CHAPTER XXII.
Some World-Famous Pibrochs.
“Oh, heard ye yon pibroch sound sad on the gale,
Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail,
’Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear,
And her sire and her people are called to the bier.”
—Campbell.
Mac Crimmon’s Lament—Best known of all pipe tunes—Its story—Blackie’s poetry—Scott’s—The war tune of Glengarry—A tragic story—The pibroch o’ Donuil Dhu—Too long in this condition—Pipers and inhospitality—Oh, that I had three hands—Lochaber no more—Allan Ramsay’s verses—An elated Mac Crimmon—Rory Mòr’s Lament—Clan Farlane pibroch—Pipers, poetry, and superstition.
There are several reasons why “Mac Crimmon’s Lament” should be the best known of all pipe tunes, but the most important is the fact that it is, and must ever continue to be, inseparably associated with the famous pipers of Dunvegan. The tune was composed by a piper who was leaving home, and had a presentiment that he would never return, but it has often been used in other circumstances. In the evicting days, when Highlanders were compelled to emigrate from their native shores, the favourite air when they were embarking was
“CHA TILL MI TUILLE”
(I’ll return no more), and on many other mournful occasions the lament of the Mac Crimmons was made the means of expressing the feelings of Highlanders. It was composed in 1746 by Donald Bàn Mac Crimmon, then piper to Mac Leod of Dunvegan. Donald Bàn was considered the best piper of his day, and when the clan left Dunvegan to join the Royalists in 1746, he was deeply impressed with the idea that he himself would never again see the old castle. The parting of the clansmen with their wives and children was sad, and Donald Bàn, thinking of his own sweetheart, poured forth his soul in the sad wail of the Lament, as the Mac Leods were marching away from the castle. The clan afterwards took part in a skirmish, which, from the peculiar circumstances, is known to history as the “Rout of Moy,” and Mac Crimmon was shot close by the side of his chief.