TO the make of a piper go seven years of his own learning and seven
generations before. If it is in, it will out, as the Gaelic old-word
says; if not, let him take to the net or sword. At the end of his seven
years one born to it will stand at the start of knowledge, and leaning a
fond ear to the drone, he may have parley with old folks of old affairs.
Playing the tune of the “Fairy Harp,” he can hear his forefolks, plaided
in skins, towsy-headed and terrible, grunting at the oars and snoring in
the caves; he has his whittle and club in the “Desperate Battle” (my own
tune, my darling!), where the white-haired sea-rovers are on the shore,
and a stain's on the edge of the tide; or, trying his art on Laments,
he can stand by the cairn of kings, ken the colour of Fingal's hair, and
see the moon-glint on the hook of the Druids!
To-day there are but three pipers in the wide world, from the Sound of
Sleat to the Wall of France. Who they are, and what their tartan, it is
not for one to tell who has no heed for a thousand dirks in his doublet,
but they may be known by the lucky ones who hear them. Namely players
tickle the chanter and take out but the sound; the three give a tune
the charm that I mention--a long thought and a bard's thought, and they
bring the notes from the deeps of time, and the tale from the heart of
the man who made it.
But not of the three best in Albainn today is my story, for they have
not the Lost Pibroch. It is of the three best, who were not bad, in a
place I ken--Half Town that stands in the wood.
You may rove for a thousand years on league-long brogues, or hurry on
fairy wings from isle to isle and deep to deep, and find no equal to
that same Half Town. It is not the splendour of it, nor the riches of
its folk; it is not any great routh of field or sheep-fank, but the
scented winds of it, and the comfort of the pine-trees round and about
it on every hand. My mother used to be saying (when I had the notion of
fairy tales), that once on a time, when the woods were young and
thin, there was a road through them, and the pick of children of a
country-side wandered among them into this place to play at sheilings.
Up grew the trees, fast and tall, and shut the little folks in so that
the way out they could not get if they had the mind for it. But never an
out they wished for. They grew with the firs and alders, a quiet clan in
the heart of the big wood, clear of the world out-by.
But now and then wanderers would come to Half Town, through the gloomy
coves, under the tall trees. There were packmen with tales of the
out-world. There were broken men flying from rope or hatchet. And
once on a day of days came two pipers--Gilian, of Clan Lachlan of
Strathlachlan, and Rory Ban, of the Macnaghtons of Dundarave.
They had seen Half Town from the sea--smoking to the clear air on the
hillside; and through the weary woods they came, and the dead quiet of
them, and they stood on the edge of the fir-belt.
Before them was what might be a township in a dream, and to be seen at
the one look, for it stood on the rising hill that goes back on Lochow.
The dogs barked, and out from the houses and in from the fields came the
quiet clan to see who could be here. Biggest of all the men, one they
named Coll, cried on the strangers to come forward; so out they went
from the wood-edge, neither coy nor crouse, but the equal of friend or
foe, and they passed the word of day.
“Hunting,” they said, “in Easachosain, we found the roe come this way.”
“If this way she came, she's at Duglas Water by now, so you may bide and
eat. Few, indeed, come calling on us in Half Town; but whoever they are,
here's the open door, and the horn spoon, and the stool by the fire.”
He took them in and he fed them, nor asked their names nor calling, but
when they had eaten well he said to Rory, “You have skill of the pipes;
I know by the drum of your fingers on the horn spoon.”
“I have tried them,” said Rory, with a laugh, “a bit--a bit. My friend
here is a player.”
“You have the art?” asked Coll.
“Well, not what yoo might call the whole art,” said Gilian, “but I can
play--oh yes!I can play two or three ports.”
“You can that!” said Rory.
“No better than yourself, Rory.”
“Well, maybe not, but--anyway, not all tunes; I allow you do 'Mackay's
Banner' in a pretty style.”
“Pipers,” said Coll, with a quick eye to a coming quarrel, “I will take
you to one of your own trade in this place--Paruig Dali, who is namely
for music.”
“It's a name that's new to me,” said Rory, short and sharp, but up they
rose and followed Big Coll.
