Nor will I return any more
To play thee a piobaireachd salute.”
The translation is too literal to be poetry, but one can imagine how Barbreck must have felt. He had better have done without that last tune.
“OH, THAT I HAD THREE HANDS!”
is associated with at least two incidents in Highland history. Towards the end of the thirteenth century a dispute arose between Mac Cailein Mòr, chief of the Clan Campbell, and Mac Dougall of Lorne, chief of the Mac Dougalls, with reference to the boundaries of their estates. The parties met at a spot where two streams unite, and fell to recrimination and ultimately to fighting like tigers. The slaughter was terrible, and the streams ran with blood and were crowded with the bodies of the slain. Ultimately Mac Cailein Mòr was killed, and his followers ceased the fighting to carry off his body. Close to the battlefield there was a small conical hillock—called in the Gaelic Tom-a-Phiobair, the Piper’s Hillock—on the top of which the piper of the Campbells stood and played while the battle raged. Sympathising with the Mac Dougalls, and regretting the havoc made among them, he composed on the spot a pipe tune, the purport of which was:—
“My loss! my loss! that I have not three hands,
Two engaged with the pipe and one with the sword,
My loss! my loss! that I have not three hands,
Two engaged with the pipe and one with the sword;
My loss! my loss! low lies yonder