[363] Donald Ban MacCrimmon, of the celebrated race of hereditary pipers to the chiefs of Macleod. This is the only mention I can recall of this pleasant story of his relations with his brother musicians. There is an exceedingly picturesque account (perhaps more picturesque than authentic) of MacCrimmon’s descent from a musician of Cremona, given in the Celtic Review, ii. 76, 1906. Though MacCrimmon escaped death at Inverurie, he was killed in the fiasco at Moy on 16th February. (See ante, p. 108.)
When leaving Dunvegan for the anti-Jacobite campaign of ’45-’46, he had a presentiment that he would never return, and composed the words and music of a celebrated lament, which was translated or paraphrased by Sir Walter Scott:—
Farewell to each cliff on which breakers are foaming,
Farewell each dark glen in which red-deer are roaming,
Farewell, lonely Skye, to lake, mountain, and river,
Macleod may return, but MacCrimmon shall never.
The Banshee’s wild voice sings the death dirge before me,
And the pall of the dead for a mantle hangs o’er me;
But my heart shall not fly, and my nerve shall not quiver,
Though devoted I go—to return again, never!