The Black Chanter seems to have kept its magic power, for, during all the troubles of the ’45, Cluny Mac Pherson accompanied Prince Charlie in his victories and helped him much by his own and his followers’ bravery. But when the final blow was given to the fortunes of Charles Edward at Drummossie Moor, the Mac Phersons were not there, and it is said that before the battle an old witch told the Duke of Cumberland that if he waited until the green banner and the Black Chanter came up he would he defeated. The battle was over before Cluny arrived, for he was met by the fugitives when on his way from Badenoch to join the Prince. The Mac Intoshes, who claim that their chief is the chief of the Clan Mac Pherson, were at Culloden and in the thickest of the fight, but they had not the Black Chanter, and so they, too, shared in the defeat. It is certainly curious that no battle at which the Mac Phersons were present with the green banner of the clan, the Black Chanter, and the chief at their head, was lost. We do not, of course, believe in this phase of the supernatural nowadays, and it has been irreverently asserted that this particular chanterwill not play, that a piper of Cluny’s who was in the service of the chief for seven years testified to this, and that it is nothing more nor less than a chanter that has been spoiled in the making. We do not contend that it really had supernatural powers—the probability is all the other way—but when the clan believed it had, that, by inspiring them with confidence, perhaps served the same purpose. Many clans and peoples find inspiration in that which to the sceptical and hypercritical is but a fetish, and though we may smile at old-time stories of the supernatural, we should remember that those things were not smiling matter to the people of those days, and that the people who live as long after us as we live after those who believed in fairies and other uncanny things are almost sure to find much more to laugh at in our practice and beliefs than we find in the practice and beliefs of our ancestors. Meantime, let us close with a piece as grand as ever was written in any language, dedicated to Culloden and the Black Chanter of Chattan by Mrs. Ogilvie—remembering that the past deserves our respect, not only for the brave people it produced, but also for the legacy of enjoyable song and poetry and tradition it has handed down to us— “Black Chanter of Chattan now hushed and exhausted, Thy music was lost with the power of the Gael; The dread inspiration Mac Pherson had boasted For ever expired in Drummossie’s sad wail. “On old St. Johnstone’s dark meadow of slaughter Thy cadences buried the piper’s last breath; The vanquished escaped amid Tay’s rolling water, The conqueror’s pibroch was silenced by death.