Author: Macpherson, Donald
Biography:
MACPHERSON, Donald (1787-1863: findmypast.com)
His volume of original poetry, Melodies from the Gaelic, dedicated to Major-General Samuel Swinton and dated from Chelsea, London, on 28 May 1824, identifies the author as a former sergeant in the 75th [originally 74th] Regiment of Foot and an army veteran of 14 years. That regiment served in India 1788-1807 and afterwards in Sicily and Greece. Macpherson was probably recruited in Scotland about 1807. Some of his poems describe scenes in Greece. He was born in Laggan, Invernessshire, on 6 Feb. 1787 and baptised on 8 Feb., the son of Janet and John Macpherson. Nothing is known about his education but his preface explains that his poems had been written between the ages of 16 and 32. After retiring from the army he settled in London and eventually established himself as a bookseller. In 1819 he married Mary Ray at St. Margaret, Westminster. At the time of the 1841 Census they were living in Ebury St., Pimlico, with four children aged between 20 and 5: Ossian, Agnes, Sarah Sophia, and John. A member of the London Highland Society to which he may have delivered a lecture on Druidical worship, he published a second edition of his Melodies by subscription in 1834. (The NLS holds the ms of that lecture, together with some of his notebooks of Gaelic poetry.) He died at 54 Ebury St. and was buried at the Brompton Cemetery on 6 Mar. 1863, “aged 74 [sic].” (findmypast.com 17 Feb. 2023; Derick S. Thomson, ed., The Companion to Gaelic Scotland [1994])