ABSTRACT
Hector MacNeill (1746–1818) was best known as a popular poet and song-writer. He was born in Rosebank in the West Highlands and educated at Stirling. He studied for a few months in Glasgow before being apprenticed in Bristol. Sent on to work at St Christopher’s in the West Indies, MacNeill was dismissed by his employer for making sexual advances towards his wife. MacNeill remained for many years in the West Indies with diminished prospects, and even ‘had to stoop to the ungenial employment of a negro-driver’ (Chambers, Eminent Scotsmen, p. 369). Returning to Scodand from Jamaica around the age of forty, MacNeill published a pro-slavery tract entitled, On the Treatment of the Negroes in Jamaica (1788). Beginning a poetic career with The Harp: A Legendary Tale (1789), he achieved success with the poem Scotland’s Skaith, or the History o’ Will and Jean, Ower True a Tale! (1795) that sold ten thousand copies within the month and went through fourteen editions within the year. This was followed by a sequel, The Waes o’ War; or, The Upshot o’ the History o’ Will and Jean (1796), and some loco-descriptive poetry, The Links o’ Forth, or, A Parting Peep at the Carse o’ Stirling (1799). MacNeill also wrote a number of love-songs. His two-volume poetical works were published (1801), followed by other volumes of verse and a two-volume novel, The Scottish Adventurers, or the Way to Rise (1812). Byron deemed MacNeill’s poems ‘deservedly popular’ (Allibone, Critical Dictionary, p. 1193).
