In one account a handsome grey mare came among the tenant of Aros's horses at the end of Loch Frisa, and his son haltered and mounted it. It stood quietly until he was on its back and then rushed into the loch. In another a horse kept all winter with a cow shackle round its neck worked quietly all spring, until he rode it to the peat moss, when it set off for the loch and only the livers of the youth and his horses were ever seen. Another says the young man clasped his arms around its neck and could not unclasp them.
Campbell thought there was this much truth in it, that the young man was dragged into Loch Frisa by a mare he was trying to break and drowned. The song suggests his body was recovered.
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