Rory Dall Morison (c.1656–c.1714): Harper to MacLeod of Dunvegan

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Morison's life is better documented than most harpers'. William Matheson's 1970 edition pieced it together from his own songs, the poems of his contemporaries, estate accounts and family tradition recorded in the 19th century by Alexander Morison (in The Costume of the Clans, 1845) and John Mackenzie. Keith Sanger and Alison Kinnaird, in Tree of Strings (1992), summarised and extended that work, and their account is the main source here, with dates checked against the Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic record of Matheson's edition and later online scholarship. The weak points are the exact dates of his move to Dunvegan and his death, his time in Ireland, and above all the music: tunes labelled "Rory Dall" may belong to Morison, to the Irish Ó Catháin, to both or to neither.

A Lewis family

established Rory Dall was the eldest son of John Morison, tacksman of Bragar on the west side of Lewis, who held a sixteen-pennyland, one of the largest farms in the district. The family claimed descent from the hereditary brieves, or judges (britheamhan), of Lewis. Sanger and Kinnaird report that John Morison played the fiddle and could improvise verse; Matheson's edition prints some of his surviving verses. He had five sons and a daughter. Two sons, Angus and John, became ministers, and Rory was meant for the church too.

shared His year of birth is usually given as about 1656, following Matheson and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ("1656?"). Some online summaries give about 1646, which does not fit his brother Angus's student dates of 1679 to 1683 or his own meeting with MacLeod in 1681 as a young man.

Blindness and the harp

established While at school in Inverness, Morison caught smallpox and was blinded. (One recent summary says measles or smallpox, depending on the source.) A church career was now closed to him, and he turned to music. Sanger and Kinnaird note that blindness and the harp often went together, and suggest that a blind player, spared manual work, could more easily keep the long fingernails the wire-strung harp required.

shared Alexander Morison, writing in 1845, said Rory went to Ireland to learn the harp. John Mackenzie said he could already play several instruments and went to Ireland to meet other players. Either way, his father is said to have remarked that it cost him more to make Rory a harper than to make his two brothers ministers. The Irish visit is family tradition and is not dated.

shared Mackenzie said that on his return Morison "called at every baronial residence on his way". Matheson read Morison's own song "Creach na Ciadaoin" ("Wednesday's Bereavement") as telling a humbler story: that as a young man he had travelled with a band of musicians who mocked him, and was glad to leave them. Matheson suggested that a man of his education did not fit easily into such company.

Edinburgh and Iain Breac MacLeod

established The break came in Edinburgh, probably while Morison was visiting his brother Angus at the university. In 1681 Iain Breac MacLeod, chief of the MacLeods of Dunvegan, came to the city to pay court to James, Duke of York, then living at Holyroodhouse as his brother Charles II's commissioner. The two men met, and Morison went to Skye.

established At Dunvegan he took the tack of Claggan, a sizeable holding, for a rent of 80 merks. Sanger and Kinnaird stress that he was a tacksman as well as a harper, farming through subtenants and living as a gentleman; John Ramsay of Ochtertyre wrote that he "was born a gentleman and lived on that footing in the family". This set him apart from household members who held land rent-free in return for service. The Mull poet John Maclean sent greetings to Skye with advice to pass quickly through the crowded big house and go on to Claggan to see Roderick.

A chief's household at the end of an era

established Iain Breac was one of the last Highland chiefs to keep a household in the old style. Besides his harper he maintained a hereditary poet from the Ó Muirgheasáin family (Donnchadh Ó Muirgheasáin was paid 20 merks in 1706 for an elegy on Norman MacLeod), the MacCrimmon pipers, represented by Patrick Òg MacCrimmon, and a fool, Norman MacAndy. The accounts also record a Lowland fiddler, James Glass, alias Monro, for whom a plaid was bought in 1683 to 1684. The Skye poet Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod) belonged to the same circle.

established Morison's songs describe this household in detail: young men at wine and meat, drinking horns passed sunwise, the pipes in the early morning, and then the harp. In one passage, as quoted by Sanger and Kinnaird from Matheson, he praises "gàir nan teud", the sound of the harp-strings, played by two hands. His songs set the harp, the pipes and the fiddle side by side in the same hall.

shared He is remembered as hostile to the fiddle. Duncan Macrae of Inverinate described him as jealous of "mac Dheòrsa", George's son, a poetic name for the fiddle, and tradition gives him the remark "Masa ceòl fìdhleireachd, tha gu leòr siud dheth" ("If fiddling is music, that is enough of it"). Sanger and Kinnaird thought the jealousy professional rather than personal, since his own father played the fiddle and the fiddle was taking over the harp's place.

