Donald John MacDonald, () (lit. "Donald Ian Duncan", fig. "Donald Ian, son of Duncan") legally Dòmhnaill Iain MacDhòmhnaill (7 February 1919 in Peninerine, South Uist, Scotland – 2 October 1986 in Glasgow, Scotland) was a Scottish war poet, philosopher, and folklorist.
According to his friend and editor Bill Innes, "Apart from the war years incarcerated in a German prisoner-of-war camp, he spent his life on the island of South Uist. Yet he was to evolve out of the Bardic tradition into a poet who deserves to rank with the greatest that Gaelic has known."Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Page xxii.
Early life Dòmhnaill Iain MacDhòmhnaill was born, the third of four children, in a croft at Peninerine on 7 February 1919. His father was the famous Seanchaidh Duncan MacDonald (), who was originally from Snishival, but who traced his lineage back via North Uist to the Isle of Skye, and to the MacRury official bards to the Chiefs of Clan MacDonald of Sleat.An Tuil, page 740.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages 288-291. Among folklorists and Celticists, however, Duncan Macdonald was often referred to, after his occupation, as () (lit. "Duncan the Stonemason").Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Page xlii.
Through his mother, Margaret (née MacIntyre), the future poet was the nephew of the poet Donald MacIntyre () and the great-grandson of Angus Maclean ().Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages xxii-xxiii. Through his North Uist ancestors, Dòmhnall was a cousin of World War I soldier poet Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna (1887-1967), whose war poetry heavily influenced his own and about whom Dòmhnall later composed an iconic Gaelic eulogy.
In addition to his immediate and extended family's encyclopedic knowledge of local history, as well as of Hebridean mythology and folklore, Dòmhnall grew up immersed in familial poetry recitations that ran the whole gamut of the great works from the poetic canon of Scottish Gaelic literature, all of whose poets worked their spell and influenced his later work. Due to his familial connections to North Uist, the poetry of Iain Mac Fhearchair, the 18th-century Chief Bard to the Chief of Clan MacDonald of Sleat, was routinely sung and recited and became Dòmhnall Iain's most important early influence. Dòmhnall also grew up, however, constantly hearing the bardic poetry of Iain Lom, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, Duncan Ban MacIntyre, and Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Page xxix.
Of translating his late friend's poetry for a bilingual complete works, Bill Innes has written, "Where Dwelly's dictionary failed, Fr. Allan MacDonald's Gaelic Words and Expressions from South Uist and Eriskay and the vocabulary to Donald MacIntyre's Sporan Dhòmhnaill were often invaluable, but some words had to be traced back to Irish. (It is a sobering reflection of the deterioration of spoken Gaelic in the last hundred years that the Bard's remarkable vocabulary came not from books but from the oral tradition within his own family)."Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages xl-xli.
Closer to home, his maternal uncle, the poet Dòmhnaill Ruadh Phàislig, was another major influence. Although Dòmhnall Iain was never to follow in his uncle's footsteps by translating the verse of Scottish national poet Robert Burns into Gaelic, he did praise the Lowland poet in verse, used the Burns stanza more than once in his later poetry, and often emulated Burns by, "extracting a deeper moral from a simple rural incident."
His first exposure to the English language was through the coercive Anglicisation enforced through corporal punishment at the Howmore school, which Dòmhnall despised attending and routinely played truant. Despite the four-year age difference, Dòmhnall Iain was very close to his younger sister Ann MacDonald (1923–1993), with whom he shared, "a similar irrepressible spirit of fun which often led them into mischief." Even though they both knew that it would later involve a generous helping of corporal punishment at the hands of the schoolmaster, Dòmhnall and Ann routinely played truant together. She often recalled in later years how their favourite ploy was to "borrow" the estate factor's boat for an unauthorised sail on Loch Druidibeg.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Page xxiii.
At the age of fourteen, Dòmhnall happily dropped out of school and joined in the arduous work on his family's croft.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Page xxiv. Similarly to many other young Gaels of his generation, Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh and a few close friends enlisted at age eighteen in the Inverness-shire battalion of the Territorial Army, which allowed them to see something of the Scottish mainland in annual training camps. Two years later, upon hearing of the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Dòmhnall gleefully exclaimed to his sister Ann, "At last!" In later years, however, his poetry would be filled with bitter longing for both his lost innocence and the peacetime culture of South Uist that he had once longed to escape.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Page xxv.
