{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_43729/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_43729","id":"gutenberg_43729","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43729","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Music","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Short Stories","Highlands (Scotland) -- Fiction","Short stories"],"text":"Produced by David Widger\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE LOST PIBROCH\n\nAND OTHER SHEILING STORIES\n\nBy Neil Munro\n\n\n\n\nTHE LOST PIBROCH\n\nTO the make of a piper go seven years of his own learning and seven\ngenerations before. If it is in, it will out, as the Gaelic old-word\nsays; if not, let him take to the net or sword. At the end of his seven\nyears one born to it will stand at the start of knowledge, and leaning a\nfond ear to the drone, he may have parley with old folks of old affairs.\nPlaying the tune of the \u201cFairy Harp,\u201d he can hear his forefolks, plaided\nin skins, towsy-headed and terrible, grunting at the oars and snoring in\nthe caves; he has his whittle and club in the \u201cDesperate Battle\u201d (my own\ntune, my darling!), where the white-haired sea-rovers are on the shore,\nand a stain's on the edge of the tide; or, trying his art on Laments,\nhe can stand by the cairn of kings, ken the colour of Fingal's hair, and\nsee the moon-glint on the hook of the Druids!\n\nTo-day there are but three pipers in the wide world, from the Sound of\nSleat to the Wall of France. Who they are, and what their tartan, it is\nnot for one to tell who has no heed for a thousand dirks in his doublet,\nbut they may be known by the lucky ones who hear them. Namely players\ntickle the chanter and take out but the sound; the three give a tune\nthe charm that I mention--a long thought and a bard's thought, and they\nbring the notes from the deeps of time, and the tale from the heart of\nthe man who made it.\n\nBut not of the three best in Albainn today is my story, for they have\nnot the Lost Pibroch. It is of the three best, who were not bad, in a\nplace I ken--Half Town that stands in the wood.\n\nYou may rove for a thousand years on league-long brogues, or hurry on\nfairy wings from isle to isle and deep to deep, and find no equal to\nthat same Half Town. It is not the splendour of it, nor the riches of\nits folk; it is not any great routh of field or sheep-fank, but the\nscented winds of it, and the comfort of the pine-trees round and about\nit on every hand. My mother used to be saying (when I had the notion of\nfairy tales), that once on a time, when the woods were young and\nthin, there was a road through them, and the pick of children of a\ncountry-side wandered among them into this place to play at sheilings.\nUp grew the trees, fast and tall, and shut the little folks in so that\nthe way out they could not get if they had the mind for it. But never an\nout they wished for. They grew with the firs and alders, a quiet clan in\nthe heart of the big wood, clear of the world out-by.\n\nBut now and then wanderers would come to Half Town, through the gloomy\ncoves, under the tall trees. There were packmen with tales of the\nout-world. There were broken men flying from rope or hatchet. And\nonce on a day of days came two pipers--Gilian, of Clan Lachlan of\nStrathlachlan, and Rory Ban, of the Macnaghtons of Dundarave.\n\nThey had seen Half Town from the sea--smoking to the clear air on the\nhillside; and through the weary woods they came, and the dead quiet of\nthem, and they stood on the edge of the fir-belt.\n\nBefore them was what might be a township in a dream, and to be seen at\nthe one look, for it stood on the rising hill that goes back on Lochow.\n\nThe dogs barked, and out from the houses and in from the fields came the\nquiet clan to see who could be here. Biggest of all the men, one they\nnamed Coll, cried on the strangers to come forward; so out they went\nfrom the wood-edge, neither coy nor crouse, but the equal of friend or\nfoe, and they passed the word of day.\n\n\u201cHunting,\u201d they said, \u201cin Easachosain, we found the roe come this way.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf this way she came, she's at Duglas Water by now, so you may bide and\neat. Few, indeed, come calling on us in Half Town; but whoever they are,\nhere's the open door, and the horn spoon, and the stool by the fire.\u201d\n\nHe took them in and he fed them, nor asked their names nor calling, but\nwhen they had eaten well he said to Rory, \u201cYou have skill of the pipes;\nI know by the drum of your fingers on the horn spoon.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have tried them,\u201d said Rory, with a laugh, \u201ca bit--a bit. My friend\nhere is a player.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have the art?\u201d asked Coll.\n\n\u201cWell, not what yoo might call the whole art,\u201d said Gilian, \u201cbut I can\nplay--oh yes!I  can play two or three ports.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can that!\u201d said Rory.\n\n\u201cNo better than yourself, Rory.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, maybe not, but--anyway, not all tunes; I allow you do 'Mackay's\nBanner' in a pretty style.\u201d\n\n\u201cPipers,\u201d said Coll, with a quick eye to a coming quarrel, \u201cI will take\nyou to one of your own trade in this place--Paruig Dali, who is namely\nfor music.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's a name that's new to me,\u201d said Rory, short and sharp, but up they\nrose and followed Big Coll.\n\nHe took them to a bothy behind the Half Town, a place with turf\nwalls and never a window, where a blind man sat winding pirns for the\nweaver-folks.\n\n\u201cThis,\u201d said Coll, showing the strangers in at the door, \u201cis a piper\nof parts, or I'm no judge, and he has as rare a stand of great pipes as\never my eyes sat on.