photos | stephanie gengotti | cirque

from the national geographic

Sunday morning church at little St. Columba's here in Tofino. Just before she launches into the singing of Psalm 130, the no-nonsense organist tells us that it's set to the tune "MacPherson's Farewell," and there's a very interesting story behind it but she won't tell us now. "You can just go home and google it up on your internet."

So I did. "While under sentence of death in the jail, during the week between his trial and his execution, MacPherson is said to have composed the tune and the song now known as MacPherson's Lament or MacPherson's Rant. Sir Walter Scott says that MacPherson played it under the gallows, and, after playing the tune, he then offered his fiddle to anyone in his clan who would play it at his wake. When no one came forward to take the fiddle, he broke it – either across his knee or over the executioner's head – and then threw it into the crowd with the remark, "No one else shall play Jamie MacPherson's fiddle". The broken fiddle now lies in the MacPherson Clan museum near Newtonmore, Inverness-shire. He then was hanged or, according to some accounts, threw himself from the ladder, to hang by his own will."