This is a letter published in the Public Forum, of the Guardian Newspaper,
Charlottetown Prince Edward Island on October 4, 1952, referencing the
Religious poetry of Ewen Lamont.
Sir, - In your issue of the 13th of last November,
there appeared in the Forum, a letter written by W. D. Lamont of Glasgow
Scotland, pointing out to members of the Lamont family living on Prince
Edward Island, that they could claim on her maternal side a blood relationship
to Princess Elizabeth whose recent visit to us still lingers as a happy
memory for us all. It is for me, however, a sad comment in connection which
this letter to have to say that one branch of this family, like branches
of other noted families, has almost completely vanished from our Island.
I refer here to the Lamonts of Orwell.
Older residents of our island, like myself, who
know something of the record of the Lamonts at home and abroad will, I
judge, feel that their relationship to our present Queen is a credit to
both parties concerned. For example of this record, we have only to recall
that a few years ago it was announced in the Guardian that a son of Murdcoh
Lamont of Glasgow, formerly of Prince Edward Island, was appointed as British
adviser to the Egyptian Government and one that only a man of great learning
and dignity could properly fulfill. In the brief report of this appointment
that appeared in the Guardian Mr. Lamont was mentioned as a brilliant Oxford
student and winner of an Oxcord scholarship: and it was also stated that
his father before his son's college days had been a brilliant and outstanding
student in arts and theology at Edinburgh University, winning a prize there
that was open to students from every approved college in the British Empire.
The Rev. Murdoch Lamont too, was mentioned as a brother of the late Rev.
Donald Lamont, one time minister in the Central Parish of the Prince Edward
Island Church of Scotland, now a parish in the Presbyterian Church of Canada.
He was the author of two books on religious topics, viz.: Seven Great Questions,
and Where are Our Dead?
Both of these ministers were sons of the late Ewen
Lamont of Orwell, one of the more distinguished persons mentioned, by the
way, in Malcolm Macqueen's "Skye Pioneers". He was by profession both a
farmer and public school teacher, and was considered in his own day to
be a splendid English and Gaelic scholar, with a strong bent for religious
poetry. He was a loyal follower of the Scottish Pioneer minister and evangelist,
Rev. Donald Macdonald, and wrote a brief sketch of his minister's life
which was published and widely read, among the descendants of the minister's
first followers, about sixty years ago, that is to say about thirty years
after the minister's death.
As is well known among the older residents of our
Island, Rev. Donald MacDonald in co-operation with several of his elders
composed all the hymns that were sung by the minister's immediate followers.
Those composed by Mr. MacDonald himself, generally consisted of two or
more opening verses that may be considered comparatively good poetry, and
these were followed by twenty or more prosaic verses that taken together
with the first ones really constituted a sermon. It is quite true that
there and there among the prosaic verses of each hymn one or more verses
might be found that might be termed real gems of poetry, but the main purpose
of the long hymns was nevertheless that they might serve as constant theological
sermons.
I have in my possession, or rather in my memory,
a somewhat lengthy poem composed about sixty years ago by Ewen Lamont on
the prospect of his own death.
To Part two of
this letter, and the Poem by Ewen Lamont
Back
to Main