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have that same,\u201d said the blind man, with his face to the door. \u201cYour\nfriends, Coll?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwo pipers of the neighbourhood,\u201d Rory made answer. \u201cIt was for no\npiping we came here, but by the accident of the chase. Still and on, if\npipes are here, piping there might be.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo be it,\u201d cried Coll; \u201cbut I must go back to my cattle till night\ncomes. Get you to the playing with Paruig Dali, and I'll find you here\nwhen I come back.\u201d And with that he turned about and went off.\n\nParig put down the ale and cake before the two men, and \u201cWelcome you\nare,\u201d said he.\n\nThey ate the stranger's bite, and lipped the stranger's cup, and then,\n\u201cWhistle 'The Macraes' March,' my fair fellow,\u201d said the blind man.\n\n\u201cHow ken you I'm fair?\u201d asked Rory.\n\n\u201cYour tongue tells that. A fair man has aye a soft bit in his speech,\nlike the lapping of milk in a cogie; and a black one, like your friend\nthere, has the sharp ring of a thin burn in frost running into an iron\npot. 'The Macraes' March,' _laochain_.\u201d\n\nRory put a pucker on his mouth and played a little of the fine tune.\n\n\u201cSo!\u201d said the blind man, with his head to a side, \u201cyou had your lesson.\nAnd you, my Strathlachlan boy without beard, do you ken 'Muinntir a'\nGhlinne so'?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow ken ye I'm Strathlachlan and beardless?\u201d asked Gilian.\n\n\u201cStrathlachlan by the smell of herring-scale from your side of the house\n(for they told me yesterday the gannets were flying down Strathlachlan\nway, and that means fishing), and you have no beard I know, but in what\nway I know I do not know.\u201d Gilian had the _siubhal_ of the pibroch but\nbegun when the blind man stopped him.\n\n\u201cYou have it,\u201d he said, \u201cyou have it in a way, the Macarthur's way, and\nthat's not my way. But, no matter, let us to our piping.\u201d\n\nThe three men sat them down on three stools on the clay floor, and the\nblind man's pipes passed round between them.\n\n\u201cFirst,\u201d said Paruig (being the man of the house, and to get the vein\nof his own pipes)--\u201cfirst I'll put on them 'The Vaunting.'\u201d He stood to\nhis shanks, a lean old man and straight, and the big drone came nigh on\nthe black rafters. He filled the bag at a breath and swung a lover's arm\nround about it. To those who know not the pipes, the feel of the bag\nin the oxter is a gaiety lost. The sweet round curve is like a girl's\nwaist; it is friendly and warm in the crook of the elbow and against a\nman's side, and to press it is to bring laughing or tears.\n\nThe bothy roared with the tuning, and then the air came melting and\nsweet from the chanter. Eight steps up, four, to the turn, and eight\ndown went Paruig, and the _piobaireachd_ rolled to his fingers like\na man's rhyming. The two men sat on, the stools, with their elbows on\ntheir knees, and listened.\n\nHe played but the _urlar_, and the _crunluadh_ to save time, and he\nplayed them well.\n\n\u201cGood indeed! Splendid, my old fellow!\u201d cried the two; and said Gilian,\n\u201cYou have a way of it in the _crunluadh_ not my way, but as good as ever\nI heard.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is the way of Padruig Og,\u201d said Rory.\n\n\u201cWell I know it! There are tunes and tunes, and 'The Vaunting' is not\nbad in its way, but give me 'The Macraes' March.'\u201d\n\nHe jumped to his feet and took the pipes from the old man's hands, and\nover his shoulder with the drones.\n\n\u201cStand back, lad!\u201d he cried to Gilian, and Gilian went nearer the door.\n\nThe march came fast to the chanter--the old tune, the fine tune that\nKintail has heard before, when the wild men in their red tartan came\nover hill and moor; the tune with the river in it, the fast river and\nthe courageous that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and\nover fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way\nbefore it. The tune of the heroes, the tune of the pinelands and the\nbroad straths, the tune that the eagles of Loch Duich crack their beaks\ntogether when they hear, and the crows of that country-side would as\nsoon listen to as the squeal of their babies.\n\n\u201cWell! mighty well!\u201d said Paruig Dali. \u201cYou have the tartan of the clan\nin it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot bad, I'll allow,\u201d said Gilian. \u201cLet me try.\u201d\n\nHe put his fingers on the holes, and his heart took a leap back over two\ngenerations, and yonder was Glencoe! The grey day crawled on the white\nhills and the Mack roofs smoked below. Snow choked the pass, _eas_ and\ncorn filled with drift and flatted to the brae-face; the wind tossed\nquirky and and in the little bashes and among the smooring lintels and\njoists; the Mood of old and young lappered on the hearthstone, and the\nbairn, with a knifed throat, had an icy lip on a frozen teat. Out of the\nplace went the tramped path of the Campbell butchers--far on their\nway to Glenlyon and the towns of paper and ink and liars--\u201cMuinntir\na' ghlinne so, muinntir a' ghlinne so!--People, people, people of this\nglen, this glen, this glen!\u201d\n\n\u201cDogs! dogs! O God of grace--dogs and cowards!\u201d cried Rory. \u201cI could be\ndirking a Diarmaid or two if by luck they were near me.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is piping that is to be here,\u201d said Paruig, \u201cand it is not piping\nfor an hour nor piping for an evening, but the piping of Dunvegan that\nstops for sleep nor supper.\u201d\n\nSo the three stayed in the bothy and played tune about while time went\nby the door. The birds flew home to the branches, the longnecked beasts\nflapped off to the shore to spear their flat fish; the rutting deers\nbellowed with loud throats in the deeps of the wood that stands round\nHalf Town, and the scents of the moist night came gusty round the\ndoor. Over the back of Auchnabreac the sun trailed his plaid of red\nand yellow, and the loch stretched salt and dark from Cairn Dubh to\nCreaggans.