so ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



bred idealism and poetic fancy, and their mental pabulum was the song 

 of the minstrel and story of the seanaohie. The scarcit}^, or entire ab- 

 sence of books had the effect of quickening and strengthening the mem- 

 ory, and the ordinary peasant could generally repeat a marvellous quan- 

 tity of verse. Thus, folk songs passed from generation to generation, 

 becoming sacred in the process, through tender associations dear to the 

 heart of the emotional Gael. The epochs of song correspond to the 

 great national movements which affected the condition or stirred the 

 emotions of the people as a whole. Thus, the Jacobite risings of 1715 

 and 1745 A.D., were followed by revivals of Gaelic song, the latter date, 

 inaugurating what has been termed the Augustan age of Highland 

 poetry, with its great names — Macdonald, Maclutyre, Buchanan, 

 Mackay and Eoss. Following the Jacobite defeat at Culloden came a 

 period of unrest and change in the Highlands from which relief was 

 sought in the new homes of America. Wave upon wave of emigration 

 succeeded, until the landowners and government became alarmed and 

 enacted measures prohibiting the people to leave their native country. 

 These measures, however, were relaxed and the mountaineers, by tens 

 of thousands sought homes in Canada and in the United States. This 

 was at a time when Gaelic poetry was at its best, and when the vanish- 

 ing echoes of the Jacobite muse were re-awakened by the social 

 upheaval caused by the depopulating of the glens. 



The clansmen carried with them not only the treasured songs of 

 the past, but the warm verses wrung from the local bards by the sad 

 scenes incident to the departure of whole country-sides of the native 

 people, leaving nothing but desolation behind them ; and the songs, also, 

 which many of those departing composed as " Farewells " to their native 

 land. These songs abound. Many of them are of poetic merit, and are 

 sung in Canada even at the present day. Two of the most popular 

 tunes played on shore as the emigrant ships weighed anchor were 

 '• MacCrimmon's Lament " and " Lochaber No More." The first is 

 one of the most pathetic in Highland minstrelsy and its effect to-day is 

 as great on a Gaelic-speaking Highlander as in the emigration days. 

 MacCrimmon, was one of a famous family of pipers, which for genera- 

 tions were retained by the chief of the Clan MacLeod, at Dunvegan 

 Castle, Isle of Skye. They are supposed to have been originally from 

 Cremona, Italy. The family held land from MacLeod, the son succeed- 

 ing the father in possession and in the office of piper. The name of 

 their farm was Boreraig, and here a piper's college was conducted to 

 which the noblemen and gentlemen of the north of Scotland sent their 

 young pipers to be instructed in bagpipe music, the ordinary term of 

 apprenticeship being seven years. In 1745, MacLeod, of Dunvegan, 

 espoused the side of the house of Hanover, in the Stuart rising. Mac- 



