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