Elizabeth Ross

Elizabeth Jane Ross (17 September 1789 – 1 June 1875) was a Scottish poet, artist, and collector of Gaelic music. Life She was born to Captain Thomas Ross, a gunner assistant in the Royal Artillery who was badly wounded at the Siege of Seringapatam (now is the territory of India) in 1792, and Isabella Rose Macleod in Perth, Scotland. Her father was an Army officer who had served in the Caribbean and was stationed in India at the time of Elizabeth's birth. Her mother, was Isabella Rose Macleod, the 8th daughter of John Macleod of Raasay. Both her parents died when she was very young. Shortly after her father's death in 1794, her sister was born and named Isabella Rose, after her mother, and was baptised at St. Mary's Church, Fort St. George (Madraspatnam). Afterwards, the two siblings moved back to Raasay. The mother's fate remains uncertain, but it was possible that her mother died and was buried on the sea during the voyage home from India. She attended Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh. She and her sister became wards of the then Governor-General in India, the Marquis of Hastings who was married to their second cousin, the Countess of Louton. The sisters were sent to Scotland to be raised by a relative (probably her maternal grandfather, John McLeod (1761-1824), laird of Raasay) (an island between Skye and the mainland). She was educated in Edinburgh where she lived with an aunt The Macleods were a very musical family. Elizabeth’s grandfather played the violin, while other menfolk were all pipers. Elizabeth became an accomplished musician, playing piano and concert harp. By her early 20s, she had transcribed 150 Gaelic airs, based on the playing of John McKay, piper to the laird of Raasay. She recorded these airs in a manuscript entitled “Original Highland airs, transcribed by Elizabeth Jane Ross, 1812” which she left in the Library of Raasay House and which were given to the Edinburgh University Library in the 1950s. McKay later composed an air, Fàilte Baintighearna D’Oyly [Lady D’Oyly’s Salute] in her honour. A descendant of the McLeod family’s piper, Angus McKay, wrote of Elizabeth’s musical aptitude and her fondness for the piper in the following terms: Her musical taste was remarkably good, and she was so fond of Pìobaireachd [bagpipes], that she acquired many of the longest pieces from the performance of the family Piper, and was accustomed to play them on the piano with much effect….