To loyalty unlearned; honour untaught;

Civility not seen from others; valour

That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop

As if it had been sowed.”

—Shakespeare.

Hereditary in two senses—When they ceased—The Mac Crimmons—A traditional genealogy—A Mac Gregor tradition—The Mac Crimmon College—Dr. Johnson—College broken up—An Irish college—Its system—A Mac Crimmon’s escapades—Respect for the Mac Crimmons—The Rout of Moy—The last of the race—How they excelled—The Mac Arthurs—The Mac Intyres—The Mac Kays—The Rankins—The Campbells—The Mac Gregors.

The hereditary pipers were hereditary in at least two senses. They were hereditary because son followed father, generation after generation, in the service of one chief, no one disputing their claim to the succession. But they were also hereditary in the sense that their talents were not self-acquired. They came of a race of pipers, and piping to them was hereditary. Seven generations of pipers for ancestors and seven years of personal training were considered necessary to produce the true hereditary piper. It is this to which Neil Munro alludes when he says—“To the make of a piper go seven years of his own learning and seven generations before.”

The hereditary pipers were second only to the chiefs of the various clans, and their fame has come down through the years with wonderful persistence. The chiefs were proud of their pipers and treated them as gentlemen. The pipers, on their part, were proud of their chiefs, and would do anything for them. Hereditary pipers existed until the passing of the Heritable Jurisdiction Abolition Act of 1747, which, by abolishing clanship, made the possession of a retinue by a chief an offence against the civil law. The chiefs then deprived their pipers of the lands they had formerly held by virtue of their office, and by that act degraded them to the level of ordinary musicians. And, with the absence of a sure position, the enthusiasm for pipe music dwindled, succeeding generations failed to attain to the high level of their forebears, and the hereditary pipers were merged in the general race of Highland musicians.

The greatest of the hereditary pipers were

THE MAC CRIMMONS,