Weakness in the use of metaphor was evidently not a characteristic of Welsh poetry at this date. In Wales they “esteemed skill in playing on the harp beyond any kind of learning,” but somehow the instrument never got the same hold on the national life of Scotland. If it had, it would not have been supplanted so easily as it was. When the pipes actually superseded the harp in Scotland it is hardly possible to discover. We read that when Mary Queen of Scots made a hunting expedition into the wilds of Perthshire she carried a harp with her, and that that same harp is still in existence; that John Garve Mac Lean of Coll, who lived in the reign of James VI., was a good performer; and that once upon a time an English vessel was wrecked on the island and that the captain, seeing this venerable gentleman with his Bible in his hand and a harp by his side, exclaimed—“King David is restored to the earth”; and that the last of the harpers was Murdoch Mac Donald, harper to Mac Lean of Coll. Mac Donald received his learning from another celebrated harper, _Ruaraidh Dall_, or Blind Roderick, harper to the laird of Mac Leod, and afterwards in Ireland; and from accounts of payments made to him by Mac Lean, still extant, he seems to have remained in the family till the year 1734, when he went to Quinish, in Mull, where he died in 1739. This Murdoch Mac Donald was the musician who was immortalised by Tannahill as “The Harper of Mull.” The story which inspired this song is quite romantic, and will bear repetition. The following abridgement is from Mr. P. A. Ramsay’s edition of Tannahill’s poems;—