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Sinclair, Alexander
MacLean, Presbyterian minister, author, Gaelic scholar, and educator; b.
1 March 1840 in Glen Bard, N.S., son of John Sinclair and Christy
MacLean; m. 1 Aug. 1882 Mary Ann Campbell in Sunny Brae, N.S., and they
had four sons and one daughter; d. 14 Feb. 1924 in Hopewell, N.S.
Alexander MacLean Sinclair’s parents, both immigrants from Scotland,
separated before his birth. Christy Sinclair was a daughter of the
renowned Gaelic bard Iain MacGhillEathain* (John MacLean), and the child
was apparently named after Alexander MacLean of Coll, who in Scotland
had been the bard’s patron. Young Alexander was raised by his mother at
her parents’ home in Glen Bard in a thoroughly Gaelic milieu; he rarely
saw his father.
From an early age he attended the local school in Beaver Meadow under
the tutelage of Norman MacDonald, who had immigrated to Nova Scotia in
1843. The late Donald Cameron, who was raised in Beaver Meadow, recalled
Sinclair telling him in Gaelic that on wintry days in his boyhood he
would walk home from school behind his friend William MacDonald, whose
large frame – “he had shoulders as wide as a gate” – would shelter him
from blowing snow. At the school only English was used and Gaelic was
not permitted even during recess. The boy learned to read the language
by means of the Lord’s Prayer, which he knew by heart in Gaelic.
School was not the only place where young Alexander received his
education. “My other teachers,” he recalled, “were two near neighbours:
John MacDonald, an Taillear Abrach [the Lochaber tailor], and John
MacDonald, an Domhnullach Ur [the new MacDonald]. . . . The one could
not read at all; the other certainly was not a reader of historical
books. But they both had a number of stories of ghosts, strong
Highlanders, and clan feuds; they also had bits of old Gaelic songs by
heart. I listened to them many a night and became pretty well acquainted
with all their lore.” In addition to his studies he spent his time in
outdoor pursuits: hunting, fishing, trapping, and snaring. “The first
money I ever received was from mink skins,” he noted in his diary.
During these years the family attended religious services at Barneys
River (Kenzieville), where the minister was the Reverend Duncan Black
Blair, a renowned Gaelic scholar and poet.
By age 15 Sinclair was sufficiently accomplished to be given the charge
of 90 students at the schoolhouse in Lochaber, for which he was to
receive an annual stipend of $120. In 1856 he began his preparation for
the ministry by entering Pictou Academy. He enrolled three years later
at the Free Church College in Halifax and in 1861 at the Normal School
in Truro, from which he graduated as a teacher. He taught a summer term
in 1862 at Canning, where he delivered a lecture on education that was
highly acclaimed. In 1863 he entered the Theological Hall of the
Presbyterian Church in Halifax and attended courses in chemistry and
political economy at Dalhousie College. He was licensed to preach by
Blair after a rigorous examination before the Presbytery of Pictou on 2
May 1866. He took up his first charge, Springville and Sunny Brae, on 25
July 1866. He would remain with this congregation, preaching in Gaelic
and English, for the next 22 years.
Along with his dedication to the ministry, Sinclair had a lifelong
devotion to the Gaelic language. As early as 1862 a ten-stanza Gaelic
poem of his had appeared in the Antigonish Casket under the signature
“A. McG. Sinclair, Gleann-Bard.” In 1863 he contributed a biographical
account of his grandfather MacLean to the Halifax edition of John
Mackenzie’s Sàr-obair nam bàrd Gaelach: or, the beauties of Gaelic
poetry, and lives of the Highland bards . . . (Glasgow, 1841) that was
published by his former teacher, Norman MacDonald. In 1869 he journeyed
to Scotland, Ireland, England, and France. In Scotland he met his
grandfather’s relatives and wrote down from their dictation in Gaelic a
considerable amount of genealogical and literary information. His
travels there convinced him that those who had emigrated to Canada and
their descendants were far better off than those who had stayed in
Scotland.
Throughout the 1870s Sinclair continued to collect Gaelic poetry, such
as the poem “An adharc [The horn] by his grandfather which he wrote down
in 1873 from the oral recitation of Mary Forbes of Beaver Meadow and
which would otherwise have been lost. He also developed an interest in
local history. In 1874 he took extensive notes from Finlay Grant of
accounts of the early history of the East River region. During this time
he worked assiduously on the two important Gaelic manuscripts that his
grandfather had brought from Scotland. The first of these was written in
the 18th century by Dr Hector Maclean and was given to the bard by
Maclean’s daughter. It contains some 3,600 lines of poetry, much of
which is unknown from other sources. The other manuscript was the bard’s
own collection, which, according to Sinclair, “contains about 17,700
lines, exclusive of the collector’s own poems.”