Exile to Glenelg

established In 1688 MacLeod ordered Morison to move to Glenelg on the mainland, where he was given the farm of Totamor rent-free. The reason is not recorded. Matheson suggested politics: MacLeod was trying to avoid committing himself between James VII and William of Orange, while his harper was an outspoken Jacobite. In "Òran mu Oifigich Àraid" ("A Song about Certain Officers") Morison asked where the turncoats would be when King James was proclaimed again.

established Glenelg was isolated and exposed to cattle raiders from Lochaber. In "A' Cheud Di-luain de'n Ràithe" ("The First Monday of the Quarter") Morison appealed to the raiders to spare a blind man, and praised them as warriors and hunters. Tradition says the flattery worked. Elsewhere he described himself growing an unkempt beard, out of sight and out of mind.

The death of Iain Breac and "Òran do MhacLeòid Dhùn Bheagain"

established Iain Breac MacLeod died in 1693. Morison's verses on his death speak of the funeral march and the keening women, and of his own heart bursting at the sound. His relationship with the new chief, Ruaidhri Òg (Roderick) MacLeod, was poor. Ruaidhri Òg was often away from Skye and spent heavily, though his former tutor Martin Martin, the author of A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, called him "the kindest friend I had on earth".

established Morison's best-known song, "Òran do MhacLeòid Dhùn Bheagain" ("A Song to MacLeod of Dunvegan"), addresses the young chief and rebukes him for neglecting his father's ways and his house. It is often described as the song in which the poet speaks with Echo at Dunvegan, who has fallen silent now the household has gone quiet. Sanger and Kinnaird note that the song also calls the chief the poet's joy and inspiration, and that MacLeod took no action against him. The poets and pipers were still kept at Dunvegan, so the rift may have been personal.

shared One older commentator named Norman MacLeod as the target of the song. That is an error: Norman was a child when Morison died. The target was Ruaidhri Òg, chief from 1693 to 1699.

Talisker, the Reay country and Lochaber

established Morison found a new patron in John MacLeod of Talisker, well known for his hospitality. Poets and musicians gathered there, including John Maclean of Mull and John Mackay, Am Pìobaire Dall, the blind piper to the lairds of Gairloch, who had studied with Patrick MacCrimmon. Mackay quoted Morison's lines in his own poems and remembered the harp-music of Christian, daughter-in-law of Talisker.

shared In "Cumha Choire an Easa" ("The Lament for the Corrie of the Waterfall"), set at a hunt in the Reay country in the far north in the 1690s, Mackay has the corrie recall that "Ruaidhri Dall" would play it a salute (fàilte), as quoted by Sanger and Kinnaird. They argued that this was probably a version of the tune now played by pipers as "Cumha Craobh nan Teud" ("The Lament for the Harp Tree"), one of whose variants is called "Corrienessan's Salute". The link is suggestive, not proved.

established Talisker died about 1700. An elegy by Lachlann MacKinnon says that harpers, bards and the needy mourned him, and that Roderick mourned him greatly. Morison's own "Cumha do Fhear Thalasgair" is among his surviving songs. After Talisker's death he is said to have left Glenelg for Lochaber, home of his father-in-law.

established He had married, probably around 1690, Catherine, daughter of John Stewart, a Lochaber factor. They had at least one son, James, who was a merchant in Stornoway by 1723. Alexander Morison and John Mackenzie both say he now visited the houses of Highland and island chiefs, Mackenzie adding that he went only by special invitation. A poem praising the Mackenzies of Coul and Applecross names "the Harper" as the man who could best sum up their fame; his brother Angus was then minister of Contin, in Coul's parish.

shared Duncan Macrae of Inverinate answered one of Morison's Jacobite songs with a satire. It mocked the harper trailing after his self-assured wife Catherine, claimed that the couple drank every groat they earned, and accused him of deserting his wife for his "other woman", the harp. Sanger and Kinnaird treated it as flyting, exaggerated but probably with some truth in it.

"Fèill nan Crann" and the songs

established Matheson's edition prints seven songs: "Òran do Iain Breac MacLeòid", "Fèill nan Crann", "Òran mu Oifigich Àraid", "A' Cheud Di-luain de'n Ràithe", "Creach na Ciadaoin", "Òran do MhacLeòid Dhùn Bheagain" and "Cumha do Fhear Thalasgair". They are in the amhran, or stressed song, metres, not the old syllabic verse of the professional bards.

shared "Fèill nan Crann" ("The Harp Key Fair") is a ribald song in which a lost harp key, or tuning key, becomes a running double meaning in teasing the women of the household. Sanger and Kinnaird describe Morison as "not entirely likeable, but capable of wit, humour and great loyalty". Their reading of his character draws on the songs themselves and on what others wrote about him.

established What marks the songs out, in Sanger and Kinnaird's view, is that they step beyond the formal praise and lament of bardic poetry to show his own feelings: delight in his patron, fear in Glenelg, grief at the deaths of his friends, and scorn for a negligent chief. Several passed into general oral tradition and were still sung long after his death.

