Celtic music lovers: does anyone know if Donald McGillavry was a real person?
April 112010
Silly Wizard recorded a wonderful song called Donald McGillavry, apparently a traditional Jacobite song about a bard/hero who traveled around causing trouble. I found two distinct sets of lyrics, but both tell essentially the same story. Both sets of lyrics are available at http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/d/donaldmcgillavry.shtml. I was wondering if he was based on a real person or just a fictional folk hero.
It seems that Donald Macgillavry is not an actual traditional Jacobite song, but was written by James Hogg and included in his 1819 work ‘Jacobite Relics of Scotland’, without initial acknowledgement of its inauthenticity!
Additionally, it does not seem that he wrote the song based on any real historical figure.
Here’s some excerpts from the information I found; see the links for more!
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[1980:] In 1819, a victim of ‘Tartan Fever’, Hogg published his collected ‘Jacobite Relics of Scotland’ [...]. The work was universally condemned by the Whig periodicals although one poem which Hogg inserted of his own, Donald MacGillavry was commended, affording him some amusement. (Liz Taumann, notes The McCalmans, ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’)
[1988:] It is well known [...] that [James Hogg] passed off his own Donald Macgillavry as a relic of outstanding merit and undoubted authenticity [...]. Donald Macgillavry was published in the first series of the ‘Relics’ with a highly appreciative note. ‘This’, proclaimed Hogg, ‘is one of the best songs that ever was made…a capital old song, and very popular’. He then proceeded upon an inquiry, as solemn as it was specious, into the historical background, unearthing several apparently genuine Macgillavrys – John M’Gillavry, executed at Preston in 1716, a Colonel M’Gillavry of the MacIntosh regiment in the ’45 – suggesting that ‘a bard connected with that associated clan may have written it’. But the note is designed to do more than put a gloss of authenticity upon the song. Its delightful wrong-headedness seems intended (as do various of the other notes in the ‘Relics’) as a skit on the unsmiling pedantry apt then as now to afflict popular-song studies. Its author was, after all, one of the most masterly parodists in the country:
"The Clan-Macgillavry is only a subordinate one, so that the name seems taken to represent the whole of the Scottish clans by a comical patronymic, that could not give offence to anyone, nor yet render any clan particularly obnoxious to the other party, by the song being sung in mixed assemblies. It may, however, have been written in allusion to that particular clan, small as it was, as we see Macgillavry of Drumglass mentioned in some copies of the Chevalier’s Muster-Roll."
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”After all’, said this avowal, ‘between ourselves, Donald M’Gillavry, which he has selected as the best specimen of the true old Jacobite song, and as remarkably above his fellows for ‘sly, characteristic Scotch humour’, is no other than a trifle of my own, which I put in to fill up a page.’"
http://www.mysongbook.de/msb/songs/d/donald.html
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Also, see this link for info about the MacGillivray Clan
(But note, at the end, that they do not realize that James Hogg wrote the song himself!)
Crest Badge: A cat sejant, proper. (See above)
Motto: Touch not the cat bot a glove. (Touch not the cat without a glove).
Gaelic Name: MacGhille-brath
Origin of Name: Gillie Bhrath (son of the servant of judgment).
Plant Badge: Boxwood, Red Whortleberry
War Cry: Dunmaglas
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The MacGillivrays took a prominent part in the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745, and at Culloden, Alexander, chief of the clan, led the Clan Chattan regiment which almost wiped out the left wing of the Hanoverian army. The burial place of the MacGillivrays of Dunmaglass is in Dunlichity churchyard.
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James Hogg in his ‘Jacobite Relics’, places this song as belonging to one of the Jacobite risings, either in 1715 or 1745. MacGillavry of Drumglass is
one of the chiefs mentioned in the Chevalier’s Muster Roll of 1715, and in the Forty-Five rebellion the powerful clan Maclntosh as led by a Colonel
MacGillavry. A bard belonging to this clan may well have written the song; on the other hand, the name might have been used as a convenient
designation for loyal highlanders.
http://rootie.geeknet.com/mac2.html