Give me my pipes, I’m sad and weary,
These halls are silent, dark, and eerie,
The pipe no more cheers as of yore,
Thy race is o’er, brave Rory Mor.”
“THE CLAN FARLANE PIBROCH.”
A Faust-like story is told of Andrew, chief of the Clan Mac Farlane, and the supposed composer of the “Clan Farlane Pibroch.” Andrew and Alastair, chiefs of the Mac Donells of Keppoch, were credited with having “the black art.” They were said to have sold their souls to the devil in exchange for their supernatural powers. They seem to have driven a rather peculiar bargain, for the understanding was that the devil should get only one of their souls, the chiefs to decide between themselves which it would be. The appointed day and hour came on which the debt was to be paid, and still the chiefs, though they had come to the trysting place, had not decided which soul was to be given up. When the devil came he was in a desperate hurry, and at once exclaimed, “Well, and whose soul do I get?” On the spur of the moment Mac Donell pointed to Mac Farlane’s shadow, saying, “That’s he,” whereupon the devil snatched up the shadow and ran off with it. From that day Mac Farlane was never known to cast a shadow.
As to the tune itself, Sir Walter Scott supposes it had a close connection with the predatory excursions of the clan into the low country near the fastnesses on the western side of Loch Lomond. The pibroch, Thogail nam bo, seems to indicate such practices, the sense of the music being:—
“We are bound to drive the bullocks,
All by hollows, hirsts, and hillocks,
Through the sleet and through the rain;