\n\nIn from the hill the men and the women came, weary-legged, and the\nbairns nodded at their heels. Sleepiness was on the land, but the\npipers, piping in the bothy, kept the world awake.\n\n\u201cWe will go to bed in good time,\u201d said the folks, eating their suppers\nat their doors; \u201cin good time when this tune is ended.\u201d But tune came on\ntane, and every tune better than its neighbour, and they waited.\n\nA cruisie-light was set alowe in the blind man's bothy, and the three\nmen played old tunes and new tunes--salute and lament and brisk dances\nand marches that coax tired brogues on the long roads.\n\n\u201cHere's 'Tulloch Ard' for you, and tell me who made it,\u201d said Rory.\n\n\u201cWho kens that? Here's 'Raasay's Lament,' the best port Padruig Mor ever\nput together.\u201d\n\n\u201cTunes and tunes. I'm for 'A Kiss o' the King's Hand.'\u201d\n\n     \u201cThug mi p\u00f2g 'us p\u00f2g 'us p\u00f2g,\n     Thug mi p\u00f2g do l\u00e0mh an righ,\n     Cha do chuir gaoth an craicionn caorach,\n     Fear a fhuair an fhaoilt ach mi!\u201d\n\nThen a quietness came on Half Town, for the piping stopped, and the\npeople at their doors heard but their blood thumping and the night-hags\nin the dark of the firwood.\n\n\u201cA little longer and maybe there will be more,\u201d they said to each other,\nand they waited; but no more music came from the drones, so they went in\nto bed.\n\nThere was quiet over Half Town, for the three pipers talked about the\nLost Tune.\n\n\u201cA man my father knew,\u201d said Gilian, \u201cheard a bit of it once in\nMoideart. A terrible fine tune he said it was, but sore on the mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt would be the tripling,\u201d said the Macnaghton, stroking a reed with a\nfond hand.\n\n\u201cMaybe. Tripling is ill enough, but what is tripling? There is more in\npiping than brisk fingers. Am I not right, Paruig?\u201d \u201cRight, oh! right.\nThe Lost _Piobaireachd_ asks for skilly tripling, but Macruimen himself\ncould not get at the core of it for all his art.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have heard it then!\u201d cried Gilian.\n\nThe blind man stood up and filled out his breast.\n\n\u201cHeard it!\u201d he said; \u201cI heard it, and I play it--on the _feadan_, but\nnot on the full set. To play the tune I mention on the full set is what\nI have not done since I came to Half Town.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have ten round pieces in my sporran, and a bonnet-brooch it would\ntake much to part me from; but they're there for the man who'll play me\nthe Lost _Piobaireachd_\u201d said Gilian, with the words tripping each other\nto the tip of his tongue.\n\n\u201cAnd here's a Macnaghton's fortune on the top of the round pieces,\u201d\n cried Rory, emptying his purse on the table.\n\nThe old man's face got hot and angry. \u201cI am not,\u201d he said, \u201ca tinker's\nminstrel, to give my tuning for bawbees and a quaich of ale. The king\nhimself could not buy the tune I ken if he had but a whim for it. But\nwhen pipers ask it they can have it, and it's yours without a fee. Still\nif you think to learn the tune by my piping once, poor's the delusion.\nIt is not a port to be picked up like a cockle on the sand, for it takes\nthe schooling of years and blindness forbye.\u201d\n\n\u201cBlindness?\u201d\n\n\u201cBlindness indeed. The thought of it is only for the dark eye.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf we could hear it on the full set!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome out, then, on the grass, and you'll hear it, if Half Town should\nsleep no sleep this night.\u201d\n\nThey went out of the bothy to the wet short grass. Ragged mists shook\no'er Cowal, and on Ben Ime sat a horned moon like a galley of Lorn.\n\n\u201cI heard this tune from the Moideart man--the last in Albainn who knew\nit then, and he's in the clods,\u201d said the blind fellow.\n\nHe had the mouthpiece at his lip, and his hand was coaxing the bag, when\na bairn's cry came from a house in the Half Town--a suckling's whimper,\nthat, heard in the night, sets a man's mind busy on the sorrows that\nfolks are born to. The drones clattered together on the piper's elbow\nand he stayed.\n\n\u201cI have a notion,\u201d he said to the two men. \u201cI did not tell you that the\nLost _Piobaireachd_ is the _piobaireachd_ of good-byes. It is the\ntune of broken clans, that sets the men on the foray and makes cold\nhearth-stones. It was played in Glenshira when Gilleasbuig Gruamach\ncould stretch stout swordsmen from Boshang to Ben Bhuidhe, and where are\nthe folks of Glenshira this day? I saw a cheery night in Carnus that's\nover Lochow, and song and story busy about the fire, and the Moideart\nman played it for a wager. In the morning the weans were without\nfathers, and Carnus men were scattered about the wide world.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt must be the magic tune, sure enough,\u201d said Gilian.\n\n\u201cMagic indeed, _laochain!_ It is the tune that puts men on the open\nroad, that makes restless lads and seeking women. Here's a Half Town of\ndreamers and men fattening for want of men's work. They forget the world\nis wide and round about their fir-trees, and I can make them crave for\nsomething they cannot name.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood or bad, out with it,\u201d said Rory, \u201cif you know it at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cMaybe no', maybe no'. I am old and done. Perhaps I have lost the right\nskill of the tune, for it's long since I put it on the great pipe.\nThere's in me the strong notion to try it whatever may come of it, and\nhere's for it.