The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories

“Would it be ‘Failte an Roich ‘?”

“Better than that by far; a masterly tune! Come out and hear him.”

But Old Boboon leaned with his arms on the wall and made no move to be off with his children.

“Come and stravaig,” said the girls, and his daughter Betty put a foot in a cranny and pulled herself up beside him to put coaxing arms round his neck.

“Calf of my heart!” said Boboon, stroking her hair, soft handed.

“We have the fine feeding,” said the girl in his ear. “Yesterday it was plotted trout in the morning and tunnag’s eggs; dinner was a collop off a fat hind.”

“A grailoched hind?”

“No, nor grailoched! That is a fool’s fashion and the spoiling of good meat. But come with us, father. Think of the burns bubbling, and the stars through the branches, and the fresh airs of the morning!”

“Down, down, you bitch! Would ye tempt me?” cried Boboon, pushing the girl from the wall and hurrying back with shaking knees to the Latin stone. The night was deep black, and for all he could tell by eyesight, he might have been in the middle of breezy Moor Rannoch, but the town gables crowded ‘thick and solid round his heart. He missed the free flowing winds; there was a smell of peat and coal from dead house-fires, and he spat the dust of lime from his throat.

Over the wall the clan scraped and skurried as weasels do. They dared make no noise for fear the town should waken, but in hoarse voices they called all together —

“Boboon, Boboon, oh! come home to the wood, Boboon!”

“Am not I the poor caged one?” said Boboon to himself, and he ran in that he might hear no more.

It was the same the next night and the next, and it looked like going on without end. Ever the wanderers coming at night to the wall and craving their head to come out. And one night they threw over a winged black-cock, that fell with beating feathers at Boboon’s feet as he stood in the dark listening to the swart Macdonalds whining outbye.

He picked up the bird and ran kind fingers through its feathers. The heat coursed in its breast and burned to a fever in its wounded oxter. Its little heart beat on Boboon’s thumb like a drumstick.

“Poor bird!” said he; “well I ken where ye came from, and the merry times ye had. Ye hatched in the braes of Ben Bhuidhe, and clucked on the reedy places round about the side of that tall hill. Before your keen eyes in the morning was the Dubh Loch, and the Shira – winding like a silver belt. Sure am I ye took wing for it with the day, and over Stuc Scardan to Aora Glen to make merry among your mates in the heather and the fern. Oh! choillich-dhuibh, choillich-dhuibh, hard’s our fate with broken wings and the heart still strong!”

He thrawed the bird’s neck, and then went over the wall to join his clan.

His second chance ended no better. He was back in a new kilt and jacket a twelvemonth later, and this time the captain tried the trick of a dog’s freedom – oat on the road as he liked by day, but kennel at night.

One day Boboon was on his master’s errand round Stron. It was the spring of the year. The shore, at the half-ebb, was clean and sweet, and the tide lapped at the edge as soft as a cat at milk.

Going round Stron on the hard yellow road, he got to think of the sea’s good fortune, – of the many bays it wandered into by night or day; of its friendship with far-out forelands, and its brisk quarrels with the black rocks. Here was no dyke at any time, but all freedom, the restlessness and the roaming, sleep or song as the mood had it, and the ploys with galleys and gabberts; the cheery halloo of the winds and the waving of branches on foreign isles to welcome one.

The road opened before him in short swatches – the sort of road a wanderer likes, with not too much of it to be seen at one look. In the hazel-wood by the way the bark of the young trees glistened like brass; thin new switches shot out straight as shelisters.

John Fine, with the sun heating his back, started at the singing of Donnacha Ban’s “Coire Cheathaich”: —

“O ‘twas gladsome to go a-hunting
Out in the dew of the sunny mom!
For the great red stag was never wanting,
Nor the fawn, nor the doe with never a horn.
My beauteous corri, my misty corri!
What light feet trod thee in joy and pride!
What strong hand gathered thy precious treasures,
What great hearts leaped on thy craggy side!”

Rounding Dundarave, the road lay straight before him till it thinned in the distance to a needle-point pricking the trees, and at the end of it was a cloud of dust.

“What have I here?” said Boboon to himself, stretching out with long steps, the kilt flapping against the back of his knees.

The cloud came close, and lo! here was his own clan on the march, draggled and stoury, rambling, scattered like crows, along the road.

“Boboon! Boboon!” they cried, and they hung about him, fingering his fine clothes.

