Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr (15 January 1869 – 5 January 1960) (Scottish Gaelic: Ruaraidh Arascain is Mhàirr) was a Scottish nationalist political activist, writer and Scottish Gaelic language revival campaigner.

Early life

Ruaraidh Erskine was born The Honourable Stuart Richard Joseph Erskine at 1 Portland Place, Brighton, East Sussex, England . He was the third of the four children born to William Macnaghten Erskine, 5th Baron Erskine (1841–1913), an army officer, and his wife, Caroline Alice Martha Grimble. The family were descendants of the Erskine Earls of Buchan.

Erskine claimed that he learned to speak Scottish Gaelic from his childhood nanny, who came from Harris, and that this kindled the enthusiasm which was to be a main hallmark of his career. His imagination was fired early by the Irish nationalist movement and these combined influences, together with his family's Scottish roots, led to his development as a prominent Gaelic nationalist, whose compelling dream was of a self-governing Celtic Scotland. a weekly newspaper. The paper was published for less than a year, but printed works by a number of notable artists, including Walter Sickert and James NcNeill Whistler. It advocated nationalism, peace, free trade and Irish Home Rule, and opposed female suffrage and socialism.

In 1891, he stood as a candidate for the Buteshire constituency as a "Scottish Tory Home Ruler", but by October of that year, he had withdrawn.

In 1901, Erskine began to edit a new bilingual newspaper, Am Bàrd, which ran until July of the following year. In 1904, he launched Guth na Blaidhna, a bilingual periodical which promoted Scottish Gaelic language revival, Catholicism and a twentieth-century Counter-Reformation. It was published for 21 years, finally going out of business in 1925. Between February 1908 and February 1909 he published the weekly Gaelic language newspaper Alba, which covered a range of political and cultural matters, including land, crofting, fishing, Scottish Gaelic-medium education, early Scottish history and Gaelic song.

Further reading

  • Cairns, Gerard (2021), No Language! No Nation! The Life and Times of the Honourable Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr, Rymour Books, Perth,
  • Alex, Murray (2023), Decadent Conservatism: Aesthetics, Politics and the Past, Oxford University Press.

See also

  • Hugh MacDiarmid
  • Compton MacKenzie

References

  • "Erskine, Stuart Richard [known as<nowiki> Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar,"</nowiki>] Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  • "Connections across the North Channel: Ruaraidh Erskine and Irish Influence in Scottish Discontent, 1906-1920" at The Irish Story
  • "Snake Women and Hideous Sensations: The Strange Case of Gaelic Detective Short Stories by Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar," Scottish Literary Review
  • "A Fitting Offering to the Gaelic Thalia or Melpomene”: Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar and Drama in Scottish Gaelic," Litteraria Pragensia
  • "Neo-Jacobites, Decadents and Fin de Siècle Nationalism," The History of Scottish Cosmopolitanism at the Fin de Siècle (video)
  • Gerard Cairns, No Language! No Nation! The Life and Times of the Honourable Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr (Perth: Rymour Books, 2021)
  • "Masculinity in Ruaraidh Erskine's Short Stories in the Context of Fin-de-siècle Detective Fiction," Association for Scottish Literature (video)