He took them to a bothy behind the Half Town, a place with turf
walls and never a window, where a blind man sat winding pirns for the
weaver-folks.
“This,” said Coll, showing the strangers in at the door, “is a piper
of parts, or I'm no judge, and he has as rare a stand of great pipes as
ever my eyes sat on.”
“I have that same,” said the blind man, with his face to the door. “Your
friends, Coll?”
“Two pipers of the neighbourhood,” Rory made answer. “It was for no
piping we came here, but by the accident of the chase. Still and on, if
pipes are here, piping there might be.”
“So be it,” cried Coll; “but I must go back to my cattle till night
comes. Get you to the playing with Paruig Dali, and I'll find you here
when I come back.” And with that he turned about and went off.
Parig put down the ale and cake before the two men, and “Welcome you
are,” said he.
They ate the stranger's bite, and lipped the stranger's cup, and then,
“Whistle 'The Macraes' March,' my fair fellow,” said the blind man.
“How ken you I'm fair?” asked Rory.
“Your tongue tells that. A fair man has aye a soft bit in his speech,
like the lapping of milk in a cogie; and a black one, like your friend
there, has the sharp ring of a thin burn in frost running into an iron
pot. 'The Macraes' March,' _laochain_.”
Rory put a pucker on his mouth and played a little of the fine tune.
“So!” said the blind man, with his head to a side, “you had your lesson.
And you, my Strathlachlan boy without beard, do you ken 'Muinntir a'
Ghlinne so'?”
“How ken ye I'm Strathlachlan and beardless?” asked Gilian.
“Strathlachlan by the smell of herring-scale from your side of the house
(for they told me yesterday the gannets were flying down Strathlachlan
way, and that means fishing), and you have no beard I know, but in what
way I know I do not know.” Gilian had the _siubhal_ of the pibroch but
begun when the blind man stopped him.
“You have it,” he said, “you have it in a way, the Macarthur's way, and
that's not my way. But, no matter, let us to our piping.”
The three men sat them down on three stools on the clay floor, and the
blind man's pipes passed round between them.
“First,” said Paruig (being the man of the house, and to get the vein
of his own pipes)--“first I'll put on them 'The Vaunting.'” He stood to
his shanks, a lean old man and straight, and the big drone came nigh on
the black rafters. He filled the bag at a breath and swung a lover's arm
round about it. To those who know not the pipes, the feel of the bag
in the oxter is a gaiety lost. The sweet round curve is like a girl's
waist; it is friendly and warm in the crook of the elbow and against a
man's side, and to press it is to bring laughing or tears.
The bothy roared with the tuning, and then the air came melting and
sweet from the chanter. Eight steps up, four, to the turn, and eight
down went Paruig, and the _piobaireachd_ rolled to his fingers like
a man's rhyming. The two men sat on, the stools, with their elbows on
their knees, and listened.
He played but the _urlar_, and the _crunluadh_ to save time, and he
played them well.
“Good indeed! Splendid, my old fellow!” cried the two; and said Gilian,
“You have a way of it in the _crunluadh_ not my way, but as good as ever
I heard.”
“It is the way of Padruig Og,” said Rory.
“Well I know it! There are tunes and tunes, and 'The Vaunting' is not
bad in its way, but give me 'The Macraes' March.'”
He jumped to his feet and took the pipes from the old man's hands, and
over his shoulder with the drones.
“Stand back, lad!” he cried to Gilian, and Gilian went nearer the door.
The march came fast to the chanter--the old tune, the fine tune that
Kintail has heard before, when the wild men in their red tartan came
over hill and moor; the tune with the river in it, the fast river and
the courageous that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and
over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way
before it. The tune of the heroes, the tune of the pinelands and the
broad straths, the tune that the eagles of Loch Duich crack their beaks
together when they hear, and the crows of that country-side would as
soon listen to as the squeal of their babies.
“Well! mighty well!” said Paruig Dali. “You have the tartan of the clan
in it.”
“Not bad, I'll allow,” said Gilian. “Let me try.”
