33. The Diaries of Rev. Murdo MacDonald, Minister of Durness, 1726–1763

by Ellen Beard

Synopsis

Murdoch MacDonald (1696-1763), minister of Durness Parish in northwest Sutherland from 1726 until his death, kept a detailed diary (in English), parts of which have miraculously survived the vicissitudes of time and Scottish weather to find their way in 2025 to the National Library of Scotland. Among other things, MacDonald was a model evangelical pastor, longtime minister to Gaelic poet Rob Donn MacKay, and father of Joseph and Patrick MacDonald, who compiled and published (respectively) the pathbreaking 1784 collection Highland Vocal Airs.
Based on previously available excerpts, the diary presents an invaluable source for the social history of the mid-eighteenth-century northern Highlands, from a Hanoverian perspective on the 1745 Rising to an inside account of the workings of church and patronage.

Image caption: Balnakeil church, where Maighstir Morchaidh preached

About the speaker

Ellen Beard is a retired American lawyer who studied Gaelic at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and earned a PhD in Celtic from the University of Edinburgh with a thesis on Gaelic poet Rob Donn MacKay (1714-1778). That research led her to ‘Maighstir Morchaidh’ and a prolonged search to locate copies, summaries, and eventually parts of the original diaries in locations from Sutherland to Kinross to Argyll. She has published articles on Rob Donn and Gaelic tune sources for Burns; her current project is an edition of Rob Donn’s social and political commentary for the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society.

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