Scandinavia, while none excelled him in knowledge of Ossianic poetry and legendary lore. When he became advanced in years he was superannuated, and passed his time in making excursions into the Reay country and Skye, visiting at gentlemen’s houses, to which he was always welcome. He died in 1854, at the age of ninety-eight, and was succeeded by his son Angus, who in his turn was succeeded by his son John Mac Kay. The four members of the family were pipers in succession to eight chiefs of Kintail, the succession in each case being from father to son. The Mac Kays, as has been said, came originally from the Reay Country, the home of all the Mac Kays, where there seems to have been a college similar to that kept at Dunvegan by the Mac Crimmons; at any rate, a peculiarly large number of Mac Kay pipers came from the district, just as if they had been trained in a school. The changing times were too much for the Mac Kays, as for the other pipers, and in 1805 the representative of the family, the John Mac Kay last mentioned, went to America. He died in Pictou in 1835, when over eighty years of age. The late Mr. Alexander Mac Kenzie, editor of the _Celtic_ Magazine, on a tour through the States in 1880, met one of the family. “More interesting to me,” he wrote, “than all my other discoveries on this continent was finding a representative of the famous pipers and poets of Gairloch in the person of John Mac Kay, who occupies the most honourable and prominent position in this thriving town (New Glasgow), that of stipendiary magistrate. His great-grandfather was the celebrated blind piper of Gairloch.” Afterwards Mr. Mac Kenzie tells of the circumstances of the family in America. They had, he says, ceased to be pipers, and no one of the race kept up the traditions of their fathers in the strange land. THE RANKINS