Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (c. 1698–1770), legal name Alexander MacDonald, or, in Gaelic Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill, was a Scottish war poet, satirist, lexicographer, political writer and memoirist. The poet's Gaelic name means "Alasdair, son of the Reverend Alasdair". His father, also named Alasdair, was known as Maighstir Alasdair ("Master Alexander") which was then the way of referring to a clergyman in Scottish Gaelic. In English, Maighstir Alasdair was known as the "Reverend Alexander MacDonald". Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was born into the minor Scottish nobility () and Clan MacDonald of Clanranald () inside a still extant house at Dalilea, around the dawn of the 18th-century. He was the second son of Maighstir Alasdair (Dr. Alexander MacDonald, 1st of Dalilea) who was the Non-juring Episcopalian Rector of Kilchoan and Tacksman () of Dalilea. MacDhòmhnaill is believed to have been homeschooled and to have received an education in both Classics and the Western canon from his father, before briefly attending University. In addition to being multilingual, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill had the almost unheard of skill for the time in the Highlands and Islands of being able to read and write in the vernacular Scottish Gaelic language. Drawing upon the literature of the other many other languages he knew, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill began composing Gaelic poetry very early. According to Derrick Thomson, even though he would have been only a teenager at the time, a memoir by the poet suggests that he may have fought for Prince James Francis Edward Stuart during the Jacobite rising of 1715. While teaching at a Protestant missionary school at Kilchoan run by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, the bard compiled the first secular book in Scottish Gaelic to be printed: Leabhar a Theagasc Ainminnin (1741), a Gaelic-English glossary. According to literary scholar John Mackenzie, listening to English translations of Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill's Jacobite poetry read aloud allegedly helped persuade Prince Charles Edward Stuart to sail from France to Scotland and begin the Rising of 1745. Beginning with the raising of the Prince's standard at Glenfinnan, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill fought as a military officer in the Clanranald Regiment. During that same uprising, The Clanranald Bard, as he has since been dubbed by Hamish Henderson, was chosen, due to his "skill in the Highland Language", to teach Scottish Gaelic to the Prince. After the defeat of the uprising at the Battle of Culloden, Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill and his older brother Aonghas Beag