The Gaelic heroine and rebel poet of resistance and hope to be honoured at new cultural centre in Highlands

Mairi Mhor nan Oran - Great Mary of the Songs - who was also known in English as Mary MacPherson - became one of the most powerful voices in the Gaeldom with her words and rhymes becoming politically effective in bringing the cause of land reform to attention.

Now, the life and legacy of the 19th century poet is to be marked in Inverness, where a new artwork will honour her outside the new Gaelic cultural and community centre, Cultarlann Inbhir Nis. The centre, the first Gaelic cultural and community hub in the Highland capital, will be housed in an old kirk in the centre of the city and Mairi, along with her shoemaker husband, Isaac, are buried in the graveyard. A £5,000 commission for the artwork is now open.

After being imprisoned for 40 days following allegations of stealing clothes from her employer, the owner of a large property in Inverness, Mairi, a widowed-mother-of-five, campaigned for the rest of her life to clear her name with the poet pouring her own sense of injustice into her work to highlight the consequences of landlordism and the wider struggle of the Gael during a time of immense change across the Highlands and Islands.

“It was the injustice I suffered that brought my poetry to life,” Mairi once said.

It was only after her imprisonment, aged 50, that she started to compose seriously with Mairi later considered the bard of the Highland land movement and the rent strikes and land raids that helped to define it.

Her poems included ‘Tha mi sgith de luchd na Beurla’ - or I am tired of the English Speakers. Her voice was dipped in hardship and a resistance to authority while also retaining a sense of hope and optimism for her people and her home.

Her songs are believed to have contributed to the success of The Crofters’ Party, the parliamentary arm of the Highland Land League, which gained six MPs in the general elections of 1885 and 1886.

Maggie Mullholland, chair of Cultarlann Inbhir Nis, said: “Having one of the great 19th century Gaelic bards buried in the chapel yard and within a stone’s throw of our new Gaelic Cultural Centre, we seek to have her and the significant contribution she made to Gaelic literature, recognised within the town of Inverness and the wider Highlands.

“She was a passionate and defiant bard who condemned the Highland Clearances and was very much involved in the struggle for land reform, a cause still as relevant today as it was then.”

Mairi was born in Skeabost Skye in 1821 where she witnessed a changing island beset by clearances, emigration and depopulation during much of her life.

A trained nurse, she moved to Inverness in 1847 and married Isaac Macpherson before taking a job as a domestic servant. The job led to ‘the great personal turmoil” of her life after she was accused of stealing items from her employer and sentenced to 40 days in prison.

Her supporters believed Mairi was an innocent woman, claiming there was evidence that a resentful co-worker had set her up.

On release from prison, Mairi moved to Glasgow and Greenock, where the urban Gaelic community, comprised mainly of exiled Highlanders drawn to the industrial heartlands for work, was becoming immersed in the theory and practice of land agitation.

She returned to Skye in 1882 and continued to support the land struggle. She published several songs in favour of Charles Fraser- Mackintosh, a lawyer, land developer and Gaelic champion who was was returned as the Crofter’s Party member for Inverness-shire in 1885.

He is one of the land campaigners named in Mairi’s poem Nuair a chaidh na ceithir ùr oirre and it is understood that he offered her legal assistance at the time she was accused of theft.

In 1891, landowner Macdonald of Skeabost paid to produce a collection of Mairi’s poems with more than 100 works featuring in the volume.

Up to 9,000 words were written down on her behalf. Mairi could not write herself but it is said she knew 18,000 lines of poetry by heart.

Following her death in 1898, the Inverness Courier recounted a “woman of striking appearance” who, during her latter years of her life, always carried with pride a “handsome” silver-mounted walking stick.

That has been gifted to her by Professor John Stuart Blackie, who befriended Mairi on a trip to Skye where he fundraised for the establishment of the Celtic chair at Edinburgh University.

Other accounts have also recalled Mairi’s fondness for a dram - and a litte snuff with a drop of the tobacco often spotted on her blouse.

Although an inscribed flagstone to Mairi, as one of Scotland’s greatest wordsmiths, was unveiled in Makars’ Court in Edinburgh two years ago, many felt her unflinching poetry and song was neglected for too long.

The late Sorley Maclean – celebrated as a great bard in Gaelic and English – said that her greatness came in the “fusion of social and private passion” with her works moving both the “sophisticated and the unsophisticated” of those who knew her language.

Murdo Campbell, chairman of the The Gaelic Society of Inverness, said: ‘We are delighted to be involved with the Mairi Mhor project . Mairi Mhor though originally from Skye has strong connections with Inverness having married and brought up her family there.

“Her poems relate to the Clearances and persecution of crofters . It is fitting that she has something to remember her by in Inverness.”