He put his fingers on the holes, and his heart took a leap back over two
generations, and yonder was Glencoe! The grey day crawled on the white
hills and the Mack roofs smoked below. Snow choked the pass, _eas_ and
corn filled with drift and flatted to the brae-face; the wind tossed
quirky and and in the little bashes and among the smooring lintels and
joists; the Mood of old and young lappered on the hearthstone, and the
bairn, with a knifed throat, had an icy lip on a frozen teat. Out of the
place went the tramped path of the Campbell butchers--far on their
way to Glenlyon and the towns of paper and ink and liars--“Muinntir
a' ghlinne so, muinntir a' ghlinne so!--People, people, people of this
glen, this glen, this glen!”
“Dogs! dogs! O God of grace--dogs and cowards!” cried Rory. “I could be
dirking a Diarmaid or two if by luck they were near me.”
“It is piping that is to be here,” said Paruig, “and it is not piping
for an hour nor piping for an evening, but the piping of Dunvegan that
stops for sleep nor supper.”
So the three stayed in the bothy and played tune about while time went
by the door. The birds flew home to the branches, the longnecked beasts
flapped off to the shore to spear their flat fish; the rutting deers
bellowed with loud throats in the deeps of the wood that stands round
Half Town, and the scents of the moist night came gusty round the
door. Over the back of Auchnabreac the sun trailed his plaid of red
and yellow, and the loch stretched salt and dark from Cairn Dubh to
Creaggans.
In from the hill the men and the women came, weary-legged, and the
bairns nodded at their heels. Sleepiness was on the land, but the
pipers, piping in the bothy, kept the world awake.
“We will go to bed in good time,” said the folks, eating their suppers
at their doors; “in good time when this tune is ended.” But tune came on
tane, and every tune better than its neighbour, and they waited.
A cruisie-light was set alowe in the blind man's bothy, and the three
men played old tunes and new tunes--salute and lament and brisk dances
and marches that coax tired brogues on the long roads.
“Here's 'Tulloch Ard' for you, and tell me who made it,” said Rory.
“Who kens that? Here's 'Raasay's Lament,' the best port Padruig Mor ever
put together.”
“Tunes and tunes. I'm for 'A Kiss o' the King's Hand.'”
“Thug mi pòg 'us pòg 'us pòg,
Thug mi pòg do làmh an righ,
Cha do chuir gaoth an craicionn caorach,
Fear a fhuair an fhaoilt ach mi!”
Then a quietness came on Half Town, for the piping stopped, and the
people at their doors heard but their blood thumping and the night-hags
in the dark of the firwood.
“A little longer and maybe there will be more,” they said to each other,
and they waited; but no more music came from the drones, so they went in
to bed.
There was quiet over Half Town, for the three pipers talked about the
Lost Tune.
“A man my father knew,” said Gilian, “heard a bit of it once in
Moideart. A terrible fine tune he said it was, but sore on the mind.”
“It would be the tripling,” said the Macnaghton, stroking a reed with a
fond hand.
“Maybe. Tripling is ill enough, but what is tripling? There is more in
piping than brisk fingers. Am I not right, Paruig?” “Right, oh! right.
The Lost _Piobaireachd_ asks for skilly tripling, but Macruimen himself
could not get at the core of it for all his art.”
“You have heard it then!” cried Gilian.
The blind man stood up and filled out his breast.
“Heard it!” he said; “I heard it, and I play it--on the _feadan_, but
not on the full set. To play the tune I mention on the full set is what
I have not done since I came to Half Town.”
“I have ten round pieces in my sporran, and a bonnet-brooch it would
take much to part me from; but they're there for the man who'll play me
the Lost _Piobaireachd_” said Gilian, with the words tripping each other
to the tip of his tongue.
“And here's a Macnaghton's fortune on the top of the round pieces,”
cried Rory, emptying his purse on the table.
The old man's face got hot and angry. “I am not,” he said, “a tinker's
minstrel, to give my tuning for bawbees and a quaich of ale. The king
himself could not buy the tune I ken if he had but a whim for it. But
when pipers ask it they can have it, and it's yours without a fee. Still
if you think to learn the tune by my piping once, poor's the delusion.
It is not a port to be picked up like a cockle on the sand, for it takes
the schooling of years and blindness forbye.”
“Blindness?”
