Most of the old Highland airs were composed on particular occasions, or for the purpose of conveying particular feelings. One, for instance, is designed to express the succession of emotions in the mind of an Ardnamurchan crofter while tilling his soil in an unpropitious season and hesitating whether to emigrate or attempt to pay his landlord the triple rent a rival had offered. Another commemorates the arrival of Prince Charlie at a farmhouse in Skye, where one of his followers was sent forward to see if he was likely to find friends there. To a Highland ear the tune expresses the first hesitating, half-whispered questions of the messenger, then his confidence as he finds the goodwife favourable, and finally his composed feelings on finding that he was among friends. Another was composed on an occasion when the Mac Kenzies attempted to obtain possession of the lands of Mac Donell of Glengarry.[4] The chief of the Mac Kenzies had his men and allies assembled at different points, one party being concealed in a church at Beauly, and, tradition says, this church was burned over the heads of a worshipping congregation by friends of the Mac Donells. But the pibroch contradicts this, for when the tune is properly played the listener in fancy hears the flames rustling and blazing through the timbers of the church, mingled with the angry remonstrances and half-smothered shouts of the warriors, but there is no representation of the more feeble plaints of women and children. Had these been among the victims, their cries would surely have formed the burden of the tune.[5] Footnote 4: See Index under _Gilliechroist_. Footnote 5: It should be stated that the best authorities now agree that there never was a church burned at the place referred to.