The Clan Stewart March—Mac Gregor of Ruaro—The Braes of the Mist—Episode at a Dunvegan competition—A Mac Crimmon surpassed—Mac Pherson’s Lament—Burns and the story—Rob Roy’s lament—The Mac Lachlans’ March—Gille Calum—The Reel o’ Tulloch—The Periwig Reel—Jenny Dang the Weaver—Mac Donald’s salute—Mac Leod’s Salute—Disappearing lore—Something to be done.

The Royal House of Stuart should perhaps have been mentioned earlier, but, like other names famous in history, they did not leave much to posterity in the way of music or poetry. Enough has been composed and written about them, but that is another matter.

is known in Perthshire as the “Sherramuir March,” because it was played at that battle by the pipers of the clan. According to tradition this tune was played both when the clan were marching to battle and in honour of a victory. It was played at Pinkie, Inverlochy, Sheriffmuir, and Prestonpans, and it was all along recognised as a tune peculiarly pertaining to the Stewarts. In accordance with Highland custom, the clansmen were in the habit of marching in the intervals of pipe music to improvised singing, and when or how the present words emerged from all previous improvisations and became a song it is impossible to say. At the battle of Pinkie in September, 1547, the clan was commanded by Donald Stewart, of Invernayle, the real chief being an old man. On the march homeward in October, when passing through Menteith, the clan found prepared at the house of one of the tenants a marriage dinner, at which the Earl of Menteith was to be present. Being hungry, Donald and his followers ate up the feast, and when Menteith arrived he was very angry, and instantly pursued the Stewarts. On overtaking them one of his men taunted them thus:—

to which Stewart replied:—

and he shot the man who had taunted his clan. A conflict ensued, in which the Earl and many of his men were killed, and then the Stewarts went off in triumph, their pipers playing the Stewarts’ March. The words now in use are the composition of an Iain Breac Mac Eanric (Henderson), a celebrated piper of the time of Montrose, and a resident in the Glencoe district. There would probably be older words, but those here given are those now associated with the tune:—

The chorus is sung before the first verse, as well as after each. “Daring let of all men” means “Defying the hindrance of all men.”

One of the most tragic of stories is associated with another Clan Mac Gregor air—

The clan, as is well known, were terribly persecuted by the ruling powers. When, after the ’45, most of the other Highland chiefs accepted Crown charters for their lands, the Mac Gregors refused, their clansmen backing them vigorously in their attitude. For this independence of theirs they were hunted like wild beasts, pursued by bloodhounds, and executed whenever caught. Even so early as 1603 the clan found themselves so persecuted and hemmed in that their chief, Mac Gregor of Glenstrae, considered it necessary to deliver himself and a score of his principal men to the Government, under promise of being allowed to leave the country. This promise was given, but ruthlessly broken, for they were all hanged at Edinburgh. In the group was Gregor Mac Gregor of Ruaro, the subject of the lament and the song. The author of neither is known:—

And so on in very much the same strain for other nine verses.

There is another tune of the “Children of the Mist,” as the Clan Mac Gregor were known, that deserves mention. It is a wild and melancholy pibroch, called Cruachan a’ Cheathaich, or

To it is sung a ballad, and connected with the air and song there is an interesting story. The singer, a Mac Gregor, concealed in her house her husband and two sons when some bitter enemies of the clan were approaching. There was no time for escape, and so she hid her friends in a bed, and, sitting down by the fire, proceeded to sing:—

And so on, representing herself as waiting in solitude for her persecuted kindred, and saying that as they had not returned they must either be at Loch Fyne—as when she last heard of them—or far away in the glens of the mist, hunting and fishing, and compelled to pass the night in some poor hut, where she had previously left some things for them. After a prayer for their safety—

she concluded with expressions of her own sadness on account of their dangers. The enemies stopped outside her cottage and listened to the song, and believing it to be from the singer’s heart—as it was, but not in the way they supposed—they passed on without disturbing her, and her husband and sons were saved.

