Review of Blair, Rev. Duncan, 'Parting, Prophecy, Poetry'. With trans. by John A. Macpherson and Michael Linkletter (Sydney, Nova Scotia: Cape Breton University Press, 2013). Pp. 256. ISBN 978-1-927492-43-7, EPUB 978-1-927492-45-1. CA$14.95.

Abstract

This present work is one by the Rev. Duncan Blair (1815-1893). This stimulating publication is shaped quite elegantly and it comes with a translation by John A. Macpherson and Michael Linkletter. While much of the story is concerned with the settlement of these displaced Celts in Canada, readers will be most / as much interested in the account of their nurture in Scotland, as they will be in the circumstances of the life of Duncan Blair, his studies in Edinburgh, his learning of Gaelic, and the phases of his family's bonding with Scotland, despite the removal to Canada. Equally fascinating is the system of links between the Scottish intellectuals, at their native homes in Scotland, in, and with, their several universities in Scotland, and then in their fine parish work in Nova Scotia. This unexpected and very illuminating work is a product of the Cape Breton University Press in Canada, and is most concerned with the Reverend Doctor Duncan Black Blair. Much, too, is concerned with / treats of aspects of the disruption of the clan system in the 18th century, and the concomitant loss of the native schools in which poetry, medicine, law, and music were formally studied, and it is also / constitutes an illuminating account of the ways in which poetry, folk tales, and other aspects of oral tradition (and indeed written and printed matter in the nineteenth century) were to be communicated, since their exile had removed the obvious easy move to print as could and did occur in Scotland.