(March 1843-6 Sept. 1913), poet. (Niall Mac Leoid) Born in Glendale, Isle of Skye, Scotland. His father, Donald Macleod (Domhnall nan Oran), was a well known Gaelic poet, and a small-scale merchant, who “occupied a small farm or croft, which he held rent free in virtue of his bardship, with succession to his widow, very probably the last tenure of the kind in Scotland.” Neil Macleod’s formal education was limited to the village school. A writer the year after his death says that Neil “came South some forty-five to fifty years ago and found employment with his cousin, the late Mr. Roderick Macleod, in Edinburgh. Shortly afterwards he became one of the travellers of the firm, embracing Argyllshire, Skye and neighbourhood, and some southern counties in his ambit. He remained at this wearing work until the weight of advancing years made it advisable for him to retire. Constitutionally he was sound and strong. But a bad fall from a trap when on his rounds some years ago, followed soon afterwards by a cowardly assault on his own stairhead by a couple of ruffians, permanently affected his health, and, it is to be feared, shortened his life.” He was married to Katherine Stewart. (three children surviving him) Neil Macleod died in the Morningside district of Edinburgh. The death certificate described Neil’s father as a “Crofter and Merchant” and Neil himself as a “Commercial Traveller (retired).”

     He was known from early years as the Skye Bard. (This title may also have been applied to his father). Neil Macleod was the author of Clàrsach an Doire (1883); it was noted as a remarkable fact in the history of Gaelic literature that this book achieved a 4th edition within his own lifetime, in 1909. At the time of his retirement from his job, his admirers presented this well-known Gaelic poet with “an illuminated address written in Gaelic, and a handsome purse of sovereigns collected in all parts of the world, but mainly in Scotland and South Africa,” but an attempt his friends made at this time to get him a pension from the government as a literary figure was unsuccessful. He was the author of “An Gleann ‘San Robh Mi Òg,” which Henry Whyte (known by the pen name of Fionn) translated into English as “My Bonnie Native Glen,” the song which in its English form became so well known in GC that it was in some sense the Glengarry anthem. The English-language version was the one Glengarrians knew best, but Rhodes Grant mentions the song being sung in Gaelic at a concert in Martintown in 1926 by one of the Maxville Fergusons.

Death certificate, General Register Office, Edinburgh, 2907038CE * obituary tribute including a good biog. sketch, with portrait, The Celtic Review, IX (1913-1914) 151-156 (QF) * biog. sketch, portrait, texts in Gaelic of some of his poems including “An Gleann ‘San Robh Mi Òg,” in Malcolm C. Macleod, ed., Modern Gaelic Bards (1908) 95-124 * Rhodes Grant, ii, 108