The Gaelic proverb, “The apprentice surpasses his master,” or

is associated with two tunes. There was to be a piping competition at Dunvegan at which pipers from all parts of the country were to be present. The leading Mac Crimmon of the day, the head of the college—“Professor” he would now be called—and a nephew of his had “entered,”—if that formality was necessary in these days—and Mac Crimmon had taught his nephew all he himself knew, with the exception of one tune, which he hoped would give him the lead in the competition. The two of them, man and boy, on their way to Dunvegan, slept one night at a wayside inn, sharing a bed. When the old man slept he dreamed of the morrow, and in his dreams he seized the boy’s arm and fingered on it the notes of the special tune he had reserved for himself. The youth was smart enough to realise that this meant something, and also smart enough to commit the notes to memory as his uncle fingered them on his arm. When the competition began he stepped out first and immediately played his uncle’s tune, and carried off the principal honours of the day. Then, the story goes, the people began to speak of An gille ‘toirt bàrr air Mac Crimmon—the lad that surpasses the Mac Crimmon.

But it is the other version of the story that is connected with the origin of a pipe tune. One of the Mac Crimmons, well known as Padruig Caogach or “Winking Peter,” owing to his inveterate habit of winking while playing, once endeavoured to compose a new pipe tune. He managed two measures, which in time became very popular, but he could not for the life of him complete it. Two years elapsed, and still Padruig’s muse had failed to come to his assistance, and the fragment began to be called Am port leathach—the half-completed tune. Then a young piper—Iain Dall it was—inspired with the music of the tune, set himself to complete it, naming it Lasan Phadruig Chaogaich, and renouncing all share in the honours of authorship. But Padruig did not like being outstripped in this way by Mac Kay, who was but a beardless boy, and, in his anger, he persuaded the other students at the college to make away with his rival. He succeeded the better in his scheme that Mac Kay had previously given great offence to his classmates by his proficiency, of which they were jealous, and with which the master piper taunted them. So one day as they were all walking together at Dun Bhorraraig, they came to a rock twenty-four feet in height, over which they pushed the blind “apprentice.” But he alighted on his feet without sustaining much injury, and the spot over which he was thrown was known for a long time after as Leum an doill—the leap of the blind. Iain Dall ultimately returned to Gairloch and succeeded his father as family piper to the Mac Kenzies of Gairloch, dying at the age of ninety-eight.

will always be associated with Burns’s song and with the noted Highland freebooter who in 1700, after holding the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray in fear for a long time, was captured, tried before the Sheriff of Banffshire, along with certain gipsies taken in his company, and executed on the Gallow Hill of Banff. But it is not generally known that Burns’s words can hardly be called original. As a matter of fact, Mac Pherson himself, tradition says, composed both the pibroch and a set of words wonderfully like those afterwards composed by Burns. The pibroch he composed long before his capture, and the words he gave to the world when he was executed, under the name of “Mac Pherson’s Farewell.” Here they are:—

Burns, on his tour through the Highlands, probably learned the air and the tradition of how Mac Pherson, when in prison under sentence of death, wrote the song, sang and played it on the scaffold, and concluded by breaking his violin to pieces because no one would accept it as a present, and promise to play the tune over his body after his execution. Neither the old version nor the words of Burns have much of the ring of a lament about them, but both are in accordance with the notorious character of the man. Burns, by the way, perpetrates a rather curious Irishism in first saying Mac Pherson

and immediately afterwards making him say—

How a man could play a spring and dance it round while his hands were tied, he does not take the trouble to explain.

Rob Roy himself, the most celebrated of all the clan who had “a name that was nameless by day,” had a lament specially composed by his wife, Helen Mac Gregor, on an occasion when the family were compelled by the law to leave their fastnesses and take refuge in Argyllshire. Helen was a woman of fierce and haughty disposition, and, feeling extreme anguish at being expelled from the banks of Loch Lomond, she gave vent to her feelings in a fine piece of music, still known as “Rob Roy’s Lament.” “I was once so hard put at,” Scott makes Rob say, “by my great enemy, as I may well ca’ him, that I was forced e’en to gie way to the tide and remove myself and my people and my family from our native land, and to withdraw for a time into Mac Cailein Mòr’s country—and Helen made a Lament on our departure, as well as Mac Crimmon himself could hae framed it—and so piteously sad and waesome that our hearts amaist broke as we sat and listened to her—it was like the wailing of one that mourns for the mother that bore him—the tears came down the rough faces of our gillies as they hearkened—and I would not have the same touch of heartbreak again, no, not for all the lands that ever were owned by Mac Gregor.”

