" Sir Francis thus grew up interested in and
thoroughly acquainted with all property and county business, and
with his future tenants, very much to his own ultimate advantage
and those who afterwards depended upon him.
Sir Hector also patronised the Gaelic poets, and appointed one of
them, Alexander Campbell, better known as "Alastair Buidhe Mac
Iomhair," to be his ground-officer and family bard, and allowed
him to hold his land in Strath all his life rent free. [The late
Dr John Mackenzie of Eileanach, Sir Hector's youngest son, makes
the following reference, under date of August 30, 1878, to the
old bard: "I see honest Alastair Buidhe, with his broad bonnet
and blue great coat (summer and winter) clearly before me now,
sitting in the dining room at Flowerdale quite 'raised' - like while
reciting Ossian's poems, such as 'The Brown Boar of Diarmad,' and
others (though he had never heard of Macpherson's collection) to
very interested visitors, though as unacquainted with Gaelic as
Alastair was with English. This must have been as early as 1812
or so, when I used to come into the room after dinner about nine
years old." Alastair Buidhe, the bard, was the author's
great-grandfather on the maternal side, and he was himself, on his
mother's side, descended from the Mackenzies of Shieldaig.
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