Ewan MacEachen

(Highland District) Born in Arisaig, 1769, but brought up in Keith; ordained a priest, 1798, and remained to assist Bishop Cameron until 1st July 1800, when left for Scotland; at Arisaig, Badenoch, Lismore (where he taught for eight years), Strathglass and Braemar (twenty years); retired, 1838, and died at Tombae, 9th September 1849.

The following obituary of Ewan MacEachen is taken from the Scottish Catholic Directory, 1850:

This venerable clergyman, who has descended full of years and of merits to the grave, was born in Arisaig, Inverness-shire, about Christmas, 1769. When he was eleven years of age, he left the Highlands along with his parents, and was sent to a school, then kept at Ruthven, near Huntly. Having manifested a desire to enter the ecclesiastical state, he repaired, in 1788, to the Scots’ College of Valladolid, where he became remarkable for an earnest application to study, and acquired some pre-eminence among his fellow-students, by his proficiency in Logic and Mathematics. He was ordained Priest, in Valladolid, in 1798. He did not, however, return immediately to the Scottish Mission; for the Rev. Alexander Cameron, who was then Rector of that College, being soon afterwards consecrated Bishop, as Coadjutor to Bishop Hay, detained him in Spain till the autumn of 1800. His chief occupation during these two years, was to attend Bishop Cameron, while discharging the various Episcopal duties of the Diocese, at the request of the Bishop of Valladolid, who was then aged and infirm.

On his return to his native country, the first charge to which he was appointed, was the Braes, or rough bounds of Arisaig, where he remained but one year. He was removed, in 1801, to Badenoch, where he remained till 1805 or 1806. During this part of his Missionary life, he had no fixed place of abode, but went about among the Catholic families within his jurisdiction, attended by his boy or gillie, who served at Mass, and carried the vestments, &c. in a wallet on his back. From Badenoch, he was sent, in quality of Professor, to the Seminary of Lismore, where Bishop John Chisholm then resided. In 1814, he succeeded Mr. Philip Macrae, in the Mission of Aigas, in Strathglass, from which charge he was, on the departure of Mr. Colin Grant for America, transferred, in 1818, to Braemar. In 1838, his increasing infirmities having rendered him unfit for active exertion, he was relieved from all Missionary duty by the Right Rev. Dr. Kyle, and retired, first, to Ballogie, where he lived till 1847, when he went to reside at Tombae, and there died, after a lingering illness, on the 9th September, 1849.

Besides his labours as a clergyman, in which he distinguished himself by a zealous discharge of all his pastoral duties, Mr. Maceachen has conferred great benefits, especially on the Highland portion of the Scottish Catholics, by the numerous works which he published. Being an excellent Gaelic scholar, of which language he was an enthusiastic admirer; and being, during his whole life, particularly fond of study, he employed all the time he could spare from his other avocations, while on the Mission, in translating, into Gaelic, several works of piety and religious instruction, for the use of Catholics, in the Highlands, who do not understand English. These translations are—1mo, The Abridgment of Christian Doctrine, which was printed while he was Missionary at Aigas; 2d, The Spiritual Combat, published in 1835; 3d, The Following of Christ, in 1836; 4th, a Prayer Book, which was prepared by him, but published and, perhaps, somewhat altered, by another clergyman; 5th, The Declaration of the British Catholic Bishops, published by the Catholic Institute ; 6th, a small Gaelic Dictionary, printed in 1842. Besides these, he published, in 1832, an excellent work on Arithmetic, in English. His more important Gaelic translations, still in Manuscript, are the New Testament and Challoner’s Meditations.