“Blindness indeed. The thought of it is only for the dark eye.”
“If we could hear it on the full set!”
“Come out, then, on the grass, and you'll hear it, if Half Town should
sleep no sleep this night.”
They went out of the bothy to the wet short grass. Ragged mists shook
o'er Cowal, and on Ben Ime sat a horned moon like a galley of Lorn.
“I heard this tune from the Moideart man--the last in Albainn who knew
it then, and he's in the clods,” said the blind fellow.
He had the mouthpiece at his lip, and his hand was coaxing the bag, when
a bairn's cry came from a house in the Half Town--a suckling's whimper,
that, heard in the night, sets a man's mind busy on the sorrows that
folks are born to. The drones clattered together on the piper's elbow
and he stayed.
“I have a notion,” he said to the two men. “I did not tell you that the
Lost _Piobaireachd_ is the _piobaireachd_ of good-byes. It is the
tune of broken clans, that sets the men on the foray and makes cold
hearth-stones. It was played in Glenshira when Gilleasbuig Gruamach
could stretch stout swordsmen from Boshang to Ben Bhuidhe, and where are
the folks of Glenshira this day? I saw a cheery night in Carnus that's
over Lochow, and song and story busy about the fire, and the Moideart
man played it for a wager. In the morning the weans were without
fathers, and Carnus men were scattered about the wide world.”
“It must be the magic tune, sure enough,” said Gilian.
“Magic indeed, _laochain!_ It is the tune that puts men on the open
road, that makes restless lads and seeking women. Here's a Half Town of
dreamers and men fattening for want of men's work. They forget the world
is wide and round about their fir-trees, and I can make them crave for
something they cannot name.”
“Good or bad, out with it,” said Rory, “if you know it at all.”
“Maybe no', maybe no'. I am old and done. Perhaps I have lost the right
skill of the tune, for it's long since I put it on the great pipe.
There's in me the strong notion to try it whatever may come of it, and
here's for it.”
He put his pipe up again, filled the bag at a breath, brought the
booming to the drones, and then the chanter-reed cried sharp and high.
“He's on it,” said Rory in Gilian's ear.
The groundwork of the tune was a drumming on the deep notes where the
sorrows lie--“Come, come, come, my children, rain on the brae and the
wind blowing.”
“It is a salute.” said Rory.
“It's the strange tune anyway,” said Gilian; “listen to the time of
yon!”
The tune searched through Half Town and into the gloomy pine-wood; it
put an end to the whoop of the night-hag and rang to Ben Bhreac. Boatmen
deep and far on the loch could hear it, and Half Town folks sat up to
listen.
It's story was the story that's ill to tell--something of the heart's
longing and the curious chances of life. It bound up all the tales of
all the clans, and made one tale of the Gaels' past. Dirk nor sword
against the tartan, but the tartan against all else, and the Gaels'
target fending the hill-land and the juicy straths from the pock-pitted
little black men. The winters and the summers passing fast and furious,
day and night roaring in the ears, and then again the clans at variance,
and warders on every pass and on every parish.
Then the tune changed.
“Folks,” said the reeds, coaxing. “Wide's the world and merry the road.
Here's but the old story and the women we kissed before. Come, come to
the flat-lands rich and full, where the wonderful new things happen and
the women's lips are still to try!”
“To-morrow,” said Gilian in his friend's ear--“to-morrow I will go
jaunting to the North. It has been in my mind since Beltane.”
“One might be doing worse,” said Rory, “and I have the notion to try a
trip with my cousin to the foreign wars.”
The blind piper put up his shoulder higher and rolled the air into
the _crunluadh breabach_ that comes prancing with variations. Pride
stiffened him from heel to hip, and hip to head, and set his sinews like
steel.
He was telling of the gold to get for the searching and the bucks that
may be had for the hunting. “What,” said the reeds, “are your poor
crops, slashed by the constant rain and rotting, all for a scart in
the bottom of a pot? What are your stots and heifers--black, dun, and
yellow--to milch-cows and horses? Here's but the same for ever--toil
and sleep, sleep and toil even on, no feud nor foray nor castles to
harry--only the starved field and the sleeping moss. Let us to a
brisker place! Over yonder are the long straths and the deep rivers and
townships strewn thick as your corn-rigs; over yonder's the place of the
packmen's tales and the packmen's wares: steep we the withies and go!”
