have composed his poem The Birlinn of Clanranald, which is about the troubled voyage of a Highland War Galley from the ghost town of Loch Eynort in South Uist to Carrickfergus and which remained unpublished until after his death, during the 1750s. Although Gaelic poetry was once assumed to be isolated from the literature of other languages, Alan Riach argues, "With Duncan Ban MacIntyre, you have someone who is illiterate but fluent in Gaelic, and composes his poetry to be sung, to be performed, as music; with Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair and The Birlinn of Clanranald you have an extremely sophisticated poet who reads fluently in a number of languages. So he’s familiar with Homer and Virgil and the great epics of classical literature. He’s familiar with poetry being written in English at the time. He’s familiar with poetry written in Scots. His own writing in Gaelic is part of that continuum, part of that context." The Captain and Chief of Clanranald then granted him land at Camas an t-Salainn and then Sandaig in Arisaig. He frequently travelled to North Uist, where he had a close friend in Iain Mac Fhearchair (John MacCodrum), the famed bard to Sir James MacDonald of Sleat. Death In his 1889 book Moidart: Among the Clanranalds, Father Charles MacDonald recorded the Bard's last moments from the oral tradition of Moidart, "In his last illness he was carefully nursed by his Arisaig friends, two of whom on the night of his decease, finding the hours rather monotonous, and thinking that he was asleep, began to recite in an undertone some verses of their own composition. To their astonishment, however, the bard raised himself up, and, smiling at their inexperienced efforts, pointed out how the ideas might be improved and the verses made to run in another and smoother form, at the same time giving an illustration in a few original measures of his own. He then sank back on the pillow and immediately expired. It was proposed at first to carry his remains to Eilean Fhionnain – Island Finnan, but the project, owing to a severe gale then raging along the coast, had to be abandoned. The Arisaig people thereupon got their own way, and Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair was buried in the cemetery of Kilmorie, close to the present Catholic church of Arisaig." Although the exact location of the Bard's grave is no longer known,