“JENNY DANG THE WEAVER,”
and its story is somewhat interesting. Rev. Mr. Gardner, minister of the parish of Birse, in Aberdeenshire, was well known for his musical talents and his wit. One Saturday he was arranging his ideas for next day’s service in his study, which overlooked the courtyard of the manse. Outside his wife was beetling potatoes for supper. To unbend his mind a little, Mr. Gardner took up his fiddle and begun to run over the notes of an air he had previously jotted down, when suddenly an altercation arose between Mrs. Gardner and Jock, the minister’s man, an idle sort of weaver fellow from the neighbouring village of Marywell, who had lately been engaged as man of all work about the manse. “Here, Jock,” cried the mistress as Jock came in from the labours of the field, “gae wipe the minister’s shoon.” “Na,” said Jock, “I’ll dae nae sich thing. I came here to be yir ploo’man, but no yir flunkey, and I’ll nae wipe the minister’s shoon.” “Deil confound yir impudence,” said the enraged Mrs. Gardner, and she sprang at him with a heavy culinary implement, and giving him a hearty beating, compelled him to perform the menial duties required of him. The minister, who viewed the scene from his window, was hugely diverted, and gave the air he had just completed the title of “Jenny Dang the Weaver.” This is supposed to have occurred in 1746. There is a well-known Gaelic song entitled “Trousers for meagre shanks, and bonnets for the bald,” sung to the air.
OF OTHER CLAN TUNES
there are not many stories of general interest. The tunes are there, but whence they came, or when they came, must ever remain a mystery. “Mac Donald’s Salute” and “Mac Leod’s Salute” were composed by Donald Mòr Mac Crimmon on the reconciliation of the Mac Leods and the Mac Donalds after the battle of Bencuillein in Skye, and played when the chiefs met at Dunvegan. There had been a feud between the clans, in the course of which much blood was spilt. This feud at last became so notorious that in 1601 the Privy Council interfered and requested the chiefs concerned to disband their forces and leave Skye. It being known that both intended to “mass togider grit nowmeris and forceis of thair kin and freindschip,” and pursue each other “with fyre and sword and other hostilitie by say and land,” they were required to release peacefully all prisoners, and to observe the King’s peace. Ultimately a reconciliation was effected, on which the chief of the Mac Leods invited the chief of the Mac Donalds to a banquet at Dunvegan Castle. When Donald Gorm Mòr Mac Donald appeared in sight of the castle, he was met by Mac Leod’s famous piper, Donald Mòr Mac Crimmon, who welcomed him by playing “Mac Donald’s Salute,” which he had composed for the occasion. In connection with the same banquet he composed and played for the first time “Mac Leod’s Salute.”
The stories I have given are, after all, but the merest pickings from the wealth of lore which has now almost disappeared from the Highlands. It irritates one considerably to find here and there fragments of what were once fine tales, with perhaps important bearings on social life or current history, and to realise the impossibility of ever obtaining them complete. For this we have to thank the Sassenach over-running of the Highlands, which resulted in the extinction of clan bard and clan piper—who between them took the place of a literature—and did not even try to introduce in their stead the blessings of that wider education which preserves the life of a nation by better means, until after much of what was worth preserving had vanished into a misty past. We have, for instance, the “Lament for the Harp Tree,” connected either with some tree on which the bards were wont to hang their harps, like captives in Babylon of an even earlier age, or with the disappearance of the harp itself, or, as the tune is called Bean Sith in the North, with the fairies in some way or other; A mhic Iain mhic Sheumais, which celebrates some battle between the Mac Donalds and the Mac Leods; another on Blar léine, or the “Shirt Battle,” fought at Kinloch Lochy between the Frasers of Lovat and the Mac Donalds of Clan Ranald, and so called from the parties having stripped to their shirts; “The Sister’s Lament for her Brothers”; a lament expressive of the aged warrior’s regret that he is no longer able to wield his sword; “Grim Donald’s Sweetheart,” a salute of very ancient origin; A Ghlas Mheur, an ancient pibroch composed by Raonull Mac Ailean Oig, a Mac Donald of Morar, to which there is supposed to have been a wild story attached; Cogadh na Sith, “war or peace,” one of the best known of tunes, and one which, as its composition indicates a determination either to obtain an honourable peace or engage in immediate war, must have had a story; and any number of others, around which stories of love or adventure or war must at one time have clustered. Tunes of later generations have no stories to speak of. They have been composed on special occasions, or in honour of certain people, but that is all. It is the old tunes we would know more about, and the old stories. Several writers, notably Mr. J. F. Campbell, of Islay; Alexander Mac Kenzie, of Inverness; Angus Mac Kay, and Hector Mac Lean, of Ballygrant, Islay, did much good work by gathering at first hand Highland legends and traditions; and in our own day Henry Whyte, (“Fionn”), the Celtic Monthly, and others, are doing a great deal to preserve what is left to us of Highland life and story. But there is much yet to do, and to do quickly, for the generation that knows of these things is fast passing away. This volume makes no claim to originality. It is only a gathering together of material that is common to Highland tradition and Highland literature, but if it shows what an amount of such material, even on one side phase of Highland life, really exists, it will have served a good purpose. In every hamlet in the Highlands there is surely some individual patriotic enough to take an interest in its folk-lore, and intelligent enough to see the necessity for saving still more of it, and these people can do more to preserve it, if only by giving it a place in the columns of the weekly papers, than any one collector or writer. And why should there not be a Highland Publishing Society, which would sell every known book on the Highlands, take the financial risk of gathering material for new books, and publishing them, and do the educational and other work now being attempted by various societies? There are already enough of county societies and clan societies working only for their own county or clan. Such distinctions have been broken down by the march of civilisation, and with the intermixing of the clans and the free movement of the people all over the country, the societies have little more than the sentiment of the past, a sound enough reason, no doubt, to justify their existence. But there is the Highlands and the language and the music, the scattered literature and half-Anglicised people, and if Highlanders with a craze for organising will but think on these things and build up some organisation that will become the natural rallying point of everything Highland, it is not yet too late to let the world see that the Scottish Highlands has a history and a literature worthy of a far higher place among the nations of the earth than the earth has yet given them. As to its music:—
“Long may its lays be heard on Scotia’s hills,
Which call no more her clans in fray to meet,
And dye with kindred blood their native rills;
And, as blythe echoes the shrill notes repeat,
May Scottish hearts with kindling raptures beat;