To it is sung a ballad, and connected with the air and song there is an interesting story. The singer, a Mac Gregor, concealed in her house her husband and two sons when some bitter enemies of the clan were approaching. There was no time for escape, and so she hid her friends in a bed, and, sitting down by the fire, proceeded to sing:—
“I sit here alone by the plain of the highway,
For my poor hunted kin, watching mist, watching byeway;
I’ve got no sign that they’re near to my dwelling;
At Loch Fyne they were last seen—if true be that telling.”
And so on, representing herself as waiting in solitude for her persecuted kindred, and saying that as they had not returned they must either be at Loch Fyne—as when she last heard of them—or far away in the glens of the mist, hunting and fishing, and compelled to pass the night in some poor hut, where she had previously left some things for them. After a prayer for their safety—
“May the King of the Universe save you for ever
From the flash of the bullet and the store of the quiver,
From the keen-pointed knife, with the life-blood oft streaming,
From the edge of the sharp claymore, terribly gleaming,”