The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories

THE LOST PIBROCH

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.’”

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.

RED HAND

THE smell of wet larch was in the air, and Glenaora was aburst to the coaxing of Spring. Paruig Dali the piper – son of the son of Iain Mor – filled his broad chest with two men’s wind, and flung the drones over his shoulder. They dangled a little till the bag swelled out, and the first blast rang in the ear of the morning. Rough and noisy, the reeds cried each other down till a master’s hand held them in check, and the long soft singing of the piobaireachd floated out among the tartan ribbons. The grey peak of Drimfern heard the music; the rock that wards the mouth of Carnus let it pass through the gap and over the hill and down to the isles below; Dun Corr-bhile and Dunchuach, proud Kilmune, the Paps of Salachary, and a hundred other braes around, leaned over to listen to the vaunting notes that filled the valley. “The Glen, the Glen is mine!” sang the blithe chanter; and, by Finne’s sword, Macruimen himself could not have fingered it better!

It was before Paruig Dali left for Halt Town; before the wars that scorched the glens; and Clan Campbell could cock its bonnet in the face of all Albainn. Paruig was old, and Paruig was blind, as the name of him tells, but he swung with a king’s port up and down on the short grass, his foot firm to every beat of the tune, his kilt tossing from side to side like a bard’s song, his sporran leaping gaily on his brown knees. Two score of lilting steps to the bumside, a slow wheel on a brogue-heel, and then back with the sun-glint on the buckles of his belt.