Doirligh Loijn Di Skrijvig Lea Donochig Mack rah 1688. Professor Mackinnon, adopting this clue, made careful search, and is satisfied that the writer was Duncan Macrae of Inverinate, chief of that name. In the course of his investigation, the professor alighted upon some curious and interesting facts, full apparently of local colour. It appears there were two Duncan Macraes of some note living on the shores of Loch Duich at that time. Big Duncan of Glenshiel, a warrior who fell at Sheriffmuir, and whose mighty claymore, said[18] to be preserved in the Tower of London as “the great Highlander’s sword,” with one terrible stroke cut through trooper and steed, ere he succumbed himself in the onslaught. The other, Donnachadh nam Piòs, or Duncan of the silver plate, so called from the magnificence of his table service, was our author. Born about 1640, in early life he studied in the University of Edinburgh, and was known as a man of unique ingenuity and mechanical skill. As evidence thereof it is said he had something to do with bringing the water into Edinburgh, and it is related how, on one occasion, a foreign vessel having got dismasted in passing through Kyle Rhea, he made a new mast for the craft by splicing pieces of wood together. For this the captain, deeply grateful, gave him the famous silver herring, which remained in the family for generations, and was reputed to attract the herring from far and near into Loch Duich. The oak trees now at Inverinate he reared from French acorns. Like his brother John, who graduated at the University, King’s College, Aberdeen, on July 12th, 1660, Duncan possessed the bardic gift. Poems attributed in the MS. to “an certain harper” and “Tinkler” are, by good authorities, set down to his own Muse, these being simply _noms de plume_. Cultured, liberal, and deeply religious, he was ecclesiastically an ardent Episcopalian, politically a vehement Jacobite. His wife, the heiress of Raasay, it appears, diddled him out of her property by conveying the title-deeds to a relative to keep the lands for her own clan. Blood was thicker than the marriage bond.