John MacDougall Hay

{{short description|Scottish novelist}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2022}}

John MacDougall Hay (23 October 1880 – 10 December 1919){{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2J1bAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA138| page=138 |title=Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ: The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation | year=1920 | publisher=Oliver and Boyd }} was a Scottish novelist.

He was born and grew up in Tarbert, Argyll. He graduated in 1900 with an M.A. from the University of Glasgow. He was initially a school teacher in Stornaway, but then became a Church of Scotland minister. He was the father of Sheena Campbell Hay (1911–1987) and George Campbell Hay, the Scottish Gaelic poet.

He is mainly known for his novel Gillespie (1914),{{cite book|author=Hay, J. MacDougall|title=Gillespie|year=1979 |publisher=Canongate |isbn=9780903937795 |url=https://archive.org/details/gillespie0000hayj/page/n1/mode/2up|postscript=; 1979 reprint of 1914 original.}} {{cite book|title=2001 pbk edition|isbn=086241427X|last1=MacDougall Hay |first1=J. |year=1993 |publisher=Canongate }}{{cite web|author=Murray, Isobel|author2=Tait, Bob|title=Gillespie – J. McDougall Hay|website=canongate.co.uk|url=https://canongate.co.uk/books/241-gillespie/}} (brief biography) set in a fictionalised version of his home town of Tarbert. It received favourable reviews{{cite journal|title=Review of Gillespie by J. MacDougall Hay|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iUE_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA270| page=270 |volume=86 |journal=The Academy: A Weekly Review of Literature, Science, and Art | date=28 February 1914 }} when it was published in 1914, but was largely forgotten until it was re-discovered in the late 20th century.{{cite web|author=Morton, Brian|date=26 May 2014|title=Cannon Fodder (review of Gillespie)|website=Scottish Review of Books|url=https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2014/05/cannon-fodder/}} He also wrote a second novel Barnacles (1916),{{cite book|author=Hay, J. MacDougall|year=1916|title=Barnacles|url=https://archive.org/details/barnacles00hayjiala/page/n7/mode/2up}}{{cite journal|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqc6AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA593| title=Review of Barnacles by J. MacDougall Hay| journal=The Review of Reviews |volume=53|issue=318|page=593|date=June 1916 | publisher=Horace Marshall & Son }} and a collection of poems Their Dead Sons (1918).{{cite book|author=Royle, Trevor|chapter=John MacDougall Hay|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HyDxLyb6yigC&pg=PT42| isbn=9781780574325 | title=In Flanders Fields: Scottish Poetry and Prose of the First World War | date=27 January 2012 | publisher=Random House }} In the year of his death, he was planning a third novel set in the Church of Scotland and to be entitled The Martyr.

In poor health for much of his adult life, he died of tuberculosis at the age of only 39.