Mac Dougall, with his pipe, whose sound was soft and sweet to me.”
This hardly indicates whether the piper would, had he three hands, have fought with the Mac Dougalls against his own clan, but, at anyrate, the Campbells, seeing that this was not one of their own tunes, were so enraged that one of them ran to the piper and chopped off his head. It is said that the piper’s fingers played three or four notes on the chanter while his head was toppling to the ground.
This story belongs to the same class as those relating to the battles of Philiphaugh and Bothwell Bridge, given in a previous chapter. The resemblance, indeed, is too striking to be a coincidence, and the three have probably at some time or other been one story. The other incident connected by tradition with the tune is that already related of a cave in either Skye or Mull, into which a venturesome piper entered. He never returned, but the last wailing notes of his pipes told that he was being hard beset with wolves, who threatened to tear him to pieces should he stop playing. So he played mournfully:—
“Oh, that I had three hands!
Two for the pipes and one for the sword,”
the inference being that in that case he could have kept on playing and fought the wolves at the same time.
The tune nearly always played at Highland funerals is
“LOCHABER NO MORE.”
It was composed to Jane, daughter of Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, by a young English officer on his being ordered back from the Highlands to join his regiment. Jane Cameron was afterwards married to Lachlan Mac Pherson of Cluny, thus bringing over the tune to the Mac Phersons. The traditional account is entirely different. According to it a party of marauders from Lochaber, consisting of forty to fifty men, reached, one autumn afternoon, the summit of a hill immediately above Glenesk, the most northerly parish of Forfarshire. They meant to make a raid on the valley, but lay down to rest until after dusk. They were, however, seen by some shepherds, who gave the alarm, and in the evening the inhabitants of the glen were all under arms for the protection of their property. After dusk the invaders descended, and in the battle that ensued five of the defenders were killed and ten taken prisoners. Prisoners and cattle were driven to the Highlands. The men returned next year after a ransom of fifteen merks had been paid for each, but the cattle were never seen again. A ballad giving these particulars was long popular in the glen, but nothing now remains of it except the last words of each verse—“Lochaber no more.” Allan Ramsay wrote lines for the air, but they contain nothing of the spirit of the traditional origin. They are obviously based on the historical account:—
“Farewell to Lochaber, and farewell my Jean,