The Piper of Talisker Bay

Talisker Bay, Minginish, Isle of Skye, Scotland

A bagpipe lament is heard at the head of Talisker beach on dusk tides — said to be the MacLeod piper who refused to leave his post when the press-gang came for him in 1771.

Talisker Bay is a long stretch of black-and-white striped sand on the western coast of Skye, hemmed by 300-metre sea cliffs and a single waterfall that drops directly into the surf. It is the most photographed beach on Skye and the source of the malt whisky that takes its name from the township at its head. The folklore is mid-18th-century. The MacLeod chief at Talisker House — set back from the beach behind a sheltering wood — kept a hereditary piper, as was the custom of the great Skye houses. In 1771, a Royal Navy press-gang came ashore in Talisker Bay to take men for the war with France. The piper, a Donald MacKinnon then in his fifties, stood at the head of the beach and played a pibroch as a warning to the crofters in the wood to flee. The press-gang took him because he would not stop playing, and they took him because his refusal to stop counted as resistance. Donald MacKinnon never returned. The MacLeod chief tried to ransom him from the navy and was told he had been pressed into the West Indies fleet and died of yellow fever on Antigua within the year. He has no grave at home. The pibroch is still heard at Talisker. Walkers descending the beach path at dusk, particularly on a falling tide between February and April, have reported the sound of pipes from the seaward end of the beach — a slow, mournful tune that breaks off mid-phrase when they look directly toward the source. Modern pipers visiting Talisker have identified the tune as the lament Cumha Mhic an Tòisich, MacIntosh's Lament. It was the last piece Donald MacKinnon was heard playing as he was taken away.