Forgotten Ground Regained

O.D. (Duncan) Macrae-Gibson

O.D. (Duncan) Macrae-Gibson (1928-2007), an Old English scholar, studied at Oxford when Tolkien taught there, spent most of his professional career at the University of Aberdeen. He also developed an Old English correspondence course and book (still available for purchase), Learning Old English: A Course with Audio-Visual CD and Exercises.
Dr. Macrae-Gibson's colleague, Derrick McClure, provided the following short biography to the University of Aberdeen Press:
  • O. D. (Duncan) Macrae-Gibson was a stalwart specimen of a declining species, the academic specialist in Old English and Old Norse. His abounding enthusiasm was for Old English, and this passion fuelled his entire teaching and research career. Completion of his Oxford doctorate was followed by a short period on the academic staff there, and subsequently by a move to Leicester. Duncan, however, though a Londoner by birth, came of Scottish stock; and the call of his ancestral homeland brought him in 1965 to the University of Aberdeen, where he was to spend the greatest part of his scholarly career, maintaining the teaching of Old English, Middle English and Old Norse with legendary enthusiasm. Naturally, a scholar whose teaching and published research, notably editions of The Rhyming Poem and Of Arthour and Merlin, had earned him an unchallengeable reputation would not abandon his work after retirement. His interest in hiking and hill-walking proved an asset during summers camping in Iceland and exploring the battlefields of the Sagas, and during the exhaustive examination of the Maldon terrain which led to a landmark article ‘How historical isThe Battle of Maldon?’ (Medium Ævum XXXIX:2, 89-107). His musical gifts too were occasionally turned to professional use: he is surely the only scholar in recent times who could sing ‘Caedmon’s Hymn’ accompanying himself on a reconstructed Sutton Hoo harp. Duncan Macrae-Gibson was a man of many parts – scholar, sportsman, musician, linguist – whose contribution to the field of Old English is enormous; but those who had the privilege of knowing him personally will always remember him as an inspiring and imaginative teacher, a much-admired colleague and friend, and a devoted family man.
This biography actually sells Dr. Macrae-Gibson's accomplishments short; he was among the pioneers who applied computational analysis to the corpus of Old English texts, and his work on his course in Old English reflected a profound interest in computer-assisted language learning.
In the mid-1970s, Dr. Macrae-Gibson joined Ða Engliscan Gesiðas, a British society devoted to everything Old English. This led to a collaboration in which the society helped to promote his correspondence course. But Dr. Macrae-Gibson also helped educate the society’s membership about alliterative verse. In the early 1980s, he published a six-article series in the society’s journal, Wiðowinde, entitled “The Natural Poetry of English”, which seems to have functioned both as a manifesto for a modern alliterative revival and a crash course in Old English poetics (focusing on the esthetic effects of rhythmic variation). It had quite an impact. One of the society’s members, Pat Masson was moved to compose the following wittily ironic response (Withowinde 68, p. 6):
Doubling of dactyls is doomed to oblivion;Linking of letters is launched with a bang:All future odes will use only the form in whichCædmon and Cynewulf cunningly sang.
Before Macrae-Gibson’s article series had finished running, the Gesithas announced the Cædmon Prize – a competition for the best poetry in the Old English style, with separate award categories for Old English and modern English submissions. The first prize was awarded in 1984; Dr. Macrae-Gibson served on the prize committee until 1994.
You can access reprints of Dr. Macrae-Gibson’s article series, “The Natural Poetry of English”, from the following links or all together in Issue 2, Spring, 2024: