Dàin Iain Ghobha

The immediate occasion for discussing Iain Gobha and his verse (although there may be weightier reasons, as we shall see) arises from the connection with the Glasgow University Department of Celtic of Dr George Henderson, who was Lecturer in the Department from 1906 to 1912.He had, before his appointment, edited a collection of Iain Gobha's verse and had had it published in two volumes: Dàin Iain Ghobha (Glasgow 1893-96).There had been earlier publication of some of Iain Gobha' s work, both in Scotland -mostly religious elegies and single poems -and in Canada, where two more substantial selections were produced, one in Toronto in 1861 (including a brief account of the author), and one in Baddeck in 1885. 1 Henderson's edition, however, is the major source both for the verse and for our information about Iain Gobha's life: it makes extensive use of written sources, including family and other correspondence, and of oral material collected at a time when there were people still alive who had known the poet and the circumstances of his life, and the events in which he had participated.The work was reprinted by The Knox Press, the publishing agency of the Free Church of Scotland, in 1967. 2 Iain Gobha was born in Rodel in South Harris in the earlier 1790s (the exact date is not recorded) and he lived in that area until his death in 1852.He was married three times.His first wife, Marion MacLean, whom he married in about 1820, died c. 1829, leaving two sons and two daughters.His second wife, Catherine MacLeod, also died untimely, leaving two young children.After her death he was accused by a local woman of being the father of her children, an accusation which occasioned him considerable distress, though he was eventually cleared after an 1 See D. MacLean, Typographia Scoto-Gadelica (Edinburgh, 1915), 291-2, for detailed bibliographical information.2 The two volumes were printed as one and retained the original pagination.The loose paper cover gives the title in English as The Poems of John Morison, but the title page gives the original Gaelic title Dàin Iain Ghobha, with the English title following.This is the most commonly available version of the work and so it will be used as the source for quotations from the verse, etc, under the short reference title Dàin.6 Dàin, 1, 160-65 and 301-15.7 This left the movement equipped to provide a supportive input as later land-related conflict developed.See for example D. E. Meek, 'The Land Question answered from the Bible; the land issue and the development of a Highland Theology of Liberation', Scottish Geographical Journal 103.2 (1987), 84-9.

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