Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/133

Mackay the Enemy upon the day of Battell, written by Lieutenant-General Mackay, and Recommended to All (as well officers as soldiers) of the Scots and English army. In xxiii articles. Published by his Excellencies Secretary.' Reprinted at Edinburgh by John Reid in 1693. A volume printed by the Bannatyne Club in 1833 contains his 'Memoirs touching the Scots Wars,' 'Memoires écrites à sa Majestie Britannique touchant la dernière Campaigne d'Irlande,' 'Lettres ou Dépêches écrites, lorsqu'il commandoit en chef les troupes de sa Majêstie en Écosse,' and an Appendix of 'Letters relative to Military Affairs in Scotland in the years 1689 and 1690,' Many of his letters are printed in 'Leven and Melville Papers' (Bannatyne Club), in Macpherson's 'Original Papers,' and in 'Hist. MSS. Comm.' 12th Rep. App. pt. viii.

 MACKAY, JAMES TOWNSEND (1775?–1862), botanist, was born in Kirkcaldy, Fifeshire, about 1775. After being educated at the parish school he was trained as a gardener, and having filled several posts in Scotland went to Ireland in 1803. He visited the west of the island in 1804 and 1805, and as a result published a 'Catalogue of the Rarer Plants of Ireland' in the 'Transactions' of the Royal Dublin Society for the following year. This catalogue he enlarged into the 'Catalogue of the Indigenous Plants of Ireland,' published in 1825 in the 'Transactions' of the Royal Irish Academy, which was again the basis of his 'Flora Hibernica,' published in 1836, the cryptogamic portion of which was by Drs. Harvey and Taylor. The governors of Trinity College, Dublin, having determined to establish a botanical garden, Mackay was recommended to them as a curator, and he held the post from 1806 until his death. Soon after his appointment he was elected an associate of the Linnean Society, and in 1850 the university of Dublin bestowed upon him the degree of LL.D. He was attacked by paralysis about 1860, and died of bronchitis in Dublin 25 Feb. 1862.

Mackay discovered several species of plants new to the British Isles, and contributed largely to Sir J. E. Smith's 'English Botany' (1790–1814). His herbarium is preserved at Dublin. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to perpetuate his name, which is now borne by a genus of seaweeds, Mackaya, so named by Dr. Harvey, and by a species of heath, Erica Mackaiana. Nine papers by him upon Irish plants, several from the reports of the British Association, are enumerated in the 'Royal Society's Catalogue,' iv. 161; but his only independent work was the 'Flora Hibernica.'

 MACKAY, MACKINTOSH (1800–1873), Gaelic scholar, born in 1800, son of Captain Alexander Mackay of Duard Beg in Sutherland, was educated for the ministry, and was presented to the parish of Laggan, Inverness-shire, in 1825. He superintended the printing in 1828 of the Gaelic dictionary of the Highland and Agricultural Society, which is still the standard dictionary of that language. In the following year he published at Inverness the first edition of the 'Poems' of Robert Mackay, Rob Donn [q. v.] In recognition of these services the university of Glasgow gave him the degree of LL.D. In 1832 he was translated to the parish of Dunoon. He left the established church at the disruption, but retained the free church charge of the same parish. He was elected moderator of the free church assembly in 1849. Five years after he emigrated to Australia, became minister of the Gaelic church at Melbourne in 1864 and at Sydney in 1866. Returning to Scotland he became minister of the free church at Tarbert, Harris, and died in 1873. He had the honour of the friendship of Sir Walter Scott, who describes him as 'a simple, learned man and a Highlander, who weighs his own nation justly, a modest and estimable person.' On visiting Abbotsford in May 1831, Mackay drew the attention of Scott and Lockhart to the poems of Rob Donn, and thus led to the review of them by Lockhart in the 'Quarterly,' July 1831, for which he supplied several prose translations. Scott recommended the manse at Laggan as a suitable place, and Mackay as a suitable tutor to his friend, Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, for his son, William Forbes Skene, the historian of Celtic Scotland, then a youth of nineteen, who went to Laggan and studied Gaelic. Mackay thus acted as foster-father to the Gaelic poet of the last and the Celtic historian of tue present century.

 MACKAY, ROBERT, commonly called (the Brown) (1714–1778), Gaelic poet, was born at Allt-na-Caillich,  