\u201d\n\nHe put his pipe up again, filled the bag at a breath, brought the\nbooming to the drones, and then the chanter-reed cried sharp and high.\n\n\u201cHe's on it,\u201d said Rory in Gilian's ear.\n\nThe groundwork of the tune was a drumming on the deep notes where the\nsorrows lie--\u201cCome, come, come, my children, rain on the brae and the\nwind blowing.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a salute.\u201d said Rory.\n\n\u201cIt's the strange tune anyway,\u201d said Gilian; \u201clisten to the time of\nyon!\u201d\n\nThe tune searched through Half Town and into the gloomy pine-wood; it\nput an end to the whoop of the night-hag and rang to Ben Bhreac. Boatmen\ndeep and far on the loch could hear it, and Half Town folks sat up to\nlisten.\n\nIt's story was the story that's ill to tell--something of the heart's\nlonging and the curious chances of life. It bound up all the tales of\nall the clans, and made one tale of the Gaels' past. Dirk nor sword\nagainst the tartan, but the tartan against all else, and the Gaels'\ntarget fending the hill-land and the juicy straths from the pock-pitted\nlittle black men. The winters and the summers passing fast and furious,\nday and night roaring in the ears, and then again the clans at variance,\nand warders on every pass and on every parish.\n\nThen the tune changed.\n\n\u201cFolks,\u201d said the reeds, coaxing. \u201cWide's the world and merry the road.\nHere's but the old story and the women we kissed before. Come, come to\nthe flat-lands rich and full, where the wonderful new things happen and\nthe women's lips are still to try!\u201d\n\n\u201cTo-morrow,\u201d said Gilian in his friend's ear--\u201cto-morrow I will go\njaunting to the North. It has been in my mind since Beltane.\u201d\n\n\u201cOne might be doing worse,\u201d said Rory, \u201cand I have the notion to try a\ntrip with my cousin to the foreign wars.\u201d\n\nThe blind piper put up his shoulder higher and rolled the air into\nthe _crunluadh breabach_ that comes prancing with variations. Pride\nstiffened him from heel to hip, and hip to head, and set his sinews like\nsteel.\n\nHe was telling of the gold to get for the searching and the bucks that\nmay be had for the hunting. \u201cWhat,\u201d said the reeds, \u201care your poor\ncrops, slashed by the constant rain and rotting, all for a scart in\nthe bottom of a pot? What are your stots and heifers--black, dun, and\nyellow--to milch-cows and horses? Here's but the same for ever--toil\nand sleep, sleep and toil even on, no feud nor foray nor castles to\nharry--only the starved field and the sleeping moss. Let us to a\nbrisker place! Over yonder are the long straths and the deep rivers and\ntownships strewn thick as your corn-rigs; over yonder's the place of the\npackmen's tales and the packmen's wares: steep we the withies and go!\u201d\n\nThe two men stood with heads full of bravery and dreaming--men in a\ncarouse. \u201cThis,\u201d said they, \u201cis the notion we had, but had no words for.\nIt's a poor trade piping and eating and making amusement when one might\nbe wandering up and down the world. We must be packing the haversacks.\u201d\n\nThen the _crunluadh mach_ came fast and furious on the chanter, and Half\nTown shook with it. It buzzed in the ear like the flowers in the Honey\nCroft, and made commotion among the birds rocking on their eggs in the\nwood.\n\n\u201cSo! so!\u201d barked the _iolair_ on Craig-an-eas.\n\n\u201cI have heard before it was an ill thing to be satisfied; in the morning\nI'll try the kids on Maam-side, for the hares here are wersh and tough.\u201d\n\n\u201cHearken, dear,\u201d said the _londubh_, \u201cI know now why my beak is gold; it\nis because I once ate richer berries than the whortle, and in season\nI'll look for them on the braes of Glenfinne.\u201d\n\n\u201cHonk-unk,\u201d said the fox, the cunning red fellow, \u201cam not I the fool to\nbe staying on this little brae when I know so many roads elsewhere?\u201d\n\nAnd the people sitting up in their beds in Half Town moaned for\nsomething new. \u201cParuig Dall is putting the strange tune on her there,\u201d\n said they. \u201cWhat the meaning of it is we must ask in the morning, but,\n_ochanoch!_ it leaves one hungry at the heart.\u201d And then gusty winds\ncame snell from the north, and where the dark crept first, the day made\nhis first showing, so that Ben Ime rose black against a grey sky.\n\n\u201cThat's the Lost _Piobaireachd_,\u201d said Paruig Dali when the bag sunk on\nhis arm.\n\nAnd the two men looked at him in a daze.\n\nSometimes in the spring of the year the winds from Lorn have it their\nown way with the Highlands. They will come tearing furious over\nthe hundred hills, spurred the faster by the prongs of Cruachan and\nDunchuach, and the large woods of home toss before them like corn before\nthe hook. Up come the poor roots and over on their broken arms go the\ntall trees, and in the morning the deer will trot through new lanes cut\nin the forest.\n\nA wind of that sort came on the full of the day when the two pipers were\nleaving Half Town.\n\n\u201cStay till the storm is over,\u201d said the kind folks; and \u201cYour bed and\nboard are here for the pipers forty days,\u201d said Paruig Dali. But \u201cNo\u201d\n said the two; \u201cwe have business that your _piobaireachd_ put us in mind\nof.\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm hoping that I did not play yon with too much skill,\u201d said the old\nman.\n\n\u201cSkill or no skill,\u201d said Gilian, \u201cthe like of yon I never heard. You\nplayed a port that makes poor enough all ports ever one listened to, and\npiping's no more for us wanderers.\u201d\n\n\u201cBlessings with thee!\u201d said the folks all, and the two men went down\ninto the black wood among the cracking trees.\n\nSix lads looked after them, and one said, \u201cIt is an ill day for a body\nto take the world for his pillow, but what say you to following the\npipers?