Clan Ranald Regiment where he was placed in command of 50 "cliver fellows" whom he personally recruited in Ardnamurchan. Amongst his other responsibilities, the Bard was appointed to teach Scottish Gaelic to the Prince due to his "skill in the Highland Language." Like his brother Aonghas Beag, the Bard converted during this period from Protestantism to the still illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland. According to Father Charles MacDonald, who interviewed Alasdair's surviving relatives, the Bard's conversion was due to the example and influence of Margaret Cameron MacDonald, his devoutly Roman Catholic sister-in-law. Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair fought alongside the Clanranald men for the duration of the campaign which ended with the crushing defeat of the Highland Clans at the Battle of Culloden. The Year of the Pillaging In the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, it is believed that the Bard remained with the Prince for at least part of the latter's flight. John Lorne Campbell believes that the Bard may have been one of the survivors of the Clanranald Regiment who joined the Prince at Glenbiastill in Arisaig (), four or five days after the disaster of Culloden. Due to the "arbitrary and malicious violence" that Hanoverian Redcoats inflicted, the aftermath of Culloden is still referred to in the Highlands and Islands as Bliadhna nan Creach ("The Year of the Pillaging"). After the Prince escaped to France, both the Bard and his elder brother Aonghas Beag were fugitives in their own country; both Alasdair's house and his brother's mansion at Dalilea were plundered by Hanoverian redcoats. Even the bard's cat was killed lest it might provide food for his wife and children. According to non-juring Episcopal Bishop Robert Forbes, who interviewed the Bard for a collection of Jacobite memoirs, "Captain MacDonald and his wife and children wandered through hills and mountains until the act of indemnity appeared, and in the time of their skulking from place to place his poor wife fell ill with child, which happened to be a daughter, and is still alive." The Bard's conversion to Catholicism had caused him to be mocked and reviled while engaging in Flyting, or the exchange of insults in verse, with a fellow Scottish Gaelic poet called "The Mull Satirist." Even though the Mull Satirist accused Alasdair MacDhòmhnaill of becoming a Catholic solely out of political careerism and a desire to curry the favor of the House of