ancient pibroch composed by _Raonull Mac Ailean Oig_, a Mac Donald of Morar, to which there is supposed to have been a wild story attached; _Cogadh na Sith_, “war or peace,” one of the best known of tunes, and one which, as its composition indicates a determination either to obtain an honourable peace or engage in immediate war, must have had a story; and any number of others, around which stories of love or adventure or war must at one time have clustered. Tunes of later generations have no stories to speak of. They have been composed on special occasions, or in honour of certain people, but that is all. It is the old tunes we would know more about, and the old stories. Several writers, notably Mr. J. F. Campbell, of Islay; Alexander Mac Kenzie, of Inverness; Angus Mac Kay, and Hector Mac Lean, of Ballygrant, Islay, did much good work by gathering at first hand Highland legends and traditions; and in our own day Henry Whyte, (“Fionn”), the _Celtic Monthly_, and others, are doing a great deal to preserve what is left to us of Highland life and story. But there is much yet to do, and to do quickly, for the generation that knows of these things is fast passing away. This volume makes no claim to originality. It is only a gathering together of material that is common to Highland tradition and Highland literature, but if it shows what an amount of such material, even on one side phase of Highland life, really exists, it will have served a good purpose. In every hamlet in the Highlands there is surely some individual patriotic enough to take an interest in its folk-lore, and intelligent enough to see the necessity for saving still more of it, and these people can do more to preserve it, if only by giving it a place in the columns of the weekly papers, than any one collector or writer. And why should there not be a Highland Publishing Society, which would sell every known book on the Highlands, take the financial risk of gathering material for new books, and publishing them, and do the educational and other work now being attempted by various societies? There are already enough of county societies and clan societies working only for their own county or clan. Such distinctions have been broken down by the march of civilisation, and with the intermixing of the clans and the free movement of the people all over the country, the societies have little more than the sentiment of the past, a sound enough reason, no doubt, to justify their existence. But there is the Highlands and the language and the music, the scattered literature and half-Anglicised people, and if Highlanders with a craze for organising will but think on these things and build up some organisation that will become the natural rallying point of everything Highland, it is not yet too late to let the world see that the Scottish Highlands has a history and a literature worthy of a far higher place among the nations of the earth than the earth has yet given them. As to its music:—