In 1880 Sinclair reissued a collection of the Gaelic hymns of John
MacLean and included hymns by Blair, the Reverend James Drummond
MacGregor, and John MacGillivray. The following year he published
Clàrsach na coille [Harp of the forest], which presents MacLean’s
secular poetry, both the material composed in Scotland and that written
in Nova Scotia, in addition to a few items by other poets, including the
bard’s son Charles and Sinclair himself. This was the first important
collection of Gaelic secular poetry largely composed in Canada. For
several years Sinclair conducted a Gaelic-language column in the Pictou
News. The first sentence of the initial column on 7 Dec. 1883 decries
the lack of a Gaelic newspaper in Canada.
In the 1880s Sinclair received offers from a number of congregations and
in May 1888 he accepted the pastoral charge of Belfast, P.E.I., where
descendants of many of the Selkirk settlers of 1803 [see James Williams]
still kept the Gaelic language and traditions alive. Throughout the
following decade and the early years of the 20th century, while
attending to his congregation, Sinclair published substantial
collections of Gaelic poetry and a number of genealogical studies. These
include Comhchruinneachadh Ghlinn-a-Bhaird: the Glenbard collection of
Gaelic poetry (Charlottetown and Montreal, 1890); The Gaelic bards from
1411 to [1715] (Charlottetown, 1890); The Gaelic bards from 1715 to 1765
(Charlottetown, 1892); Orain le Iain Lom Mac-Dhomhnaill: poems by John
Lom MacDonald (Antigonish and Glasgow, 1895); The Gaelic bards from 1775
to 1825 (Sydney, N.S., 1896); Na bàird Leathanach: the Maclean bards
(2v., Charlottetown, 1898-1900); The Clan Gillean (Charlottetown, 1899);
The Sinclairs of Roslin, Caithness, and Goshen (Charlottetown, 1901);
Mactalla nan tùr [Echo of the towers] (Sydney, 1901); Filidh na coille
[Poet of the forest] . . . (Charlottetown, 1901); Dain agus orain, le
Alasdair Mac-Fhionghain [Poems and songs, by Alexander MacKinnon]
(1902); and The Gaelic bards from 1825 to 1875 (Sydney, 1904). He also
contributed important articles to the Transactions of the Gaelic Society
of Inverness in Scotland, the Celtic Review (Edinburgh) and the Celtic
Monthly (Glasgow). He published essays in other journals as well and in
such newspapers as the Oban Times (Oban, Scot.), the Eastern Chronicle
(New Glasgow, N.S.), the Presbyterian Witness (Halifax, etc.), and the
Casket.
Sinclair retired from his charge in 1906 and returned to Nova Scotia.
For several years between 1907 to 1914 he lectured on Gaelic language
and literature in the fall semesters at St Francis Xavier College in
Antigonish and in the winter semesters at Dalhousie. Manuscript notes of
some of his lectures reveal his solid knowledge of comparative
Indo-European philology. (Sinclair used the term “Indo-Keltic” just as
German philologists used the term “Indo-Germanic.”) Among his students
at St Francis Xavier were Angus Lewis Macdonald, later premier of Nova
Scotia, and Patrick Joseph Nicholson, who became president of the
university and an important supporter of the Gaelic language both there
and in his weekly Gaelic article in the Casket. Sinclair received an
honorary lld degree from Dalhousie in 1914.
On 14 Feb. 1924, just two weeks before his 84th birthday, Sinclair
passed away at his home in Hopewell. He was survived by his wife, whom
he had married in an all-Gaelic service more than 40 years earlier, and
by all of his five children. He will be remembered as a pioneer in the
field of Celtic studies in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. His
publications brought to the world nearly all the material in the
manuscripts of Dr Hector Maclean and John MacLean. Although modern
critics may find fault with the way in which he sometimes “improved” his
sources, it should be taken into account that he was a self-made Gaelic
scholar who had no formal training in the subject. His promotion of
Gaelic language and literature earned for him the respect of
contemporary Celtic scholars throughout the world.
Kenneth E. Nilsen
The Clan Gillean
By The Rev. A. MacLean Sinclair (1899) (pdf) |
