It serves no good purpose to indulge in regrets for that which is past, but one cannot help feeling sorry that the story of our national music is so scrappy and so unreliable. There is, indeed, a large quantity of material of a kind, and on a cursory examination one may think the stories of the origin of tunes are plentiful enough. But when one begins to go deeper and trace each story to its source, reconcile all its different versions and explain how the same incident crops up in another place, under different circumstances, perhaps even in connection with another tune, it is then that the task of making intelligible, and at the same time trustworthy, stories for melodies that are now so well known, becomes difficult. Precise dates have been given for many tunes, but it is obvious enough that the writers giving them, though doubtless good pipers, were but little conversant with the facts of history. Very few, indeed, of the older tunes can be authenticated. With them it is truly a case of being lost in the mists of antiquity. It is too often assumed that a tune having a direct reference to a certain historical incident, is itself of the date of that incident, while the chances are that it was composed on that incident by a piper who lived many years after. Because Shakespeare wrote Macbeth we do not conclude that he lived in Macbeth’s day. A composer, like a dramatist, has all history spread out before him, and can make his music on what he pleases. We have, for instance, a piece of pipe music called “The Battle of Harlaw,” but, though we know that it is very old, we have no reason to think that, in its present form, it was in existence in 1411. So with very many others. When the events they celebrate took place, very few, if any, of the actors could write, and it was a long time after that the matters referred to became part of written history. When the tunes were composed must, therefore, be decided, when it can be decided at all, by other evidence—by historical data regarding the lives of their composers or by references in the authentic history of the country. Such data and references are, however, because of the lack of education in the times when the accurate information could be got, very scarce, and the result is that, although many of the older tunes have been first favourites from time immemorial, no one has any idea of how they came into being.