Hector Macneill

Hector Macneill (22 October 1746 – 15 March 1818) was a Scottish poet born near Roslin, Midlothian, Scotland. Macneill had been the son of a poor army captain and went to work as a clerk in 1760 at the age of fourteen. Soon, he was sent to the West Indies and served as assistant secretary from 1780 to 1786.

After he returned to Scotland, he wrote various political pamphlets, two novels, and several poems, The Harp (1789), The Carse of Forth, and Scotland's Skaith, the last against drunkenness, but is best known for his songs, such as My Love's in Germany (My Luve's in Germanie)My Boy Tammy, I lo'ed ne'er a Laddie but ane, and Come under my Plaidie.

Hector Macneill died in Edinburgh in 1818.

Hector's Profile from "The Modern Scottish Minstrel" (1855) by Charles Rogers

Hector Macneill was born on 22 October 1746, in the villa of Rosebank, near Roslin. His father had obtained a company in the 42nd Regiment, with which he served in Flanders. Retiring with his wife and two children to Rosebank, a few years after the birth of his son Hector, he moved to a farm on the banks of Loch Lomond.

In his eleventh year Hector wrote a drama, after the manner of John Gay; and David Doig of the grammar-school of Stirling, advised his father to educate him for a liberal profession. But the family could not afford this.

A rich relative, a West India trader of Bristol, paid the captain a visit; and offered to retain Macneill in his employment. After two years' preparatory education, he was sent to Bristol at age 13. He sailed to island of Saint Kitts, provided with recommendatory letters, if he preferred employment on land. With a son of the Bristol trader he remained for a year; and then sailed for Guadaloupe, where he continued in the employment of a merchant for three years, till 1763, when the island was ceded to the French.

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