The Book of Scottish Song/Macpherson's Farewell
Macpherson’s Farewell.
[Written by Burns to the tune of "Macpherson's Rant." "Macpherson's Lament," says Sir Walter Scott, "was a well-known song many years before the Ayrshire Bard wrote those additional verses which constitute its principal merit. This noted freebooter was executed at Inverness, about the beginning of the last century. When he came to the fatal tree, he played the tune, to which he has bequeathed his name, upon a favourite violin, and holding up the instrument, offered it to any one of his clan who would undertake to play the tune over his body, at his lyke-wake; as none answered, he dashed it to pieces on the executioner's head, and flung himself from the ladder." Scott has erred, however, in naming Inverness as the place of Macpherson's execution. The records of his trial are still extant, and have been recently published. Through this document it appears that he was tried at Banff, along with three others, and convicted of being "repute an Egyptian and vagabond, and oppressor of his majesty's free lieges, in a bangstree manner, and going up and down the country armed, and keeping markets in a hostile manner," and was sentenced to be executed at the cross of Banff, November 16, 1700, eight days after his conviction. Tradition asserts, that the magistrates hurried on the execution early in the morning, and that Macpherson suffered several hours before the specified time. The motive for this indecent haste is said to have been a desire to defeat a reprieve, then on the way. An anonymous article in the first volume of the New Monthly Magazine, supplies some particulars of his lineage and exploits. "James Macpherson was born of a beautiful gipsy who, at a great wedding, attracted notice of a half-intoxicated Highland gentlemen. He acknowledged the child, and had him reared in his house, until he lost his life in bravely pursuing a hostile clan, to recover a spread of cattle taken from Badenoch. The gipsy woman hearing of this disaster in her rambles, the following summer came and took away her boy, but she often returned with him, to wait upon his relations and clansmen, who never failed to clothe him well, besides giving money to his mother. He grew up in beauty, strength, and stature, rarely equalled. His sword is still preserved at Duff House, a residence of the Earl of Fife, and few men of our day could carry, far less wield it as a weapon of war; and if it must be owned that his prowess was debased by the exploits of a freebooter, it is certain no act of cruelty, no robbery of the widow, the fatherless, or the distressed, and no murder, was ever perpetrated under his command. He often gave the spoils of the rich to relieve the poor; and all his tribe were restrained from many atrocities of rapine by the awe of his mighty arm. Indeed it is said that a dispute with an aspiring and savage man of his tribe, who wished to rob a gentleman's house, while his wife and two children lay on the bier for interment, was the cause of his being betrayed to the vengeance of the law. He was betrayed by a man of his own tribe, and was the last person executed at Banff, previous to the abolition of heritable jurisdiction."]
Farewell, ye prisons dark and strong,
The wretch's destinie!
Macpherson's time will not be long
On yonder gallows tree.
Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dantonly gaed he,
He play'd a spring, and danced it round,
Beneath the gallows tree!
Oh, what is death, but parting breath?
On mony a bluidy plain
I've daur'd his face, and in this place
I scorn him yet again.
Untie these bands frae aff my hands,
And bring to me my sword;
And there's nae man in a' Scotland
But I'll brave him at a word.
I've lived a life of sturt and strife;
I die by treacherie:
It burns my heart I must depart,
And not avenged be.
Now fareweil, light, thou sunshine bright,
And all beneath the sky!
May coward shame distain his name,
The wretch that dares not die!