Coll, O my dear, dinna come near,
I’m prisoner here, I’m prisoner here.”
Coll Kitto at once recognised the warning, turned his boat, and escaped. The Lady of Dunstaffnage saw how she had been out-witted, and she made the piper play on the top of the highest hill in Islay tunes of the merriest kind, and then ordered his fingers to be cut off so that he might never play again. The hill is known to this day as “The Hill of the Bloody Hand.”
In pretty much the same way the story is associated with Duntroon Castle, only there are no women in it, so it is difficult to say which is correct. But it is plain enough that the incident itself is authentic, although it is doubtless exaggerated, and tradition is somewhat hazy as to the proper location.
“DUNTROON’S SALUTE.”
Another tune—“Duntroon’s Salute”—is mixed up with A Cholla mo run in a rather peculiar way, a way that suggests that the origin of the one is somehow being attributed to the other. Sir Alexander Mac Donald, Alister Mac Cholla Chiotaich, so this story goes, made a raid on Argyllshire in 1644 (the dates are irreconcilable with the accepted facts of the two stories), and surrounded Duntroon Castle, with the object of cutting off every person inside in revenge for the murder of his father’s piper. He himself, with a fleet of galleys, besieged the castle from the seaward side, and he ordered his piper to play the “Mac Donalds’ March.” Instead, however, the piper, on the spur of the moment, composed and played a war cry to alarm Duntroon. After saluting Duntroon and wishing him good health, he warned him of his danger, pointed out that the enemy were ready to attack him by sea and land, from right and left and front. The tune was understood on shore and also on board Mac Donald’s boat, and the poor piper was instantly hung from the yard-arm. Mac Donald finding he could not reduce Duntroon, moved northward, following out his work of destruction. The tune composed and played on this occasion is still known as “Duntroon’s Salute,” and that there is some truth in the story is shown by the way in which it seems to represent the sound of waves breaking against rocks. The exact relations between its origin and that of A Cholla mo run would, however, do with a little clearing up. It may be mentioned as a fact that some years ago a body was found buried within Duntroon, which was evidently that of the piper referred to in the tradition. At anyrate his finger bones were awanting, a fact which goes to prove the second Dunivaig story. But how, then, did the piper come to be buried in Duntroon?
“THE CAMPBELLS ARE COMING”
dates so far back in the centuries that we fail to trace its origin. It has been the march of the clan for hundreds of years. There is an old Gaelic song sung to the air, which tradition says was the composition of a piper. This piper, in the course of his vocation, was at a wedding in Inveraray, where he was inhospitably treated. Smarting under a sense of injury, he composed the song:—
“I was at a wedding in the town of Inveraray,
I was at a wedding in the town of Inveraray,