Alice MacDonell


Alice MacDonell was a Scottish poet who claimed to be Chieftainess of the MacDonell clan of Keppoch, and was recognised as bardess to that clan.
Her full name and title was Alice Claire MacDonell of Keppoch, or in Scottish Gaelic Ailis Sorcha Ni' Mhic 'ic Raonuill na Ceapaich. She wrote verses as “Alice C. MacDonell of Keppoch”.

Life

Born in 1854 at Kilmonivaig in the Scottish Highlands, Alice MacDonell was the youngest child and eighth daughter of Angus McDonnell and his wife Christina. Her great-great grandfather was the Keppoch who led the MacDonalds at Culloden.
She was educated by private tuition, and at the Convent of French Nuns in Northampton and at St. Margaret's Convent, Edinburgh. She gave early signs of the gift of poetry, stringing together couplets on incidents she had heard, her favourites being tales of battle and chivalry. She was steeped in the Jacobite sentiment of her ancestors, composing about the heroics of the Rising, though she also included more contemporary examples such as The Highland Brigade at the Battle of the Alma, The Rush on Coomassie, and the Gordon Highlanders at Dargai Heights.
She was Bardess to the Clan MacDonald Society. Her poetry was composed in English, with occasional use of nominal Gaelic titles.
She did not marry.
In 1911, she was living with her sister Josephine in Streatham, London.
She died on 12 October 1938 in Hove, East Sussex, England.

Works

An incomplete list of her works includes

Books of poems

  • Lays of the heather: poems, dedicated to Prince Rupert of Bavaria, London: E. Stock from Songs of the mountain and the burn, London: J. Ouseley
  • The royal ribbon, Edinburgh: T. Allan
  • The crushing of the lilies, Edinburgh: T. Allan
  • For God and St. Andrew, Edinburgh:
  • The Glen o’ dreams, Edinburgh: T. Allan

Poems

  • The Weaving of the Tartan poem in Celtic Monthly
  • Culloden Moor
  • Lochabair gu Bràch introductory poem to Loyal Lochaber and its Associations, by W. Drummond Norie. Glasgow: Morison Brothers
  • The mother land poem in the year book of the MacDonald Society

Articles

  • Deirdre: The Highest Type of Celtic Womanhood, from The Celtic Review Vol.8 No.32 p. 347
  • Unforgotten, in The Irish Monthly Vol.56 No.656 p. 65

Songs