Duncan Livingstone

The Poet's great-great-great grandfather and namesake, Duncan Livingstone, fought under the command of Allan Maclean of Torloisk at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. With Duncan also fought his brothers, brother-in-law, and his father, who was killed there. According to the local oral tradition, Duncan Livingstone eloped with Anne MacLean, whose father Hector was the disinherited eldest son of Donald, 10th Chief of Clan MacLean of Coll and whose mother was Isobel, the only daughter of Ruairi Mear, 17th Chief of Clan MacLeod of Dunvegan. After the elopement, Duncan and Anne were granted the mill at Ensay by MacLean of Torloisk. Duncan is said also to have composed the song Mo Rùn Geal Dìleas in honor of his wife.[1]

The poet's grandfather, Alexander Livingstone, was further said to have been the uncle of the African explorer and missionary David Livingstone.[2]

Duncan Livingstone was born in his grandfather's Croft at Reudle, near Torloisk on the Isle of Mull. His father, Donald Livingstone (Dòmhnall Mac Alasdair 'ic Iain 'ic Dhòmhnall 'ic Dhonnchaidh) (1843–1924) was a joiner and stone-mason. The Poet's mother was Jane MacIntyre (Sine nighean Donnchaidh mhic Iain) (1845-1938), a native of Ballachulish who was said to be the grandniece of the Gaelic poet Duncan Ban MacIntyre (1724-1812). The Bard was the third of seven children and the outlines of the house where he was born may still be seen today.[3]

Duncan's parents had married in Glasgow in 1872. His mother had worked as a domestic servant. His father had lived in Canada and worked in the construction of timber houses. When Duncan was 18-months old, his family moved to Tobermory, where he was educated. He later recalled, however, "The scholars of my day were thrashed if they spoke Gaelic in the school or it's environs."[4]

When Livingstone was 16, his family moved to 126 Talisman Road in Glasgow. Duncan first became a clerk and then a stonemason's apprentice. When the Second Boer War broke out, he learned that the Laird of Torloisk was raising a cavalry regiment and immediately enlisted.[5]

During combat against the Boer Commandos, Duncan Livingstone was shot through the ankle and returned, lamed, to Glasgow. At this time, he carved the inscription Tigh Mo Chridhe, Tigh Mo Gràidh ("House of My Heart, House of My Love") on the lintel of the main door of Saint Columba Church of Scotland on St. Vincent Street in Glasgow.[6]

On 3 March 1903, the poet left Southampton on the S.S. Staffordshire on a voyage back to South Africa. He never returned to Scotland and was soon joined in South Africa by his brothers John and Alex. The three brothers briefly owned a house building company in Johannesburg, but disbanded their partnership and the poet joined the Public Works Department. His brother John went on to prosper through gold mining, while Alex became a sugar cane farmer in Natal. [7][8]

In 1911, Catriona (Katie) MacDonald of Pennyghael in Mull, came to South Africa and became the Poet's wife. They were never to have children, however.[9]

There was a lively community of Scottish Gaels in Pretoria when the poet first settled there and he, his wife, and both of his brothers were very active in both Scottish and Gaelic circles. Duncan and Alex Lingstone edited a Gaelic page in the Caledonian Society's journal. Duncan also founded the Celtic Society of Pretoria, which was a literary association consisting of forty members with Scottish, Irish, and Welsh origins. Also Duncan established a Celtic section in the State Library, Pretoria, which consisted by 1954 of almost a thousand books.[10]

According to literary historian Ronald Black, Duncan Livingstone's poetry was doubtlessly assisted by the Gaelic broadcasts which he began making from South Africa for the BBC during the early 1930s. His first poem to be published was A fàgail Aifric in 1939. He published three other poems in Gaelic about the war and also wrote a lament, in imitation of Sìleas na Ceapaich's Lament for Alasdair of Glengarry, for his nephew Pilot Officer Alasdair Ferguson Bruce of the RAF, who was shot down and killed during a mission over Germany in 1941.[11]

Catriona died in September 1951 and Duncan, who adored her, never recovered from the blow. He spent his retirement both writing and playing bowls.[12]

Livingstone contemptuously mocked the collapse of the British Empire after World War II with the satirical Gaelic poem, Feasgar an Duine Ghil ("The Evening of the White Man").[13]

The rise of the National Party and its policy of Apartheid troubled Livingstone deeply. The Poet's nephew, Prof. Ian Livingstone, recalls, "I visited Duncan (from Uganda) at his hotel (the Union Hotel, Pretoria) in 1959. He was resident there. Later, when I was back in Uganda, he sent me a long poem, in English (10 pages) on Sharpeville, where some 77 Africans had been shot dead by police (mostly in the back). This had obviously affected him greatly. Unfortunately, I don't have the copy anymore."[14]

The Sharpeville massacre also inspired Livingstone to write the Gaelic poem Bean Dubha' Caoidh a Fir a Chaidh a Marbhadh leis a' Phoiles ("A Black Woman Mourns her Husband Killed by the Police").[15]

He died in Pretoria on 25 May 1964 and lies buried in Rosetta Street Cemetery.[16]

In a paper about The Gaelic Literature of Argyll, Donald E. Meek describes Livingstone as a, "very fine modern Gaelic poet", who, "wrote some splendidly prophetic verse on the twentieth-century challenges which were to confront white rule in South Africa. He thus has a claim to be included in any forthcoming survey of the Gaelic literature of Africa!"[17]

In an essay, Scottish professor Wilson MacLeod described Duncan Livingstone as a "poet of significance", and one who became a perspective critic of the British Empire, which was best illustrated by his indifferent attitude towards its collapse in Feasgar an Duine Ghil. Macleod notes, however, that such an attitude was rare among Gaelic poets, the vast majority of whom were supportive of continued existence of the empire, including poets such as Aonghas Moireasdan and Dòmhnall MacAoidh. According to him, the ideas espoused by Livingstone went into decline after the Battle of Culloden and the defeat of the Rising of '45.[18]