John Gregorson Campbell was a Scottish folklorist and Free Church minister who dedicated much of his life to preserving the oral traditions of the Scottish Highlands. Born in 1836, Campbell was highly educated and fluent in several languages, including Scottish Gaelic. In the mid-1850s, he served as the Secretary to the Ossianic Society of Glasgow University, demonstrating an early commitment to Celtic literature and folklore.
Campbell's career as a minister was marked by challenges. Although approved to preach by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1858, ill health initially prevented him from taking up employment. In 1861, he was appointed to the parishes of Tiree and Coll in Argyll by the Duke of Argyll, though he faced objections from local parishioners regarding his style of preaching. Despite these professional difficulties, he remained in the region, which provided him with rich opportunities to collect local lore.
As a folklorist, Campbell was distinguished by his rigorous methodology. Unlike many of his contemporaries who romanticized or altered the tales they gathered, Campbell transcribed legends precisely as they were dictated by Gaelic-speaking narrators. While several of his collected anecdotes appeared in magazines during his lifetime, his major legacy rests on four compendiums of tales. Work on collating these volumes began just before his death in 1891, with three of the collections published posthumously.
