But it is the other version of the story that is connected with the origin of a pipe tune. One of the Mac Crimmons, well known as _Padruig Caogach_ or “Winking Peter,” owing to his inveterate habit of winking while playing, once endeavoured to compose a new pipe tune. He managed two measures, which in time became very popular, but he could not for the life of him complete it. Two years elapsed, and still _Padruig’s_ muse had failed to come to his assistance, and the fragment began to be called _Am port leathach_—the half-completed tune. Then a young piper— _Iain Dall_ it was—inspired with the music of the tune, set himself to complete it, naming it _Lasan Phadruig Chaogaich_, and renouncing all share in the honours of authorship. But _Padruig_ did not like being outstripped in this way by Mac Kay, who was but a beardless boy, and, in his anger, he persuaded the other students at the college to make away with his rival. He succeeded the better in his scheme that Mac Kay had previously given great offence to his classmates by his proficiency, of which they were jealous, and with which the master piper taunted them. So one day as they were all walking together at _Dun Bhorraraig_, they came to a rock twenty-four feet in height, over which they pushed the blind “apprentice.” But he alighted on his feet without sustaining much injury, and the spot over which he was thrown was known for a long time after as _Leum an doill_—the leap of the blind. _Iain Dall_ ultimately returned to Gairloch and succeeded his father as family piper to the Mac Kenzies of Gairloch, dying at the age of ninety-eight. “MAC PHERSON’S LAMENT” will always be associated with Burns’s song and with the noted Highland freebooter who in 1700, after holding the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray in fear for a long time, was captured, tried before the Sheriff of Banffshire, along with certain gipsies taken in his company, and executed on the Gallow Hill of Banff. But it is not generally known that Burns’s words can hardly be called original. As a matter of fact, Mac Pherson himself, tradition says, composed both the pibroch and a set of words wonderfully like those afterwards composed by Burns. The pibroch he composed long before his capture, and the words he gave to the world when he was executed, under the name of “Mac Pherson’s Farewell.” Here they are:— “My father was a gentleman Of fame and lineage high, Oh! mother, would you ne’er had born A wretch so doomed as I! But dantonly and wantonly And rantonly I’ll gae, I’ll play a tune and dance it roun’ Below the gallows tree. The Laird o’ Grant, with power aboon The royal majesty, He pled fu’ well for Peter Brown, But let Mac Pherson die. But dantonly, etc.