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt might,\u201d said one, \u201cbe the beginning of fortune. I am weary enough\nof this poor place, with nothing about it but wood and water and tufty\ngrass. If we went now, there might be gold and girls at the other end.\u201d\n\nThey took crooks and bonnets and went after the two pipers. And when\nthey were gone half a day, six women said to their men, \u201cWhere can the\nlads be?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe do not know that,\u201d said the men, with hot faces, \u201cbut we might be\nlooking.\u201d They kissed their children and went, with _cromags_ in their\nhands, and the road they took was the road the King of Errin rides, and\nthat is the road to the end of days.\n\nA weary season fell on Half Town, and the very bairns dwined at the\nbreast for a change of fortune. The women lost their strength, and said,\n\u201cTo-day my back is weak, tomorrow I will put things to right,\u201d and they\nlooked slack-mouthed and heedless-eyed at the sun wheeling round the\ntrees. Every week a man or two would go to seek something--a lost heifer\nor a wounded roe that was never brought back--and a new trade came to\nthe place, the selling of herds. Far away in the low country, where the\nwinds are warm and the poorest have money, black-cattle were wanted, so\nthe men of Half Town made up long droves and took them round Glen Beag\nand the Rest.\n\nWherever they went they stayed, or the clans on the roadside put them to\nsteel, for Half Town saw them no more. And a day came when all that was\nleft in that fine place were but women and children and a blind piper.\n\n\u201cAm I the only man here?\u201d asked Paruig Dali when it came to the bit, and\nthey told him he was.\n\n\u201cThen here's another for fortune!\u201d said he, and he went down through the\nwoods with his pipes in his oxter.\n\n\n\n\nRED HAND\n\n\nTHE smell of wet larch was in the air, and Glenaora was aburst to\nthe coaxing of Spring. Paruig Dali the piper--son of the son of Iain\nMor--filled his broad chest with two men's wind, and flung the drones\nover his shoulder. They dangled a little till the bag swelled out, and\nthe first blast rang in the ear of the morning. Rough and noisy, the\nreeds cried each other down till a master's hand held them in check, and\nthe long soft singing of the _piobaireachd_ floated out among the tartan\nribbons. The grey peak of Drimfern heard the music; the rock that wards\nthe mouth of Carnus let it pass through the gap and over the hill and\ndown to the isles below; Dun Corr-bhile and Dunchuach, proud Kilmune,\nthe Paps of Salachary, and a hundred other braes around, leaned over to\nlisten to the vaunting notes that filled the valley. \u201cThe Glen, the\nGlen is mine!\u201d sang the blithe chanter; and, by Finne's sword, Macruimen\nhimself could not have fingered it better!\n\nIt was before Paruig Dali left for Halt Town; before the wars that\nscorched the glens; and Clan Campbell could cock its bonnet in the face\nof all Albainn. Paruig was old, and Paruig was blind, as the name of him\ntells, but he swung with a king's port up and down on the short grass,\nhis foot firm to every beat of the tune, his kilt tossing from side to\nside like a bard's song, his sporran leaping gaily on his brown\nknees. Two score of lilting steps to the bumside, a slow wheel on a\nbrogue-heel, and then back with the sun-glint on the buckles of his\nbelt.\n\nThe men, tossing the caber and hurling the _clachncart_ against the\nsun beyond the peat-bog, paused in their stride at the chanter's boast,\njerked the tartan tight on their loins, and came over to listen; the\nwomen, posting blankets for the coming sheiling, stopped their splashing\nin the little linn, and hummed in a dream; and men and women had mind\nof the days that were, when the Glen was soft with the blood of men, for\nthe Stewarts were over the way from Appin.\n\n\u201cGod's splendour! but he can play too,\u201d said the piper's son, with his\nhead areel to the fine tripling.\n\nThen Paruig pushed the bag further into his oxter, and the tune changed.\nHe laid the ground of \u201cBodaich nam Briogais,\u201d and such as knew the story\nsaw the \u201ccarles with the breeks\u201d broken and flying before Glenurchy's\nthirsty swords, far north of Morven, long days of weary march through\nspoiled glens.\n\n\u201cIt's fine playing, I'll allow,\u201d said the blind man's son, standing\nbelow a saugh-tree with the bag of his bannered pipes in the crook of\nhis arm. He wore the dull tartan of the Diarmaids, and he had a sprig\nof gall in his bonnet, for he was in Black Duncan's tail. \u201cSon of Paruig\nDali,\u201d said the Chief seven years ago come Martinmas, \u201cif you're to play\nlike your father, there's but Dunvegan for you, and the schooling of\nPatrick Macruimen.\u201d So Tearlach went to Skye--cold isle of knives and\ncaves--and in the college of Macruimen he learned the _piob-mhor_.\nMorning and evening, and all day between, he fingered the _feadan_ or\nthe full set--gathering and march, massacre and moaning, and the stately\nsalute. Where the lusty breeze comes in salt from Vatemish across Loch\nVegan, and the purple loom of Uist breaks the sunset's golden bars,\nhe stood on the braes over against Borearaig and charmed the grumbling\ntide. And there came a day that he played \u201cThe Lament of the Harp-Tree,\u201d\n with the old years of sturdy fight and strong men all in the strain of\nit, and Patrick Macruimen said, \u201cNo more, lad; go home: Lochow never\nheard another like you.\u201d As a cock with its comb uncut, came the\nstripling from Skye.\n\n\u201cFather,\u201d he had said, \u201cyou play not ill for a blind man, but you miss\nthe look on the men's faces, and that's half the music. Forbye, you are\nold, and your fingers are slow on the grace-notes. Here's your own flesh\nand blood can show you fingering there was never the like of anywhere\neast the Isles.