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Old Gaelic Songs. 131
Thoir d" acliniliasan .seachad, uia tlioill,
'8 iii 'u oiiiieam fliciu suiin 'sa' l)lias,
Ma tlicir tliu gun cliuir mi oit giuaim,
Biilli mi gu La-luaiu am tliamli.
Ill the beginning of the winter of 1G20, Murdoch, the son of
Alexander Macrae of In verinate, wlio was married to Ann Mac-
kenzie, daugliter of the Laird of Applecross, went, as was his
wont, on a lumting excursion to some of the upper defiles of
Gleann-Lic, in Kintail, and was lost in the hills. His friends
searched for him, and after fifteen days Murdoch's body w;uj
found at the foot of a rock. It is not known for certain how the
man came by his death : he may liave slip))ed over the precipice,
hwt it was said that INInrdoch had, during his ramblings, found a
man stealing his goats. Having taken him a prisoner, lie was
bringing him liome when, it is supposed that, as they were passing
along the Cadha, at the Carraiy, in Gleann-Lic, the man
pitched Murdoch over the rock at the foot of which his body was
found. There is a tradition that on his death-bed an old man
was heard to confess that he was the murderer of Murdoch Macrae,
and that this confession was overheard by a girl who revealed
it. The Rev. Alexander Cameron, late of the Quoad Sacra
Parish of Glengarry, sent to the Secretary of the Gaelic Society
of Inverness, parts of two plaintive .songs composed on the
lamented death of Murdoch Macrae. They are printed in Vol.
VIII. of the Society's Transactions. I am sorry that Mr
Cameron should have said the supposed murderer wa.s a Strath-
glass man. By this assertion I am reluctantly compelled to state
that the tradition in Kintail is (see Dornie MS., pages 16-5 to
167), that he was a Glenmoriston man, and I have always heard
the same myself. The elegies alluded to were composed by the
herdsman of Murdoch's brother, John Macrae, locally known as
the ''Hard mac Mhurchaidh mhic Iain Ruaidh" who resided in
Mamag, in Gleneilchaig, Kintail.
This song was apparently composed while the search for
Murdoch Macrae was going on
Och nan ochan 's mi sgith,
'Falbh nan cnoc so ri sian,
Giu' neo-shocrach a' sgriob tlia 'san duthaich ;
Cha b' e d' fhasach gun ni,
No d' fhearann-aitich chion sil,
Ach sueul nach binn e ri sheinn 's an duthaich.