The music attributed to "Rory Dall"

shared Sanger and Kinnaird concluded that Morison "does not seem to have been a composer of instrumental music". He fitted old and new melodies to his own words and no doubt played solo harp pieces, but none of the existing harp tunes can be definitely attributed to him. The tunes linked with his name fall into several groups.

shared Daniel Dow's 18th-century collection credits four tunes to "Rorie Dall": "Suipeir Tighearna Leòid" ("Lude's Supper"), "Is eagal leam am bàs" ("I am afraid of death"), "Fuath nam Fìdhlearan" ("The Fiddlers' Contempt") and "Cumha Peathar Ruairi" ("The Lament for Rory's Sister"). Matheson suggested these belonged to Morison. But a shorter version of "Cumha Peathar Ruairi" is in the Straloch manuscript, compiled in the 1620s, before Morison was born, and "Lude's Supper" was tied by John Gunn (1807) to a visit to Lude about 1650, also before Morison's birth. "Fuath nam Fìdhlearan" has been linked with him because of his dislike of fiddlers, but Sanger and Kinnaird thought it a traditional "Port" form, perhaps a type of musical flyting; Matheson suggested it might parody fiddle style.

shared "Rory Dall's Port" first appears in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion in the mid 18th century. Sanger and Kinnaird thought its variations were probably Oswald's own. They also reported a tune in the Straloch manuscript ending "Finis Port Rorie Dall", the same tune as "Port Ballangowne" in the earlier Skene manuscript. A 2025 University of St Andrews blog notes that the Straloch manuscript survives only in an 1839 transcription and that this attribution cannot now be confirmed.

shared The strongest link is in John Bowie's collection of 1789, which prints eight harp tunes supplied by "a Gentleman of Note in the Highlands" whose ancestors learned them from "the famous Rory Daul a celebreted Harper in the Reign of Queen Ann". Queen Anne reigned from 1702 to 1714, which fits Morison, not Ó Catháin. Bowie's informant credits Rory with playing the tunes, not composing them. The set includes "McLoud's Salute" and a tune later sung to words about the Battle of Sheriffmuir (1715). Matheson suggested that Mary MacLeod learned a tune of this type from Morison at Dunvegan.

established Matheson's edition prints the airs to which Morison's songs were sung in tradition. The later Angus Fraser manuscript (Edinburgh University Library) includes two airs named from "Òran do MhacLeòid Dhùn Bheagain": "Far-fuadach a' Chlàrsair" ("The Harper's Dismissal") and "Fonn Marbhrann nan Teud" ("Air of the Death Elegy on the Harp"), as well as a jig called "Rory Dall Morison". These are later arrangements, but they show the songs and their tunes were still current.

Two Blind Rorys

established Ruaidhrí Dall Ó Catháin ("Blind Rory O'Kane") was an Irish harper of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, said to have come from the Ó Catháin family of north Derry and Antrim and to have spent much of his life in Scotland. Irish tradition, recorded by Arthur O'Neill and Edward Bunting around 1800, credits him with "Da Mihi Manum" and with "Port Atholl" and "Port Gordon", and says he died in Skye leaving his harp and a silver tuning key. Sanger and Kinnaird dated his death to around 1650, a few years before Morison was born.

established Writers from the late 18th century onward merged the two. William Tytler of Woodhouselee wrote of a "Rory or Roderick Dall" who had lived "about fifty years ago" around Blair Atholl and Dunkeld, a date that fits neither man. Gunn placed Morison at Lude about 1650. An Antrim tradition printed in 1906 claimed that the Irish Rory fled to the Highlands and "changed his name to Morrison". Sanger and Kinnaird called the merging of the two men "patently untrue". The book itself is not wholly consistent here: one chapter says Gunn named Morison as the composer of "Lude's Supper", while the music chapter says Gunn gave the tune to Ó Catháin.

shared Later research has gone further. A 2025 St Andrews blog reports that Keith Sanger, in a 2025 article for the Irish harp journal Harp Perspectives, found very little evidence that the Irish Rory existed at all as a single historical figure, and argued that his legend gathers stories of several itinerant Irish harpers. On that view, Morison is the only "Rory Dall" whose life is documented, though tunes from before his time still cannot be his.