\u201d\n\nThe stepmother heard the brag. \u201c_A pheasain!_\u201d she snapped, with hate in\nher peat-smoked face. \u201cYour father's a man, and you are but a boy with\nno heart for a long day. A place in Black Duncan's tail, with a gillie\nto carry your pipes and knapsack, is not, mind ye, all that's to the\nmaking of a piper.\u201d\n\nTearlach laughed in her face. \u201cBoy or man,\u201d said he, \u201clook at me! north,\neast, south, and west, where is the one to beat me? Macruimen has the\nname, but there were pipers before Macruimen, and pipers will come after\nhim.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's maybe as you say,\u201d said Paruig. \u201cThe stuff's in you, and what\nis in must out; but give me _cothrom na Feinne_, and old as I am, with\nFinne's chance, and that's fair play, I can maybe make you crow less\ncrouse. Are ye for trying?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am at the training of a new chanter-reed,\u201d said Tearlach; \u201cbut let it\nbe when you will.\u201d\n\nThey fixed a day, and went out to play against each other for glory, and\nso it befell that on this day Paruig Dali was playing \u201cThe Glen is Mine\u201d\n and \u201cBodaich nam Briogais\u201d in a way to make stounding hearts.\n\nGiorsal snapped her fingers in her stepson's face when her husband\nclosed the _crunluadh_ of his _piobaireachd._\n\n\u201cCan you better it, bastard?\u201d snarled she.\n\n\u201cHere goes for it, whatever!\u201d said Tear-lach, and over his back went the\nbanner with its boar's head sewn on gold. A pretty lad, by the cross!\nclean-cut of limb and light of foot, supple of loin, with the toss of\nthe shoulder that never a decent piper lacked. The women who had been\nat the linn leaned on each other all in the soft larch-scented day, and\nlooked at him out of deep eyes; the men on the heather arose and stood\nnigher.\n\nA little tuning, and then\n\n     \u201cIs comadh leam's comadh leam, cogadh na sithe,\n     Marbhar 'sa chogadh na crochar's an t-sith mi.\u201d\n\n\u201cPeace or war!\u201d cried Giorsal, choking in anger, to her man--\u201cpeace or\nwar! the black braggart! it's an asp ye have for a son, goodman!\u201d\n\nThe lad's fingers danced merry on the chanter, and the shiver of\nsomething to come fell on all the folk around. The old hills sported\nwith the prancing tune; Dun Corrbhile tossed it to Drimfem, and\nDrimfern sent it leaping across the flats of Kilmune to the green\ncorries of Lecknamban. \u201cLove, love, the old tune; come and get flesh!\u201d\n rasped a crow to his mate far off on misty Ben Bhreac, and the heavy\nblack wings flapped east. The friendly wind forgot to dally with the\npine-tuft and the twanging bog-myrtle, the plash of Aora in its brown\nlinn was the tinkle of wine in a goblet. \u201cPeace or war, peace or war;\ncome which will, we care not,\u201d sang the pipe-reeds, and there was the\nmuster and the march, hot-foot rush over the rotting rain-wet moor, the\njingle of iron, the dunt of pike and targe, the choked roar of hate and\nhunger, batter and slash and fall, and behind, the old, old feud with\nAppin!\n\nLeaning forward, lost in a dream, stood the swank lads of Aora. They\nfelt at their hips, where were only empty belts, and one said to his\nchild, \u201cWhite love, get me yon long knife with the nicks on it, and the\nbasket-hand, for I am sick of shepherding.\u201d The bairn took a look at his\nface and went home crying.\n\nAnd the music still poured on. 'Twas \u201cI got a Kiss o' the King's Hand\u201d\n and \u201cThe Pretty Dirk,\u201d and every air better than another. The fairy pipe\nof the Wee Folk's Knowe never made a sweeter fever of sound, yet it hurt\nthe ears of the women, who had reason to know the payment of pipers'\nsprings.\n\n\u201cStop, stop, O Tearlach og!\u201d they cried; \u201cenough of war: have ye not a\nreel in your budget?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was never a reel in Boreraig,\u201d said the lad, and he into\n\u201cDuniveg's Warning,\u201d the tune Coll Ciotach heard his piper play in the\nwest on a day when a black bitch from Dunstaffnage lay panting for him,\nand his barge put nose about in time to save his skin.\n\n\u201cThere's the very word itself in it,\u201d said Paruig, forgetting the\ntaunting of Giorsal and all but a father's pride.\n\n'Twas in the middle of the \u201cWarning\u201d Black Duncan, his toe on the\nstirrup, came up from Castle Inneraora, with a gillie-wet-foot behind,\non his way to Lochow.\n\n\u201cIt's down yonder you should be, Sir Piper, and not blasting here for\ndrink,\u201d said he, switching his trews with his whip and scowling under\nblack brows at the people. \u201cMy wife is sick of the _clarsach_ and wants\nthe pipes.\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm no woman's piper, Lochow; your wife can listen to the hum of her\nspinning-wheel if she's weary of her harp,\u201d said the lad; and away\nrode the Chief, and back to the linn went the women, and the men to\nthe _cabar_ and the stone, and Tearlach, with an extra feather in his\nbonnet, home to Inneraora, leafing a gibe as he went, for his father.\n\nParuig Dali cursed till the evening at the son he never saw, and his\nwife poisoned his mind.\n\n\u201cThe Glen laughs at you, man, from Carnus to Croit-bhile. It's a black,\nburning day of shame for you, Paruig Dall!\u201d\n\n\u201cLord, it's a black enough day for me at the best!\u201d said the blind man.\n\n\u201cIt's disgraced by your own ill-got son you are, by a boy with no blood\non his _biodag_, and the pride to crow over you.\u201d\n\nAnd Paruig cursed anew, by the Cross and the Dogs of Lorn, and the White\nGlaive of Light the giants wear, and the Seven Witches of Cothmar. He\nwas bad though he was blind, and he went back to the start of time for\nhis language. \u201cBut _Dh\u00e9!_ the boy can play!\u201d he said at the last.