Ossian Collection > Ossian, his principal poems

350 TUE IIAKP IN THE HIGHLANDS.
ment, was abandoned by his son ; a measure which the poor
neglected bard lamented, in an elegy on his patron, which
was printed in a collection of Gaelic poems. I have not
been able to procure any farther accounts of him ; but he
appears to have been, after this, still held in great esti-
mation, and to have been taken notice of by persons of the
first rank in this countr3^ Some of his compositions for
the harp are still extant ; I remember to have seen one of
them in an old collection of engraved Scottish music.
The family of Maclean of Coll was one who mantained a
harper John Garve Maclean of Coll, who lived in the end
of the reign of James VI., and during that of Charles
I., was esteemed a good performer on the harp, and
an excellent composer of music. One of his compositions
has been handed down called the Koyal Lament, which was
probably composed in memory of the latter unfortunate
monarch. An anecdote has been handed down in the
family, of an English vessel having been wrecked on the
Island, the captain of which Avent to the castle of Coll,
and on seeing this venerable gentleman with a Bible in his
hand, and a harp by his side, exclaimed, that he beheld
King David restored again to the earth !
Murdoch Macdonald appears to have been the last native
harper of the Highlands. He was first sent to the Isle of
Skye, to receive instructions from Rory Dall, and then to
Ireland for the same purpose. He remained in the family
of Coll, in quality of harper, until 1734, as appears from an
account of payments made in that year, in the hand-
writing of Hector Maclean of Coll. How long he continued
in the fiimily does not appear ; but he retired to Quinish, in
the Island of Mull, where he remained until his death. He
was always called, and is still remembered in the Island of