Some stories—they are only stories—assert that the Mac Crimmons were originally Mac Gregors. The Mac Gregors, it is pointed out, had an academy for the teaching of pipe music in Lochaber many centuries ago, and the Mac Gregor music, such as the “Reel of Tulloch” (that this is a Mac Gregor tune is a matter of debate, however) is the merriest and also the saddest in the Highlands. Rob Roy’s deathbed tune is said to have simply been “We Return no More,” in other words, “Mac Crimmon’s Lament,” and his piper was himself a Mac Crimmon, who, under the mournful circumstances, recalled the traditional strain. There is certainly a great deal that is probable in this, but that is the most that can be said about it. The best, and what, on the face of it, is the most reliable story of the Mac Crimmons is that given by Angus Mac Kay in his book of pipe music.[14] It is beyond doubt that high musical talent as well as high moral principle and personal bravery descended from father to son during many generations in the family of the Mac Crimmons. They became so famous that pupils were sent to them from many parts of the Highlands, and one of the best certificates a piper could possess was his having studied under the Mac Crimmons. Finding the number of their pupils increasing daily, they at length opened a regular school or college on the farm of Boreraig, about eight miles south-west of Dunvegan Castle, but separated from it by Loch Follart. Here seven years’ study was prescribed for each scholar, regular lessons were given out, and certain periods were fixed on for receiving instruction. The tuition was carried on as systematically as in any of our northern schools, and the names of some of the caves and knolls in the vicinity still indicate the places where the scholars used to practise respectively the chanter, the small pipe and the large bagpipe, before playing in the presence of the master. This school was not entirely extinct in 1779, for Dr. Johnson, who was at Dunvegan in that year, alludes to it and says his dinner “was exhilarated by the bagpipes at Armadale and Dunvegan.” The school proper was the “ben” end of the dwelling-house, which seems to have been about seventy feet in length and two storeys in height. In actual practice, however, the room was little used. The “professors” preferred the open hillside, a small hollow near the house, or a cave in the neighbourhood, which came to be known as the Pipers’ Cave. Near the Pipers’ Cave is another known as the Pigeons’ Cave, which is about a mile in length. To it, tradition asserts, the daughters of the Mac Crimmons were wont to slip with a favourite set of pipes, for they too were musically inclined, and so proficient did some of them become, an ancient chronicler tells us, that they were able to superintend the class work in the absence of their fathers. Footnote 14: See page 109.