Celtic Mythology and Religion

Vlll
INTRODUCTION.
of studies, and graduated in 1880.
For a short time
he assisted Dr. Dey in the Grammar School ;
thereafter,
in 1880, he was appointed Rector of Raining's
School, Inverness, under the government of the
Highland Trust. He occupied this post till 1894,
when Raining's School was transferred to the Inverness
Burgh School Board, and thereafter was officially
connected with the Secondary Department of the
Inverness High Public School. In 1901 his University
of Aberdeen honoured him with the honorary
degree of LL.D. In 1905 Mr. Arthur J. Balfour,
then Prime Minister, in consideration of his great
services to Celtic, and specially Gaelic, philology,
history and literature, recommended him to the
King for a Civil List Pension of £90, as from 1st
April of that year. Two years later he died suddenly
in Stirling, where he had gone on business during
the Easter vacation.
As Headmaster of Raining's School, MacBain
succeeded in making his school occupy for the North
of Scotland a
position similar to that held by the
Grammar School of Old Aberdeen under Dr. Dey.
His reputation attracted to it many of the ablest
lads from the whole Highland area. He taught
them to think for themselves, to insist on having
not only facts, but also, so far as in them lay, the
reasons why these things are so. Keen young men
were not slow to kindle at the master's quickening
fire. They gladly lived laborious nights and days,
doing with all their might that which was given