A touch of the romantic is found in the story of Moladh Mairi, a well-known Mac Lachlan tune. Angus Mac Kay, son of Iain Dall, the blind piper of Gairloch, attended a competition in Edinburgh on one occasion, and the other competitors were so jealous of him and afraid of his superior talents that they conspired together to destroy his chances, They obtained possession of his pipes and pierced the bag in several places. When Mac Kay began to practise on the day of the competition he discovered the injury, and was in despair. But he had a fair friend of the name of Mary who quickly procured for him a sheep’s skin, from which, undressed as it was, they between them formed a new bag. With this the piper carried off the first prize, and in gratitude to his helper Mac Kay composed Moladh Mairi. He afterwards married a Mary Fraser of Gairloch, but we have nothing to show that this was the same Mary. In a proper story it certainly would have been.

Another, and a more probable, story is associated with this tune. A daughter of Mac Lachlan of Strathlachlan, chief of the clan, made a present of a wether’s skin to the family piper to make a bag for his pipes. He was delighted with the present, and composed the tune in her honour. This story is the more likely, inasmuch as it is well known that pipers always had a high sense of honour, as they still have, and would never think of treating a competitor in the way the first story says Mac Kay was treated.

or “The Sword Dance,” is one of the best known of pipe tunes. There is the jocular story to the effect that it made its first appearance in the world after the Deluge, when the Ark had landed on Ararat, and Noah expressed his joy by dancing over two crossed twigs. That the tune, or at anyrate the dance, is an heirloom from the ancients, is highly probable, as the sword dance in a modified form was the special antic of the priests of Mars. The real Gille Calum, however, is said to have been Callum a’ chinn mhoir—Malcolm Canmore, who incurred the displeasure of the Highlanders by removing the ancient Court from Dunstaffnage Castle, in Argyllshire, to Dunfermline, by marrying the Saxon Princess Margaret, which led to the change of Court language from Gaelic to English, and also by having added to the coinage a very small coin, the bodle, equal in value to one-third of our halfpenny, and so small as to be contemptible in the eyes of his Highland subjects. The translation, by “Fionn,” of the Gaelic associated with the name shows considerable wit and a pretty strain of sarcasm:—

has two alleged origins, but one at least is discredited by the known character of the people concerned. It was on a wild Sunday in the parish of Tulloch, Aberdeenshire, that the minister, thinking his people would not venture out, stayed at home. His congregation, however, to whom the kirk was a trysting-place, turned up as usual. For a time they waited patiently enough, but by and bye, moved by the stormy weather and their minister’s absence, they proposed refreshments. The collection ladle was sent round, and the proceeds invested in “yill” at the neighbouring change-house. As the liquor took effect the fun grew more furious, and at last a dance was suggested. The enthusiasm rose even to this height, the village cobbler mounted the pulpit, the blacksmith from the precentor’s box roared out the ditty “John, come kiss me now,” and the floor rang with the flying feet of the dancing congregation. The fiddler, impressed for the occasion, allowed his bow to get more and more into the spirit of the gathering; it went madder and madder as the excitement increased, and at last, in a sudden burst of inspiration, he improvised the dance tune of all dance tunes—“Reel o’ Tulloch.” Tradition is silent as to what befel the revellers in so sacred a place, as well it may. It is hardly possible to imagine a company of Scottish Established Church people looking at a fiddler on the Sabbath, much less dancing in church to his music.

