Don't remember the EXACT date, but I remember the exact place - the living-room couch, when I was a young lad, the old fella sitting there with his arm around me - watching one of those music shows from the Maritimes, and there was this young man in highland regalia (not J'n Allan) standing alone singing ... I can still see it - and hear it. I don't know if it was the MacDonald blood in my veins or what, but the song must have really struck me - it was probably at least fifteen years before I heard the song again, but I never forgot the melody, the story, and the chorus. Like Jim Lad, I can't say that about many songs.

The melody, by the way, became a standard waltz tune in Cape Breton.

Gentlemen, I give you: Jim McLean!