Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Malcolme, David
MALCOLME, DAVID (d. 1748), philologist, was licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Haddington on 11 Jan. 1700, was called in 1704, and ordained on 28 March 1705 to the ministry of Duddingston, near Edinburgh. He was rebuked on 10 Nov. 1721 for celebrating the marriage of George Drummond, afterwards lord provost of Edinburgh, to Catherine, daughter of Sir James Campbell of Aberuchill, Perthshire, and was deposed on 24 March 1742 for deserting his charge two years without leave. His claim on the ministers' widows' fund was disallowed. He died on 7 Feb.1748 (Scots Mag. x. 50). On 12 Aug. 1736 he was elected F.S.A. ([Gough,] Chronolog. List Soc. Antig. 1798, p. 6).
Malcolme was an accomplished philologist, especially in regard to the Celtic languages. Although not a highlander, he was so remarkably exact in the Erse etymology of place-names that, without seeing the places, he could tell their precise situation (Gough, British Topography, ii. 487 n.) In 1732 he proposed publishing a Gaelic dictionary, to be based on the manuscript collections of Edward Lhuyd [q. v.] (Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, i. 166), but the design went no further than a prospectus and specimen, though it received encouragement from a committee of the general assembly in 1737. He published anonymously ‘An Essay on the Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland,’ 8vo, Edinburgh, 1738, which he reissued in a greatly enlarged form as ‘Letters, Essays, and other Tracts, illustrating the Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland, together with many curious discoveries of the Affinity betwixt the Language of the Americans and the ancient Britons to the Greek and Latin. … Also Specimens of the Celtic, Welsh, Irish, Saxon, and American Languages,’ 15 pts. 8vo, London, 1744.
[Hew Scott's Fasti Eccl. Scot. vol. i. pt. i. pp. 111–12; New Statistical Account of Scotland, i. 387.]