\n\n\u201cOh, _amadain dhoill_\u201d cried the woman; \u201cif it was I, a claw was off the\ncub before the mouth of day.\u201d\n\n\u201cWitless woman, men have played the pipes before now, lacking a finger:\nlook at Alasdair Corrag!\u201d\n\n\u201cAllowing; but a hand's as easy to cut as a finger for a man who has\ngralloched deer with a keen _sgian-dubh_. Will ye do't or no'?\u201d\n\nParig would hearken no more, and took to his pillow.\n\nRain came with the gloaming. Aora, the splendid river, roared up the\ndark glen from the Salmon Leap; the hills gathered thick and heavy round\nabout the scattered townships, the green new tips of fir and the copper\nleaves of the young oaks moaned in the wind. Then salt airs came tearing\nup from the sea, grinding branch on branch, and the whole land smoked\nwith the drumming of rain that slanted on it hot and fast.\n\nGiorsal arose, her clothes still on her, put a plaid on her black head,\nand the thick door banged back on the bed as she dived into the storm.\nHer heavy feet sogged through the boggy grass, the heather clutched at\nher draggled coat-tails to make her stay, but she filled her heart with\none thought, and that was hate, and behold! she was on the slope of\nthe Black Bull before her blind husband guessed her meaning. Castle\nInneraora lay at the foot of the woody dun, dozing to the music of the\nsalt loch that made tumult and spume north and south in the hollow of\nthe mountains. Now and then the moon took a look at things, now and then\na night-hag in the dripping wood hooted as the rain whipped her breast\nfeathers; a roe leaped out of the gloom and into it with a feared\nhoof-plunge above Carlonan; a thunderbolt struck in the dark against the\nbrow of Ben Ime and rocked the world.\n\nIn the cold hour before the mouth of day the woman was in the piper's\nroom at the gate of Inneraora, where never a door was barred against the\nnight while Strong Colin the warder could see from the Fort of Dunchuach\nto Cladich. Tearlach the piper lay on his back, with the glow of a\nhalf-dead peat on his face and hands. \u201cParuig, Paruig!\u201d said the woman\nto herself, as she softly tramped out the peat-fire and turned to the\nbed. And lo! it was over. Her husband's little black knife made a fast\nsweep on the sleeper's wrist, and her hand was drenched with the hot\nblood of her husband's son.\n\nTearlach leaped up with a roar in the dark and felt for his foe; but the\nhouse was empty, for Giorsal was running like a hind across the soaked\nstretch of Caimban. The lightning struck at Glenaora in jagged fury and\nconfusion; the thunder drummed hollow on Creag\n\nDubh: in a turn of the pass at the Three Bridges the woman met her\nhusband.\n\n\u201cDaughter of hell!\u201d said he, \u201cis't done? and was't death?\u201d\n\n\u201cDarling,\u201d said she, with a fond laugh, \u201c'twas only a brat's hand. You\ncan give us 'The Glen is Mine!' in the morning.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE SECRET OF THE HEATHER-ALE\n\n\nDOWN Glenaora threescore and ten of Diarmaid's stout fellows took the\nroad on a fine day. They were men from Carnus, with more of Clan Artair\nthan Campbell in them; but they wore Gilleasbuig Gruamach's tartan,.\nand if they were not on Gilleasbuig Gruamach's errand, it makes little\ndifference on our story. It was about the time Antrim and his dirty\nIrishers came scouring through our glens with flambeaux, dirk and sword\nand other arms invasive, and the country was back at its old trade of\nfighting, with not a sheiling from end to end, except on the slopes of\nShira Glen, where a clan kept free of battle and drank the finest of\nheather-ale that the world envied the secret of.\n\n\u201cLift we and go, for the Cattle's before!\u201d said Alasdair Piobaire on the\nchanter of a Dunvegan great-pipe--a neat tune that roared gallant and\nfar from Carnus to Bara-caldine; so there they were, the pick of swank\nfellows on the road!\n\nAt the head of them was Niall Mor a' Chamais--the same gentleman namely\nin story for many an art and the slaughter of the strongest man in the\nworld, as you'll find in the writings of my Lord Archie. \u201cGod! look at\nus!\u201d said he, when his lads came over the hill in the grey mouth of day.\n\u201cAre not we the splendid men? Fleas will there be this day in the hose\nof the Glenshira folk.\u201d And he sent his targe in the air in a bravado,\ncatching it by the prong in its navel, smart and clean, when it whirled\nback.\n\nHawks yelped as they passed; far up on Tullich there was barking of\neagles; the brogues met the road as light as the stagslot; laughing,\nsinging, roaring; sword-heads and pikes dunting on wooden targets--and\nonly once they looked back at their women high on the brae-face.\n\nThe nuts were thick on the roadside, hanging heavy from swinging\nbranches, and some of the men pulled them off as they passed, stayed for\nmore, straggled, and sang bits of rough songs they ken over many of on\nLochowside to this day. So Niall Mor glunched at his corps from under\nhis bonnet and showed his teeth.\n\n\u201cGather in, gather in,\u201d said he; \u201cye march like a drove of low-country\ncattle. Alasdair, put 'Baile Inneraora' on her!\u201d\n\nAlasdair changed his tune, and the good march of Clan Diarmaid went\nswinging down the glen.\n\nThe time passed; the sun stood high and hot; clucking from the\nfir-plantings came woodcock and cailzie; the two rivers were crossed,\nand the Diarmaids slockened their thirst at the water of Altan Aluinn,\nwhose birth is somewhere in the bogs beside tall Bhuidhe Ben.\n\nWhere the clans met was at the Foal's Gap, past Maam. A score of the\nMacKellars ran out in a line from the bushes, and stotted back from the\nsolid weight of Diarmaid moving in a lump and close-shouldered in the\nstyle Niall Mor got from the Italian soldier. Some fell, hacked on the\nhead by the heavy slash of the dry sword; some gripped too late at the\npikes that kittled them cruelly; and one--Iver-of-the-Oars--tripped on\na root of heather, and fell with his breast on the point of a Diarmaid's\ndirk.