The figure of Colma appeared first in “Fragment X” of Macpherson's anonymously published Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760). Unnamed there, she is the lover of Salgar (or Shalgar), slain along with her brother in their mortal combat with each other, and the poem opens with her famous declaration, “It is night; and I am alone, forlorn on the hill of storms.” In “The Songs of Selma,” she is introduced and named by Minona, daughter of Torman and sister of Morar: “Colma left alone on the hill, with all her voice of music! Salgar promised to come: but the night descended around. Hear the voice of Colma, when she sat alone on the hill!” Colma repeats her lament, and concludes, “I sit in my grief. I wait for morning in my tears. Rear the tomb, ye friends of the dead; but close it not till Colma come. My life flies away like a dream: why should I stay behind?” An extension of her original song in the Fragments adds, “Our tears descended for Colma, and our souls were sad.” The general atmosphere of mourning led by Ullin, Fingal's chief bard, and Ossian himself, is intensified with the lament for Alpin and Ryno, two of their fellow bards.

This tale of Colma appealed to both French and German composers, the latter more searching in their approach: nine German-language settings of Colma appeared between 1791 and 1873. The number in itself is not especially impressive, but one of the settings, “Kolma's Klage,” is by Franz Schubert, and apart from the wide diffusion of his music in German-speaking lands, his influence on the development of both the melodie and the romance in France after 1830 or so was considerable. The French settings of “Colma” were restricted, however, to the period roughly between 1800 and 1817 when Ossian fever in France was at its height. The music for M.-J. Chenier's versification of “Colma” (possibly by Mehul, ca. 1800) was followed by settings by Jean-Baptiste Bouffet (1809), Camille Pleyel (1815), and Henri-Montan Berton (1815–17).