A HUNDRED YEARS IN THE HIGHLANDS 239 



this day it is remembered how and in what capacity 

 their ancestor came from Gairloch. 



I may mention that, besides the piper, John Roy took 

 two good deer-hounds back with him from Sutherland, 

 and even their names are not yet forgotten — " Cu dubh " 

 and ** Faoileag " (" Black Hound " and " Seagull "). 



Rory, the young piper, who was also a Mackay and 

 was born about 1592, was soon after followed by an 

 older brother, called Donald. It was Donald who was in 

 attendance as piper on the twelve sons of John Roy, 

 when Kenneth, Lord of Kintail, met them at Torridon, 

 where John Roy so nearly met with his death. 



Rory was piper in succession to four of the Gairloch 

 Lairds — namely, John Roy, Alasdair Breac (who was 

 a head taller than any of John Roy's eleven other sons), 

 Kenneth, the sixth laird, and his son Alexander. Rory's 

 home was at Talladale, on the mainland, while his first 

 two masters, John Roy and Alasdair Breac, resided 

 mostly in their island homes on Eilean Ruairidh Beag 

 and Eilean Suthainn, in Loch Maree, opposite Talladale, 

 which were, I suppose, considered safer, at any rate for 

 the ladies and the children, in those wild times. The 

 last two chiefs, however, whom Rory served, lived in the 

 original Tigh Dige or Stank* House of Gairloch, which 

 had the moat round it and the drawbridge. Rory did 

 not marry till he was sixty years old. He had just the 

 one son, the celebrated blind piper, and during the latter 

 part of his life he lived in the Baile Mor of Gairloch, so 

 as to be near his masters in the Stank House. Rory died 

 about 1689, in extreme old age, being, like his son, almost 



* Stank=moat. 



