The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories

“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.”