Association copy of a
rare Scottish-Canadian work
[MacKay, Angus] Oscar Dhu DONALD
MORRISON, THE CANADIAN OUTLAW; A TALE OF THE SCOTTISH PIONEERS [MEGANTIC
OUTLAW]
s.l. [Quebec], s.n.,
1892
1st Edition 8vo
(19cm), 118pp, portrait of Donald Morrison and three other illustrations,
publishers black patterned cloth, all edges red, rebacked with period cloth.
Original endpapers preserved. Ownership inscription of ‘John Leonard,
Sherbrooke’ to free endpaper. Leonard (1855-1935) was the lawyer who defended
Donald Morrison in court, and in 1905 he became Sherbrooke’s mayor. His name is written in a different hand on
the title page (perhaps a gift inscription from the author/publisher?). Some marks and
wear to edges and corner of the cloth with small areas of loss. Binding sound. Paper generally very clean. Small burn mark to p.36 affecting one letter.
A sound copy with
important provenance of a book which details, as an epic ballad, events
surrounding the longest manhunt in Canadian history. Donald Morrison (1858 - 1894) was a son of
Scottish immigrants from the Isle of Lewis.
The loss of the Morrison family farm in Lac Megantic (in the Eastern
Townships of Quebec) in the late 1880s triggered a series of events that
culminated in Morrison shooting and killing Deputy Jack Warren, and his being
harboured from the authorities for ten months by the local Scottish Hebridean
community. Morrison was eventually
caught and convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 18 years hard labour. He
contracted tuberculosis in prison and, several hours after being released on
grounds of clemency, he died on June 19th 1894.
Morrison was buried in the Gisla cemetery on the Stornoway road in
Megantic.
Angus MacKay
(1864-1923) was a Canadian poet also of Lewis immigrant stock. MacKay’s Gaelic pseudonym - “Oscar Dhu,”
- is a nod to his mother tongue.
John Leonard, though
of Irish decent, spoke Scottish Gaelic as well as the Highlanders in the region
and the remarkable lengths he went to to aid Morrison in his plight is detailed
in Bernard Epps’ biography ’The Outlaw of Megantic’ (Toronto, 1973). He features in the poignant closing paragraph
of Epps’ book: ‘There, surrounded by the woods and hills of home, Donald at
last lay down to rest. There the people bade him a last Soiridh! [farewell] -
the friends and relatives who had sheltered him, his father, now eighty-two
years old, who would lie beside him in less than a year, his mother,
seventy-six, destined to go in hard and keep on going for twelve years yet,
John Leonard, his friend and lawyer, and Augusta Mclver [his sweetheart] still
waiting for a question she would never hear.’ Copies of this work are rare in
commerce. Not in the NLS.
[ref:1539]£395