War poet Following combat training at Inverness and Aldershot, he was assigned to the 4th Service Battalion, King's Own Cameron Highlanders, 152nd Infantry Brigade.
According to his friend Bill Innes, however, "According to his contemporaries, [Dòmhnaill Iain's] rebellious nature earned him more than his fair share of bullying during his training in Aldershot. This may have been the trigger for the bitterness towards the English which surfaces occasionally in his poetry."
He was then sent to the Third French Republic in January 1940. Along with his whole division and the fellow Gaelic war poet Aonghas Caimbeul, he was assigned to active service as part of the French IX Corps, saw combat against the invading Wehrmacht during the Fall of France, when he was ultimately among those surrounded by German panzers, and left behind after the rest of the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk.
After Major-General Victor Fortune surrendered the whole 51st (Highland) Division to Major-General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux on 12 June 1940, Dòmhnaill Iain spent the rest of the war as a POW in Nazi Germany.Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, Polygon. Page 780.
While en route to captivity in Germany in June 1940, Dòmhnall composed a lament for his fellow soldiers who had lost their lives before the 51st (Highland) Division surrendered. The result is the Gaelic song poem "Na Gillean nach Maireann" ("The Lads that Are No More"), which he set to the air "O ho nighean, è ho nighean"Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages 16-17. and which bears a strong resemblance to the poem "Tha Mi Duilich, Cianail, Duilich" ("I am Sad, Lamenting, and Full of Sorrow"), which was composed for very similar reasons during World War I by his cousin Dòmhnall Ruadh Chorùna.Domhnall Ruadh Choruna, Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath, Lochmaddy, (1995), page 24-27.
In accordance with the Third Geneva Convention, POWs like MacDonald, who were below the rank of sergeant, were required to work. MacDonald spent his captivity attached to Arbeitskommando ("labour units") and doing unpaid labour, mainly in quarries and salt mines. MacDonald later described, "in harrowing detail", his experiences in enemy captivity in the postwar memoir Fo Sgàil a' Swastika ("Under the Shadow of the Swastika").
Bill Innes later wrote, "Interestingly, he had no hatred of the German people. Although some of their leaders descended to the depths of Satan's angels, he often said he found the ordinary people much like the Gaels in their interests in culture and music. He felt he had more in common with them than with the French - or the English!"Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Page xxvi.
Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh composed many works of oral poetry during forced labour in German captivity, all of which he memorized and was only able to write down and edit for publication following the end of the war and his release.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages xxix-xxx.
Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh's World War II experiences in both combat and as a POW in German captivity left him as a fervent Scottish nationalist with an intensive hatred of colonialism, militarism, and war; which later expressed itself in many works of Gaelic poetry condemning what he considered the wasteful loss of human life due to World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the Troubles in Northern Ireland,Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages xxxiv-xl. and the 1967 Abortion Act.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages 246-251.Ronald Black (1999), An Tuil: Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse, Polygon. Pages 420-425, 781.
With these changed beliefs in mind, Dòmhnall would often say following his return from captivity, "I learned more in those five years than I could have in eighty years of ordinary living."
Post-War life Dòmhnall was demobilised and returned, for the rest of his life, to working on his father's crofts upon South Uist in 1946. His return home after the war was an event he celebrated in multiple song-poems.
For example, in "Moch sa Mhadainn 's Mi Dùsgadh" ("Rising Early"), Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh somewhat facetiously rewrote Scottish national poet Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's "Òran Eile donn Phrionnsa" ("A New Song to the Prince"), which celebrates the arrival in Scotland of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the raising of his standard at Glenfinnan, and the beginning of the Jacobite rising of 1745. In Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh's version, which is sung to the exact same melody, he instead speaks of his joy at waking up on board a ship that was about to return him to South Uist after five years in enemy captivity.Chì Mi / I See: Bàrdachd Dhòmhnaill Iain Dhonnchaidh / The Poetry of Donald John MacDonald, edited by Bill Innes. Acair, Stornoway, 2021. Pages 120-123.