The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories. Munro Neil

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,”