Charles Mackay was a Scottish poet, journalist, and song writer.

Life

Charles Mackay was born in Perth, Scotland

Perth, Scotland

Perth is a town and former city and royal burgh in central Scotland. Located on the banks of the River Tay, it is the administrative centre of Perth and Kinross council area and the historic county town of Perthshire...

. His father was by turns a naval officer and a foot soldier; his mother died shortly after his birth. Charles was educated at the Caledonian Asylum, London, and at Brussels, but spent much of his early life in France. Coming to London in 1834, he engaged in journalism, working for the Morning Chronicle

Morning Chronicle

The Morning Chronicle was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London, England, and published under various owners until 1862. It was most notable for having been the first employer of Charles Dickens, and for publishing the articles by Henry Mayhew which were collected and published in book format in...

from 1835–1844 and then became editor of the Glasgow Argus. He moved to the Illustrated London News

Illustrated London News

The Illustrated London News was the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper; the first issue appeared on Saturday 14 May 1842. It was published weekly until 1971 and then increasingly less frequently until publication ceased in 2003.-History:...

in 1848, becoming editor in 1852.

He published Songs and Poems (1834), a History of London, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a history of popular folly by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions"...

(1841), and a romance entitled, Longbeard. He is also remembered for his Gaelic Etymology Of The Languages Of Western Europe and the later Dictionary of Lowland Scotch in which he presented his "fanciful conjectures" that "thousands of English words go back to Scottish Gaelic". The linguist Anatoly Liberman

Anatoly Liberman

Anatoly Liberman is a professor in the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses in linguistics, etymology, and folklore. Liberman is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia. His main graduate works, written under the auspices of the...

 has described MacKay as an "etymological monomaniac" commenting that "He was hauled over the coals by his contemporaries and never taken seriously during his lifetime". His fame chiefly rested upon his songs, some of which, including "Cheer, Boys, Cheer", were set to music by Henry Russell

Henry Russell (musician)

Henry Russell was an English pianist, baritone singer and composer, born into a distinguished Jewish family.-Biography:...

 in 1846, and had an astonishing popularity.

Charles Mackay wrote the popular poem You have no enemies, you say?:

You have no enemies, you say?

Alas, my friend, the boast is poor,

For those who have mingled in the fray

Of duty, that the brave endure,

Must have made foes.

If you have none,

Small is the work that you have done.

You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,

You’ve dashed no cup from purjured lip,

You’ve never set the wrong to right.

You’ve been a coward in the fight.

Mackay visited North America in the 1850s publishing his observations as Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour of the United States and Canada in 1857-58 (1859). During the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 he returned there as a correspondent for the Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, in which capacity he discovered and disclosed the Fenian conspiracy

Fenian Brotherhood

The Fenian Brotherhood was an Irish republican organization founded in the United States in 1858 by John O'Mahony and Michael Doheny. It was a precursor to Clan na Gael, a sister organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Members were commonly known as "Fenians"...

.

He had the degree of LL.D. from the University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...

 in 1846. He was a member of the Percy Society

Percy Society

The Percy Society was a British book-club. It was founded in 1840 and collapsed in 1852.It was a scholarly collective, aimed at publishing limited-edition books of rare poems and songs...

. He died in London. His daughter was the novelist Marie Corelli

Marie Corelli

Marie Corelli was a British novelist. She enjoyed a period of great literary success from the publication of her first novel in 1886 until World War I. Corelli's novels sold more copies than the combined sales of popular contemporaries, including Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G...

.

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