The two men stood with heads full of bravery and dreaming--men in a
carouse. “This,” said they, “is the notion we had, but had no words for.
It's a poor trade piping and eating and making amusement when one might
be wandering up and down the world. We must be packing the haversacks.”
Then the _crunluadh mach_ came fast and furious on the chanter, and Half
Town shook with it. It buzzed in the ear like the flowers in the Honey
Croft, and made commotion among the birds rocking on their eggs in the
wood.
“So! so!” barked the _iolair_ on Craig-an-eas.
“I have heard before it was an ill thing to be satisfied; in the morning
I'll try the kids on Maam-side, for the hares here are wersh and tough.”
“Hearken, dear,” said the _londubh_, “I know now why my beak is gold; it
is because I once ate richer berries than the whortle, and in season
I'll look for them on the braes of Glenfinne.”
“Honk-unk,” said the fox, the cunning red fellow, “am not I the fool to
be staying on this little brae when I know so many roads elsewhere?”
And the people sitting up in their beds in Half Town moaned for
something new. “Paruig Dall is putting the strange tune on her there,”
said they. “What the meaning of it is we must ask in the morning, but,
_ochanoch!_ it leaves one hungry at the heart.” And then gusty winds
came snell from the north, and where the dark crept first, the day made
his first showing, so that Ben Ime rose black against a grey sky.
“That's the Lost _Piobaireachd_,” said Paruig Dali when the bag sunk on
his arm.
And the two men looked at him in a daze.
Sometimes in the spring of the year the winds from Lorn have it their
own way with the Highlands. They will come tearing furious over
the hundred hills, spurred the faster by the prongs of Cruachan and
Dunchuach, and the large woods of home toss before them like corn before
the hook. Up come the poor roots and over on their broken arms go the
tall trees, and in the morning the deer will trot through new lanes cut
in the forest.
A wind of that sort came on the full of the day when the two pipers were
leaving Half Town.
“Stay till the storm is over,” said the kind folks; and “Your bed and
board are here for the pipers forty days,” said Paruig Dali. But “No”
said the two; “we have business that your _piobaireachd_ put us in mind
of.”
“I'm hoping that I did not play yon with too much skill,” said the old
man.
“Skill or no skill,” said Gilian, “the like of yon I never heard. You
played a port that makes poor enough all ports ever one listened to, and
piping's no more for us wanderers.”
“Blessings with thee!” said the folks all, and the two men went down
into the black wood among the cracking trees.
Six lads looked after them, and one said, “It is an ill day for a body
to take the world for his pillow, but what say you to following the
pipers?”
“It might,” said one, “be the beginning of fortune. I am weary enough
of this poor place, with nothing about it but wood and water and tufty
grass. If we went now, there might be gold and girls at the other end.”
They took crooks and bonnets and went after the two pipers. And when
they were gone half a day, six women said to their men, “Where can the
lads be?”
“We do not know that,” said the men, with hot faces, “but we might be
looking.” They kissed their children and went, with _cromags_ in their
hands, and the road they took was the road the King of Errin rides, and
that is the road to the end of days.
A weary season fell on Half Town, and the very bairns dwined at the
breast for a change of fortune. The women lost their strength, and said,
“To-day my back is weak, tomorrow I will put things to right,” and they
looked slack-mouthed and heedless-eyed at the sun wheeling round the
trees. Every week a man or two would go to seek something--a lost heifer
or a wounded roe that was never brought back--and a new trade came to
the place, the selling of herds. Far away in the low country, where the
winds are warm and the poorest have money, black-cattle were wanted, so
the men of Half Town made up long droves and took them round Glen Beag
and the Rest.
Wherever they went they stayed, or the clans on the roadside put them to
steel, for Half Town saw them no more. And a day came when all that was
left in that fine place were but women and children and a blind piper.
“Am I the only man here?” asked Paruig Dali when it came to the bit, and
they told him he was.
“Then here's another for fortune!” said he, and he went down through the
woods with his pipes in his oxter.