Strathspey also claims the tune, and in competition with Deeside, it has a fierce tradition on the subject. The district of Tulloch lies at the back of the Abernethy forest, and here is said to have occurred the incident that inspired the maddest of Highland reels. A certain John Mac Gregor, commonly known as Iain Dubh Gearr, was at Killin at a market held somewhere between 1550 and 1580. In the house of call there, known as “Streethouse,” he was set upon by eight men, but being powerful and a splendid swordsman, he discomfited all his adversaries, killing some and wounding others. Then he fled to Strathspey, where he married a woman named Isabel Anderson (one version of the story has it that Mac Gregor got into trouble with some Robertsons through having married this Isabel, who was sought by a Robertson, and that these and not market acquaintances were his enemies). His foes followed him, and one night thirteen of them arrived at his house, determined to take him dead or alive. John was sleeping in the barn when they came, and when he was wakened and told of his danger he determined to fight it out. Isabel and he had a gun and a pistol and plenty of ammunition, and they defended the barn against all comers. John fired the weapons one after the other alternately through crevices in the walls, and Isabel kept them loaded. The thirteen outside, handicapped as they were by the shelter from which the defenders worked, were very soon all wounded, whereupon John sallied out and cut off their heads. Then Isabel in her glee gave him a big draught of beer, which he drank, and seizing his spouse by the waist they improvised and danced those reel steps which have ever since been so popular. The music must have been old, but the words are of the date of this incident:—

The song then, at considerable length, tells the story until:—

The story has two traditional endings. In the one John became a peaceable and prosperous man, and as his name appears in authoritative documents of date 1568, it is the more likely to be true. The other is tragic. Mac Gregor’s enemies, according to it, still hunted the couple, and Isabel was thrown into prison. Then Mac Gregor himself was shot, and his head brought to Isabel. At the sight she was so struck with sorrow that she suddenly expired.

It may not be inappropriate to conclude these stories of tunes with two which are associated with ministers.

can always be depended on to provoke laughter when well played. It is probably the composition of Mr. Fraser of Culduthal. This gentleman was at a baptismal “entertainment” at the house of Fraser of Knockie, where the presence of a very old and venerable minister could not restrain him from exciting mirth. He sat next but one to the minister, and found means over his neighbour’s shoulder to tickle below the parson’s large wig with a long feather or a blade of corn. As the glass went round the old man became uneasy, but suspected nobody. At last he got into a rage, dreading an earwig or spider, and shook out his wig over a blazing fire, which unfortunately got hold of it. It was too greasy to admit of its being saved. Amid great laughter, it simmered in the fire till it had almost suffocated the company. The minister’s bald head produced more laughter at his expense, in which he himself joined, and he enjoyed the joke thoroughly when it was told to him. The real name of the air is “The Fried Periwig.”

The other tune is

and its story is somewhat interesting. Rev. Mr. Gardner, minister of the parish of Birse, in Aberdeenshire, was well known for his musical talents and his wit. One Saturday he was arranging his ideas for next day’s service in his study, which overlooked the courtyard of the manse. Outside his wife was beetling potatoes for supper. To unbend his mind a little, Mr. Gardner took up his fiddle and begun to run over the notes of an air he had previously jotted down, when suddenly an altercation arose between Mrs. Gardner and Jock, the minister’s man, an idle sort of weaver fellow from the neighbouring village of Marywell, who had lately been engaged as man of all work about the manse. “Here, Jock,” cried the mistress as Jock came in from the labours of the field, “gae wipe the minister’s shoon.” “Na,” said Jock, “I’ll dae nae sich thing. I came here to be yir ploo’man, but no yir flunkey, and I’ll nae wipe the minister’s shoon.” “Deil confound yir impudence,” said the enraged Mrs. Gardner, and she sprang at him with a heavy culinary implement, and giving him a hearty beating, compelled him to perform the menial duties required of him. The minister, who viewed the scene from his window, was hugely diverted, and gave the air he had just completed the title of “Jenny Dang the Weaver.” This is supposed to have occurred in 1746. There is a well-known Gaelic song entitled “Trousers for meagre shanks, and bonnets for the bald,” sung to the air.

there are not many stories of general interest. The tunes are there, but whence they came, or when they came, must ever remain a mystery. “Mac Donald’s Salute” and “Mac Leod’s Salute” were composed by Donald Mòr Mac Crimmon on the reconciliation of the Mac Leods and the Mac Donalds after the battle of Bencuillein in Skye, and played when the chiefs met at Dunvegan. There had been a feud between the clans, in the course of which much blood was spilt. This feud at last became so notorious that in 1601 the Privy Council interfered and requested the chiefs concerned to disband their forces and leave Skye. It being known that both intended to “mass togider grit nowmeris and forceis of thair kin and freindschip,” and pursue each other “with fyre and sword and other hostilitie by say and land,” they were required to release peacefully all prisoners, and to observe the King’s peace. Ultimately a reconciliation was effected, on which the chief of the Mac Leods invited the chief of the Mac Donalds to a banquet at Dunvegan Castle. When Donald Gorm Mòr Mac Donald appeared in sight of the castle, he was met by Mac Leod’s famous piper, Donald Mòr Mac Crimmon, who welcomed him by playing “Mac Donald’s Salute,” which he had composed for the occasion. In connection with the same banquet he composed and played for the first time “Mac Leod’s Salute.”