His contemporaries

established Lachlann Dall, another blind harper, was a friend of the poet Sìleas na Ceapaich (Sìleas MacDonald of Keppoch, born about 1660). Alexander and Donald Stewart's collection of Gaelic verse names him "Lachlan Mac Ionmhuinn, an Clàrsair", so he may have been a MacKinnon; Matheson and Colm Ó Baoill rejected his identification with the poet Lachlann mac Theàrlaich Òig. Sìleas's lament for him opens "Slàn a chaoidh le ceòl na clàrsaich" ("Farewell forever to the music of the harp"), as quoted by Sanger and Kinnaird. She names the tunes he played for her, and the poem shows a harper with no fixed base, carrying news between houses from Skye to Banffshire over perhaps fifty years.

established Murdoch MacDonald was harper to MacLean of Coll. According to Gunn (1807), he was brought up by the Coll family, taught by Morison and then sent to Ireland to continue his studies. A disarming list of 28 April 1716 records "Murdoch McMurchie harper" at Breacachadh on Coll, who had not been in the rising and had no arms. Gunn says he was still paid by MacLean in 1734 and died at Quinish in Mull; another account gives about 1739. Three "Ancient Harp Airs" in the MacLean-Clephane manuscript are noted as played by him, and two resemble tunes linked with "Rory Dall". Gunn called him the last of the Highland harpers.

established Alexander Menzies, "harper in Ballinearn" near Logierait in Perthshire, died before December 1705 a wealthy man, having lent at least £1,000 Scots to a local laird. He shows that some harpers prospered while others depended on patrons.

shared William McMurchy of Kintyre, born about 1700, was said to play pipes, fiddle and harp and to compose poetry, so Sanger and Kinnaird doubted that Murdoch MacDonald was truly the last.

The end of the household harper

shared Morison's career traces the end of the resident harper in Highland households. Within a generation, chiefs had stopped keeping a harper, poet, piper and fool. The reasons were political (the Jacobite risings and their aftermath), economic (chiefs living in Edinburgh and London and spending more) and musical, as the fiddle and the pipes took over the harp's dance and ceremonial music. Gunn's 1807 report on the harp in the Highlands treated the tradition as having stopped "about the year 1734". Irish harpers such as Echlin Ó Catháin still toured Scotland in the 1770s, but no Scottish household harper is recorded after Murdoch MacDonald and William McMurchy. Some of the music passed to the fiddle and the pipes, which is how a few harp tunes survive at all.

Death and burial

shared Morison returned to Skye near the end of his life. The accounts of the MacLeod factor, John MacLeod of Contullich, record a plaid bought for "blind Roderick" in about 1713. John Mackenzie said the castle household asked after his health in his last illness and that his body was taken to Dunvegan for burial. A letter from his brother Angus written before 1 August 1714 includes the words "if poor Rorie were alive", so he died in 1713 or 1714. The 2025 St Andrews blog, following Francis Collinson, gives burial in the winter of 1712 to 1713, and an appendix table in Tree of Strings gives his dates as "1656 × 1712". A grave in the old cemetery at Eye in Lewis is sometimes pointed out as his, but Sanger and Kinnaird thought this a case of mistaken identity.

• His father said it cost more to make Rory a harper than to make two of his brothers ministers.
• He met his patron in Edinburgh, not in Skye.
• He paid rent for his farm at Dunvegan, unlike the household poets and pipers.
• He flattered Lochaber cattle raiders in song so that they would leave a blind man's cattle alone.
• One of his songs uses a lost harp key as a running joke.
• A rival poet called the harp his "other woman".
• Bowie's 1789 collection dates "the famous Rory Daul" to the reign of Queen Anne.

• Myth: Rory Dall Morison and the Irish harper Ruaidhrí Dall Ó Catháin were one man. Writers from the late eighteenth century merged them, but Ó Catháin died around 1650, before Morison was born. Later research suggests the Irish Rory may be a legend gathering the stories of several harpers.
• Disputed: which tunes Morison composed. Tunes labelled "Rory Dall" may belong to Morison, to Ó Catháin, to both or to neither. "Da Mihi Manum", "Port Atholl", "Port Gordon", "Cumha Peathar Ruairi" and "Lude's Supper" are linked to Ó Catháin or predate Morison, and "Rory Dall's Port" is unproven. Sanger and Kinnaird concluded that no harp tune can be definitely attributed to him.
• Disputed: when Morison was born and died. He was born about 1656, not about 1646, and died in 1713 or 1714, though some sources give 1712 to 1713.
• Myth: he held his farm at Claggan rent-free. He paid 80 merks as a tacksman. Only Totamor in Glenelg was rent-free.
• Disputed: where he is buried. Tradition says Dunvegan. A grave at Eye in Lewis is sometimes pointed out as his, but Sanger and Kinnaird thought this a mistaken identity.
• Myth: Morison was the last Highland harper. Murdoch MacDonald, who is said to have been his pupil, and William McMurchy outlived him.
• Myth: "Òran do MhacLeòid Dhùn Bheagain" attacks Norman MacLeod. One older commentator said so, but Norman was a child when Morison died. The song addresses the young chief Ruaidhri Òg.