glen Noe, a side glen off Loch Etive in Argyll, and extended through the surrounding mountains. The high mountain country of Argyll — Ben Cruachan, Beinn Dorain, the hills above the head of Loch Awe — is the landscape of MacIntyre family history, and it is the landscape that their greatest poet wrote about with extraordinary precision and love.
Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir — Duncan Ban MacIntyre in English, or Fair-haired Duncan the son of the carpenter — (1724–1812) is considered the greatest Scottish Gaelic nature poet. He was born in Glenorchy, served as a soldier at the Battle of Falkirk (1746) — on the Hanoverian side, reluctantly — and spent his life composing poetry about the mountains of his native Argyll.
His masterpiece, Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain (In Praise of Ben Dorain), is a celebration of the mountain, its deer, and its landscape that has been called the finest nature poem in any Scottish language. Unusually, Duncan Ban was illiterate — his poems were composed and memorised orally and only written down later in his life. He is remembered in Argyll with a monument near Dalmally, close to his native glen.
The MacIntyres, like most Argyll Highland families, suffered during the Clearances of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many emigrated to Canada (Ontario and the Maritimes), Australia (Victoria), and the United States. The name is found throughout the Scottish-Canadian communities of Ontario and Nova Scotia.
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