The stories I have given are, after all, but the merest pickings from the wealth of lore which has now almost disappeared from the Highlands. It irritates one considerably to find here and there fragments of what were once fine tales, with perhaps important bearings on social life or current history, and to realise the impossibility of ever obtaining them complete. For this we have to thank the Sassenach over-running of the Highlands, which resulted in the extinction of clan bard and clan piper—who between them took the place of a literature—and did not even try to introduce in their stead the blessings of that wider education which preserves the life of a nation by better means, until after much of what was worth preserving had vanished into a misty past. We have, for instance, the “Lament for the Harp Tree,” connected either with some tree on which the bards were wont to hang their harps, like captives in Babylon of an even earlier age, or with the disappearance of the harp itself, or, as the tune is called Bean Sith in the North, with the fairies in some way or other; A mhic Iain mhic Sheumais, which celebrates some battle between the Mac Donalds and the Mac Leods; another on Blar léine, or the “Shirt Battle,” fought at Kinloch Lochy between the Frasers of Lovat and the Mac Donalds of Clan Ranald, and so called from the parties having stripped to their shirts; “The Sister’s Lament for her Brothers”; a lament expressive of the aged warrior’s regret that he is no longer able to wield his sword; “Grim Donald’s Sweetheart,” a salute of very ancient origin; A Ghlas Mheur, an ancient pibroch composed by Raonull Mac Ailean Oig, a Mac Donald of Morar, to which there is supposed to have been a wild story attached; Cogadh na Sith, “war or peace,” one of the best known of tunes, and one which, as its composition indicates a determination either to obtain an honourable peace or engage in immediate war, must have had a story; and any number of others, around which stories of love or adventure or war must at one time have clustered. Tunes of later generations have no stories to speak of. They have been composed on special occasions, or in honour of certain people, but that is all. It is the old tunes we would know more about, and the old stories. Several writers, notably Mr. J. F. Campbell, of Islay; Alexander Mac Kenzie, of Inverness; Angus Mac Kay, and Hector Mac Lean, of Ballygrant, Islay, did much good work by gathering at first hand Highland legends and traditions; and in our own day Henry Whyte, (“Fionn”), the Celtic Monthly, and others, are doing a great deal to preserve what is left to us of Highland life and story. But there is much yet to do, and to do quickly, for the generation that knows of these things is fast passing away. This volume makes no claim to originality. It is only a gathering together of material that is common to Highland tradition and Highland literature, but if it shows what an amount of such material, even on one side phase of Highland life, really exists, it will have served a good purpose. In every hamlet in the Highlands there is surely some individual patriotic enough to take an interest in its folk-lore, and intelligent enough to see the necessity for saving still more of it, and these people can do more to preserve it, if only by giving it a place in the columns of the weekly papers, than any one collector or writer. And why should there not be a Highland Publishing Society, which would sell every known book on the Highlands, take the financial risk of gathering material for new books, and publishing them, and do the educational and other work now being attempted by various societies? There are already enough of county societies and clan societies working only for their own county or clan. Such distinctions have been broken down by the march of civilisation, and with the intermixing of the clans and the free movement of the people all over the country, the societies have little more than the sentiment of the past, a sound enough reason, no doubt, to justify their existence. But there is the Highlands and the language and the music, the scattered literature and half-Anglicised people, and if Highlanders with a craze for organising will but think on these things and build up some organisation that will become the natural rallying point of everything Highland, it is not yet too late to let the world see that the Scottish Highlands has a history and a literature worthy of a far higher place among the nations of the earth than the earth has yet given them. As to its music:—