Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mackellar, Mary
MACKELLAR, MARY (1834–1890), highland poetess, daughter of Allan Cameron, baker at Fort William, was born on 1 Oct. 1834. She married early John Mackellar, captain and joint-owner of a coasting vessel, with whom she sailed for several years, visiting many places in Europe, and being often shipwrecked. She settled in Edinburgh in 1876, shortly afterwards obtained a judicial separation from her husband, and dying on 7 Sept. 1890, was buried at Kilmallie, Argyllshire. For the last ten years of her life she tried to make a livelihood by her pen, and she was granted 60l. from the Royal Bounty Fund in 1885. Her 'Poems and Songs, Gaelic and English,' collected chiefly from newspapers and periodicals, were published at Edinburgh m 1880. The Gaelic poems show force and some fancy, but the English pieces, through which there is an undertone of sadness, are of no merit. She also wrote 'The Tourist's Handbook of Gaelic and English Phrases for the Highlands' (Edinburgh, 1880), and her translation of the queen's second series of Leaves from our Journal in the Highlands 'has been described as 'a masterpiece of forcible and idiomatic Gaelic.' A 'Guide to Lochaber' by her gives many traditions and historical incidents nowhere else recorded. She held the office of 'bard' to the Gaelic Society of Inverness, in whose 'Transactions' much of her prose, including her last work, appears. A monument is being erected to her memory at Kilmallie by public subscription.
[Scots Magazine, May 1891; Transactions of Gaelic Society of Inverness, vol. xvi., Introduction; Edwards's Modern Scottish Poets, 2nd ser. p. 196; Murdoch's Recent and Living Scottish Poets.]