After him came a blind harper and a blind piper, both famous in Highland minstrelsy. The harper was Roderick Morrison, son of an Episcopal clergyman in the island of Lewis. He was born in the year 1646, and in his boyhood had been sent along with his two brothers to be educated at Inverness, all three having been destined by their father for the ministry of the Church. But, unhappily, while there the youthful islanders were seized with smallpox, which was then epidemic in the town. His two brothers recovered from the effects of the dread scourge, and afterwards became ministers, one at Contin, the other at Poolewe in Ross-shire. Roderick himself was the chief sufferer, for not only was his face disfigured and contracted, but he also lost the use of his eyes. Incapacitated thus for a profession, he turned his attention to music, and in addition to the skill he acquired in playing other instruments, became an adept at the harp. Hence the name “An Clarsair Dall,” by which he was generally known throughout the Highlands. Visiting Ireland, it is thought he profited by tuition from his fellow-harpers there, who had achieved fame in that form of minstrelsy; and on his return to Scotland he took occasion to call at every baronial residence on the way to exhibit his art. It so happened at the time that many of the Scotch nobility and gentry were at the Court of King James in Holyrood, Edinburgh, and thither the blind musician wended his way, where he found an excellent friend in the person of the Highland chieftain, John Breac Macleod of Harris, who readily engaged him as his family harper. While holding this office Morrison composed several beautiful tunes and songs, living the life of a farmer at Totamòr in Glenelg, on a piece of land which his patron granted him rent-free. On the death of the latter he returned to his native island, and died there in a good old age, and was buried in a country churchyard near Stornoway. Morrison was a poet of power and culture. His elegy, “Creach nan Ciadan,” on the chieftain who befriended him, is reckoned one of the most pathetic, plaintive, and heart-touching of Highland laments. The blind piper, John Mackay of Gairloch, was a contemporary, though twenty years his junior. Like his father before him, who hailed from the Reay country, this Mackay was born blind. Taught music first of all under the paternal roof, he was sent later on to the Isle of Skye to perfect his studies under the direction of the celebrated Mac Crimmon. There he excelled all other pupils, and soon learned to compose pipe-music himself. In fact, it is recorded that one of the Mac Crimmons, jealous of his powers as a pipe-music composer, bribed some of the youths to throw him over a precipice, which they did one day, the blind stripling falling a distance of twenty-four feet, but without physical hurt. The rock is still known as “Leum an Doill,” or “The Blind Man’s Leap,” since he had the good fortune to land on his soles.