Author: Maclachlan, Ewen
Biography:
MACLACHLAN, Ewen (1773-1822: ODNB)
Poet, teacher, and Gaelic scholar. He was born on 15 Mar. 1773 at Kilmallie, Inverness-shire. one of six children of a weaver, Donald Maclachlan, and his wife Sarah Mackenzie. He attended the parish school at Kilmallie and subsequently became a private tutor. However, his scholarly potential was recognised and, with the financial assistance of the chief of the Glengarry clan, he was able to attend King’s College, Aberdeen, from 1796. He graduated AM in 1800 and became librarian at King’s College and a teacher at the Aberdeen Grammar School. He was a talented linguist (his books include verse in Latin, Greek, and Gaelic) and the Highland Society of Scotland engaged him to work on the Gaelic-English section of their Scoto-Celtic Dictionary (2 volumes, 1828); he also translated into Gaelic the first seven books of the Iliad (not published until 1937). Although he was disappointed in his ambition of becoming the first professor of Gaelic at the University of Edinburgh (a chair in Celtic studies was founded only in 1882), in 1819 he was appointed headmaster of Aberdeen Grammar School. He died at Aberdeen on 29 Mar. 1822 and was buried at Lochaber; a monument to him was erected at Fort William. (ODNB 13 Nov 2019; ancestry.co.uk 7 Feb. 2025; findmypast.co.uk 7 Feb. 2025; Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness 16 [1889-90] 125-29) SR