(?-11 May 1905), clergyman. Born in Argyleshire, Scotland. Parents: Mr and Mrs Duncan MacNish. He came to Canada with his parents as a child. After education at the University of Toronto (B. A., 1863, M. A., 1864), and at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow (B. D. from the former, 1867), he was ordained in Scotland, 1868. On 25 Nov. 1868, he was inducted as assistant and successor to the Rev. Hugh Urquhart of St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Cornwall. Dr Urquhart died in 1871, and Neil MacNish remained minister of St. John’s till he retired from the active ministry in 1903. The new St. John’s Church was built in Cornwall during his ministry. He was married in 1876 to Anna Harriet Campbell. (children) He received the degree of LL. D. from the University of Toronto, 1874. At his death, the mourners included his brother, Donald MacNish, formerly an MLA.

     The Rev. Neil MacNish was fluent in Gaelic, and sometimes preached in Gaelic in GC. Donald Harvey MacVicar (1831-1902), principal of the Presbyterian College in Montreal, stated in a college circular that MacNish was “recognized, not only as the most distinguished Celtic scholar on the American continent, but also as one who has few equals across the Atlantic.” In the early 1880s Neil MacNish was lecturing at the Presbyterian College on the language and literature of the Highlands. His entry in the Morgan biographical dictionary mentions his publication of various articles on Celtic language and literature. It was remembered that he and Fr George Corbet were good friends, who visited each other and enjoyed talking Gaelic together. At MacNish’s funeral, “Among the congregation and in the cortege which followed the remains to the cemetery were the Very Rev. Vicar General Corbet…” An obituary said that “Though an honored preacher and pastor of the Presbyterian denomination, his scholarly attainments made him known to many who did not see eye to eye with him as regards beliefs in religious doctrine; but could not fail to see in him a man of literary attainment much above the average, a man whose death they mourn as a distinct loss to all that tends towards the higher education of our people. As one of the leading Gaelic scholars in Canada, he occupied a unique position in the literary world and his contributions to the press and scientific journals were greatly appreciated by a class who are yearly becoming all too few.” The Gaelic student Edward G. Cox, who met MacNish in Cornwall in 1904, wrote in his diary that MacNish was “a delightful man.” It is an interesting question whether it was an intervention by MacNish that brought Cox to Dunvegan.

     A recent search of the Canadian library system identified 10 publications by Neil MacNish. These included three printed sermons, A Sermon Preached in St. John’s Church, Cornwall, on the Occasion of the Lamented Death of the Late Minister of that Church, the Rev. Hugh Urquhart, D. D. (14 pp., Montreal, Lovell, 1871), A Sermon Preached in St. John’s Church, Cornwall, on the 26th November, 1893, before the Sons of Scotland (8 pp., Cornwall, Ont., Standard, 1894) and Gaelic Sermon: Preached before the Gaelic Society of Toronto, 14th June 1896 (16 pp., Toronto, Imrie, Graham, 1896). The other 7 publications were booklets or offprints on The Gaelic Topography of Damnonia (15 pp., 1884), The Gaelic Topography of Wales and the Isle of Man (15 pp., 1884?), Umbria Capta (21 pp., 1887?), The Picts (10 pp., 1897), The General History of the Celts (7 pp., 1898), A Topographical Argument in Favour of the Early Settlement of the British Isles by Celts, Whose Language Was Gaelic (24 pp., n.d.), and The Language and Literature of Brittany (8 pp., n.d.). While most certainly this is not a complete list of his published writings, how near it is to being complete is impossible to guess. The library search necessarily excluded articles in learned journals, magazines and newspapers, unless they had been separately published as offprints, or had been cut out of their journals or so forth and bound up as if they were individually-published pamphlets. By way of addition to the above, it may be noted that least two addresses of his have been printed, one of 1873 to the Presbytery of Glengarry, and his inaugural address as president of the Celtic Society of Montreal, printed with the society’s constitution and by-laws in 1885.

     It is to be regretted that he did not, so far as is known, take Glengarry Gaelic as a subject of study.

Cornwall Standard 12 & 19 May 1905 (portrait), (QF-1), Glengarry News 19 May 1905 (QF-2) * Morgan (1898) 713 * MacMillan, Kirk: index (portrait) * Whyte, i, 312 , based on the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae * The library search described in the text above was kindly made in the spring of 2000 by the National Library of Canada at the request of the present author for titles of books, offprints, pamphlets and other publications of Neil MacNish which had in one way or another been entered over the years in Canadian library catalogues as being in some sense book-type publications (i. e., publications that could be treated by library cataloguers as being books, however brief). * Dr MacNish of Cornwall presents a paper (read by Prof. Loudon) to the Canadian Institute on whether the poems of Ossian were of Scottish or Irish origin, Toronto Globe, 13 Feb. 1882 in “City News” * scheduled to be one of the speakers at the 1894 Lochiel centennial, Witness 4 Sept. 1894 * Fr Corbet: DTL Standard Freeholder 12 Nov. 1949, based on Cornwall Freeholder 14 Nov. 1890; Cornwall Standard report on MacNish funeral * “Neil MacNish, the parson of Cornwall, an authority on Semitics,” mentioned W. J. Loudon, Sir William Mulock (1932) 37, 50, 61 * “at least two addresses,” 1873: unbound pamphlet (8 pp.) Dunvegan Museum; 1885: listed BLC 225:371