There were many other composers of one or a few songs or poems which may be found in various collections of whom we know little or nothing more than their mere names. To this class belong Donald Macintyre of North Argyll, George Morison of the far North, William MacMurchie of Kintyre, Alexander Macinnes of Glencoe, Maclachlan of Kilbride, and some female composers who are only known as the wives or daughters of men described as of certain localities. There does not appear to have been a parish or clachan in the Highlands and Isles that has not brought forth its own singer. WILLIAM ROSS. This sensitive and delightful poet was born at Broadford, Isle of Skye, in 1762. He received good education at the parish school of Forres, where he highly distinguished himself. He made a particular study of his native language, and was also well acquainted with Latin and Greek. He sang sweetly, and played on the violin, flute, and other instruments with considerable skill. He became parish schoolmaster of Gairloch, Ross-shire, where he was a very successful teacher. He did not fill this situation, however, very long. He died of consumption in 1790, in the twenty-eighth year of his age. His early death is said to have been hastened by a love disappointment. In _Cuachag nan Eraobh_, one of his best-known songs, he indulges in melancholy and painful reflections. It is addressed to a cuckoo that settled on the branch of a tree beside him. He remembers his false love and sings:— Nought to me but a sting all her bright beauties bring— I droop with decay, and I languish; There’s a pain at my heart like a pitiless dart, And I waste all away with anguish. She has stolen the hue on my young cheeks that grew, And much she has caused my sorrow; Unless now she renew with her kindness that hue Death will soon bid me “Good morrow.” Death did soon bid poor Ross “good morrow” and in this song, like Michael Bruce, he sang his own elegy. How pathetically the poet cries in the prospect of death!— If she were thus low, with what haste should I go To ask how the maiden was faring: Now short the delay till a mournful array The brink of my grave will be bearing! Ross is a poet of a high order, and one of the sweetest minstrels the Highlands have produced. Many of his songs are highly popular. The exquisite sweetness and finish of Ross appear in his praise of the “Highland Maid,” the first two stanzas of which are rendered as follows by Mr Angus Macphail, whose early death has been a loss to Gaelic literature:— My pretty Highland maiden, With tresses golden bright, And blue eyes softly shading, And soft hands snowy white; O’er Scotland’s hills and plains With thee I fain would go, Wrapped in our native tartan plaids That in the breezes flow.