MACNEILL, Hector, poet, born in Rosebank, near Roslin, Scotland, 22 October, 1746; died in Edinburgh, 15 March, 1818. He studied in a grammar-school in Stirling, and at the age of fourteen was sent to Bristol to enter the counting-house of his cousin, a West India trader. Subsequently he went to the West Indies, and became the manager of a sugar-plantation in Jamaica, where he wrote a pamphlet in defence of slavery in the West Indies (1788). About this time he returned to Scotland, and became assistant secretary in the flag-ship of Admiral Geary, which post, after two cruises, he exchanged for a similar one in a ship bound to the East Indies, remaining there for five years. He then spent two years in retirement in Stifling, where he published " The Harp, a Legendary Tale," which had but little success (1789). Again he visited the West Indies, where he was engaged in the custom-house in Kingston, Jamaica, and his friend and former employer, John Graham, a planter, bequeathed him an annuity of £100. On his estate of Three-Mile-River, Macneill wrote "The Pastoral, or Lyric Muse of Scotland." The last years of his life were spent in Edinburgh, where he wrote several novels, and was editor of the "Scots Magazine." He published an edition of his poems (2 vols., 1801). The chief of these are "Scotland's Scaith, or the History of Will and Jean," and " The Waes o' War, or the Upshot o' the History o' Will and Jean" (1796). Several of his songs, including "Come under my Plaidie," "My Boy Tammy," "Saw ye my Wee Thing," and " Donald and Flora," have a wide popularity. See James Grant Wilson's "Poets and Poetry of Scotland" (New York, 1876).