Duncan Blair
Duncan Blair
Rev. Duncan B. Blair (1815-1893) was an excellent linguist, a good poet and a devout man. "As an accurate writer of Gaelic he had no superior," espoused A. Maclean Sinclair. Blair composed sacred and secular poems, laments and songs and prose, many of which were published in Mac-Talla, the famous Gaelic newspaper published in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Among his contributions to Mac-Talla were a series of essays on the Highland Clearances. Blair's poems have been studied and presented elsewhere over the years, but less is known about his prose. Now, transcribed in the original Gaelic with English translations, Fògradh, Fàisneachd, Filidheachd / Parting, Prophecy, Poetry includes Blair's articles about the Clearances, an account of a 16th-century seer who some say foretold of the Clearances, essays about Blair's travels around the Maritimes and Ontario and a number of his poems, all as published in Mac-Talla.