He looked at their brown flesh, he saw the yellow soil in the crannies of their brogues, the men loose and blackguardly, the women red-cheeked, ripe, and big-breasted, with bold eyes, and all had enchantment for him! A stir set up in his heart that he could not put down.

“Where were you yesterday?” he asked.

“On the side of the Rest in Glen Croe, with dry beds of white hay and no hurry.”

“Where are you for?”

“Have you forgotten the wanderer’s ways, Boboon? Where does this road go to?”

“Well ye ken, my heroes! It goes to the end of a man’s will. If the man’ says, ‘I bide here,’ it’s the end of the road; but if he has the notion, it will take him to the end of days. That, by my soul! is the charm of all roads that are not in towns; and now that I think of it, let the captain whistle on his errand, for I’m Boboon and sick of the causey stones.”

So night found Boboon and his clan far in at the back of Auchnabreac, town-muir and bonny place, where some we ken would sooner be than wandering o’er the world.

And the days passed, and at Martinmas the captain was at Kilmichael Market, and he came on Boboon with his people on the edge of the market-place. Boboon in those days was as straight as a young saugh-wand, sharp and thin, all thong at the joints, and as supple as a wild cat. He was giving a display with the sgian-dubh, stabbing it on the ground at the back of his left heel and twisting his right arm round the leg to get the blade out of the ground without bending the knee. It was a trick to take the eye, but neither bardic nor soldierly, yet there was a throng of drovers about him. Along with him was his daughter Betty, who took after him for looks, but had her dead mother’s dainty tongue, and from her mother a little book-schooling John Fine had never the need of.

The eye of the captain fell on the two of them as they stood there, with their forty clan-folk going about the market, and he was gripped by a new notion to give Boboon the third and the last chance.

“Boboon!” he said, “come back to the town this once, and I’ll put you and your daughter up together in a house of your own.”

Before a week was out the thing was as he wanted. Boboon and Betty got a room in Macvicar’s Land, with a wooden floor, and a fire on the side of the wall with a built-in chimney, and other gentilities beside. They stayed for months, and they stayed for years, and the clan craved them in vain to come home. Betty was put to the books and the arts of ladydom by the captain’s mother and sister, and she took to them like a Ridir’s daughter. She lost the twang of the road-folk; she put her errant hair in leash; she grew to the habit of snodding and redding, until for grace and good looks she was the match of them that taught her.

One day the captain, walking in his garden in deep cogitation, fell in the way of the girl as she roamed among the bushes. He got for the first time the true glance of her (for one may look at a person for years and not see the reality till a scale falls from the eyes), and behold! here was a woman who set his heart drumming.

It was that very night Boboon put an end to his last chance.

The strong sun of the day left the night hot and clammy, and a haze hung on the country such as one sees in these parts in keenest frost. Macvicar’s Land was full of smells – of sweating flesh and dirty water, of fish and the rotting airs of sunless holes – and the dainty nose of Macdonald took a disgust. He flung open door and window, and leaned out at the window with his neck bared and his mouth stretched wide gasping to the air. The bairns in the back-land looked up and laughed.

“Look at Boboon, Boboon, Boboon, the father of Lady Betty!” they cried, and John Fine shook his fist and cursed their families.

But there was no ease from the trouble in this fashion, so he got up and went behind the town, and threw himself under the large trees with an ear to the ground. Beside him the cattle crunched the sappy grass in so sweet and hearty mouthfuls that he could well wish he had the taste of nature himself, and they breathed great breaths of content. His keen ears could catch the hopping of beasts on the grass and the scratching of claws in the wood, he could hear the patter of little feet, and the birds above him scraping on the bark when they turned in their sleep. A townman would think the world slept, so great was the booming of quietness; but Boboon heard the song of the night, the bustle of the half world that thrives in shade and starshine.

Leaning now on an elbow, he let his eyes rove among the beeches, into the bossy tops, solemn and sedate, and the deep recesses that might be full of the little folk of fairy-land at their cantrips. And then farther back and above all was Dunchuach the stately, lifting its face, wood-bearded, to the stars!

“If a wind was here it was all I wanted,” said Boboon, and when he said it the wind came – a salty air from the sea. The whole country-side cooled and gave out fresh scents of grass and earth.

“O God! O God!” cried the wanderer, “here we are out-by, the beasts and the birds and the best of Boboon together! Here is the place for ease and the full heart.”

He up and ran into the town, and up to the captain’s gate and in.