Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macintosh, Donald
MACINTOSH, DONALD (1743–1808), Scottish nonjuring bishop, born in 1743 at Orchilmore, near Killiecrankie, Perthshire, was son of a cooper and crofter. After attending the parish school, and acting for some time as a teacher, he went to Edinburgh in the hope of bettering his fortune. In 1774 he was acting as one of Peter Williamson's penny postmen; he next found employment as a copying clerk, and was subsequently tutor in the family of Stewart of Gairntully. For some years from 1785 he was employed in the office of Mr. Davidson, deputy-keeper of the signet and crown agent. On 30 Nov. 1786 he was elected to the honorary office of clerk for the Gaelic language to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and held it until 1789. In 1789 Bishop Brown of Doune, the sole representative of the nonjuring episcopal clergy of Scotland, fixed on Macintosh as his successor, ordaining him deacon in June 1789, and thereafter priest. He appears to have had no fixed residence, but moved from place to place, as a missionary or untitled bishop of Jacobite episcopacy, till he finally settled in Edinburgh. He made an annual tour through the Perthshire highlands as far north as Banff, administering the sacraments and religious instruction among the scattered remnant who owned his pastoral authority. In 1794 Macintosh unsuccessfully raised an action in the court of session against the managers of the fund for the relief of poor Scottish episcopal clergymen, who had deprived him of his salary (9l. a year). In 1801 he was chosen Gaelic translator and keeper of Gaelic records to the Highland Society of Scotland, with a salary of 10l. The catalogues of Gaelic MSS. belonging to the Highland Society, and others given in vol. iii. of the London Highland Society's 'Ossian,' pp. 666-73, were compiled by Macintosh, who also transcribed some of the manuscripts. He died unmarried at Edinburgh on 22 Nov. 1808 (Scots Mag. lxx. 968), the last representative of the nonjuring Scotch episcopal church, and was buried in the Greytriars churchyard. His library of books and manuscripts, numbering about two thousand volumes, he bequeathed to the town of Dunkeld. The bequest was accepted, and the library is still maintained in Dunkeld under the name of The Macintosh Library, to which numerous additions have from time to time been made. None of Macintosh's manuscripts, however, appear to have found their way to Dunkeld, and their fate is unknown.
Macintosh was compiler of a modest little volume entitled 'A Collection of Gaelic Proverbs and Familiar Phrases; . . . with an English Translation . . . illustrated with Notes. To which is added The Way to Wealth, by Dr. Franklin, translated into Gaelic,' 12mo, Edinburgh, 1785, which, though in several respects defective, was a valuable contribution to Celtic literature, being the first collection of Celtic proverbs ever made. The translation of Franklin's 'Way to Wealth' was done by Robert Macfarlane, an Edinburgh schoolmaster, by desire of the Earl of Buchan, to whom the book is dedicated. Macintosh contemplated a new edition some time before his death. The so-called 'second edition,' by Alexander Campbell (1819), is very discreditable. Another collection based on Macintosh's was published under the editorship of Br. Alexander Nicolson in 1881, and again in 1882. Macintosh did something, too, in the way of collecting old poetry. One piece secured by him in Lochaber in 1784, 'Ceardach Mhic Luin,' appears in Gillies's 'Sean Dana,' p. 233.
[Nicolson's Gaelic Proverbs, 2nd edit., Appendix, pp. 416-21.]