I OPENED The Scotsman yesterday to find a feature about one Donald MacDonald, an American expat who was a journalist in both his native country and in Scotland.

I immediately realised that the Donald MacDonald in question had been one of my lecturers at Napier College in Edinburgh when I studied journalism in the 1980s. Now 83 years old, Donald is a lovely bloke who was always more journalist than lecturer, and full of very funny and entertaining anecdotes.

Like most Americans living in Scotland, he was always more passionate about his ancestry than most natives are, so he took the massacre of Glencoe very personally. That was when 38 men of the MacDonald clan were murdered by the Earl of Argyll’s Regiment of Foot, led by Robert Campbell. A further 40 women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned.

The order for the massacre was traced, after a government enquiry, to John Dalrymple, First Earl of Stair. I only relate this because when I called Donald yesterday, after reading the article, I reminded him that he once told our class that he personally made a point, on a semi-regular basis, of commemorating the date of the massacre (13 February, 1692) by visiting a pub in Kirkliston where the First Earl of Stair is buried, then relieving himself on the villain’s grave.

A friend to whom Donald also related the story was inspired to pen this amusing limerick:

On the day of Glencoe for a dare
In a manner most devil-may-care
You went to Kirkliston
And gleefully pissed on
The grave of the Master of Stair