‘Mac Intosh the excellent
They have lifted.
They have laid thee
Low, they have laid thee.’
These are the only words in existence which I can hear of.”
There is, however, another tradition connected with the tune. There was a prediction, believed among the clansmen, that the Mac Intosh of that day would die through the instrumentality of his beautiful black steed, whose glossy skin shone as the raven’s wing, and whose flowing mane and tail waved free as the wind itself. But the chief, whatever he felt, was determined to show his people that he treated the prediction lightly, and so he continued to ride his favourite, in spite of the entreaties of his friends. He rode him on the day of his marriage, and on the way to church the horse became more than usually restive. He reared and plunged, and behaved so badly that the rider, losing control of himself and his horse, drew his pistol and shot the favourite dead. Another, a piebald horse, was procured, and the company proceeded to church. After the ceremony they returned by the way they had come, the bride and her maids on white ponies, and the bridegroom and his friends following. The chief’s horse, in passing, shied at the body of the black horse, which lay by the wayside, and the rider was thrown to the ground and killed on the spot. A turn of the road hid the accident from those in front, and the bride, unconscious of what had happened, went on her way. She is said to have composed and chanted the air as, at the funeral, she moved at the head of the bier, marking the time by tapping on the coffin lid all the way to the grave, where she had to be torn away as the body was being lowered in:—
“Oh! my love, lowly laid, Oh! my love, lowly laid;
Oh! my love, lowly laid, beside the fatal wall breach!
Wife am I, sorrowful in my weeds of deep woe,
Since I heard, with heart sore pained, that henceforth I must wear them.