\n\nTo the hills went a fast summons, and soon at the mouth of the gap came\ntwoscore of the MacKellars. They took a new plan, and close together\nfaced the green tartan, keeping it back at the point of steel, though\nthe pick of Glenaora wore it, and the brogues slipped on the brae-face.\nIt was fast cut and drive, quick flash of the dirk, with the palm up and\nthe hand low to find the groin, and a long reach with the short black\nknife. The choked breath hissed at teeth and nose, the salt smell of new\nblood brought a shiver to birch-leaf and gall. But ever the green tartan\nhad the best of it.\n\n\u201c_Bas, bas, Dhiarmaid!_\u201d cried Calum Dubh, coming up on the back of his\nbreaking two-score with fresh lads from Elerigmor, bed-naked to the\nhide, and a new fury fell on the two clans tearing at it in the narrow\nhollow in between the rocky hills. So close they were, there was small\nroom for the whirl of the basket-hilt, and \u201cMind Tom-a-Phubaill and the\nshortened steel!\u201d cried Niall Mor, smashing a pretty man's face with a\nblow from the iron guard of his Ferrara sword. The halberts, snapped at\nthe haft to make whittles, hammered on the target-hides like stones on\na coffin, or rang on the bosses; the tartan ripped when the stuck one\nrolled on his side before the steel could be twisted out; below the foot\nthe grass felt warm and greasy, and the reason was not ill to seek.\n\nOnce it looked like the last of Calum Dubh. He was facing Niall Mor,\nsword and targe, and Niall Mor changed the sword to the other hand,\npulled the _sgian-dubh_ from his garter, and with snapping teeth pushed\nlike a lightning fork below MacKellar's target. An Elerigmor man ran in\nbetween; the little black knife sunk into his belly with a moist plunge,\nand the blood spouted on the deer-horn haft.\n\n\u201c_Mallachd ort!_ I meant yon for a better man,\u201d cried Niall Mor; \u201cbut\nit's well as it is, for the secret's to the fore,\u201d and he stood up dour\nand tall against a new front of Mac-Kellar's men.\n\nThen the sky changed, and a thin smirr of warm rains fell on the glen\nlike smoke; some black-cattle bellowed at the ford in a wonder at where\ntheir herds could be, and the herds--stuck, slashed, and cudgelled--lay\nstiffening on the torn grass between the gap and Mac-Kellar's house.\nFrom end to end of the glen there was no man left but was at the\nfighting. The hook was tossed among the corn; the man hot-foot behind\nthe roe, turned when he had his knife at its throat, to go to war; a\nlover left his lass among the heather; and all, with tightened belts,\nwere at the old game with Clan Diarmaid, while their women, far up on\nthe sappy levels between the hill-tops and beside the moor-lochs,\nspan at the wheel or carded wool, singing songs with light hearts and\nthinking no danger.\n\nBack went MacKellar's men before Niall\n\nMor and his sturdy lads from Camus, the breeder of soldiers--back\nthrough the gap and down on the brae to the walls of Calum Dubh.\n\n\u201c'Illean, 'illean!\u201d cried Calum; \u201clads, lads! they have us, sure enough.\nOh! pigs and thieves! squint mouths and sons of liars!\u201d\n\nThe cry gathered up the strength of all that was left of his clan, Art\nand Uileam, the Maam lads, the brothers from Drimlea and two from over\nStron hill, and they stood up together against the Carnus men--a gallant\nmadness! They died fast and hard, and soon but Calum and his two sons\nwere left fencing, till a rush of Diarmaids sent them through the door\nof the house and tossed among the peats.\n\n\u201cGive in and your lives are your own,\u201d said Niall Mor, wiping his sword\non his shirtsleeve, and with all that were left of his Diarmaids behind\nhis back.\n\nTo their feet stood the three MacKellars.\n\nCalum looked at the folk in front of him, and had mind of other ends to\nbattles. \u201cTo die in a house like a rat were no great credit,\u201d said he,\nand he threw his sword on the floor, where the blades of Art and Uileam\nsoon joined it.\n\nWith tied arms the father and his sons were taken outside, where the air\nwas full of the scents of birch and gall new-washed. The glen, clearing\nfast of mist, lay green and sweet for mile and mile, and far at its\nmouth the fat Blaranbuie woods chuckled in the sun.\n\n\u201cI have you now,\u201d said Niall Mor. \u201cYe ken what we seek. It's the old\nploy--the secret of the ale.\u201d\n\nCalum laughed in his face, and the two sons said things that cut like\nknives.\n\n\u201cMan! I'm feared ye'll rue this,\u201d said Niall Mor, calm enough. \u201cYe may\nlaugh, but--what would ye call a gentleman's death?\u201d\n\n\u201cWith the sword or the dagger in the hand, and a Diarmaid or two before\nme,\u201d cried Calum.\n\n\u201cWell, there might be worse ways of travelling yont--indeed there could\nill be better; but if the secret of the ale is not to be ours for the\nasking, ye'll die a less well-bred death.\u201d\n\n\u201cName it, man, name it,\u201d said Calum. \u201cMight it be tow at the throat and\na fir-branch.\u201d\n\n\u201cTroth,\u201d said Niall Mor, \u201cand that were too gentle a travelling. The\nScaurnoch's on our way, and the crows at the foot of it might relish a\nGlen Shira carcass.\u201d\n\nUileam whitened at the notion of so ugly an end, but Calum only said,\n\u201cDie we must any way,\u201d and Art whistled a bit of a pipe-tune, grinding\nhis heel on the moss.\n\nNiall Mor made to strike the father on the face, but stayed his hand and\nordered the three in-by, with a few of his corps to guard them. Up and\ndown Glen Shira went the Diarmaids, seeking the brewing-cave, giving hut\nand home to the flame, and making black hearths and low lintels for the\nwomen away in the sheilings. They buried their dead at Kilblaan, and,\nwith no secret the better, set out for Scaurnoch with Calum and his\nsons.\n\nThe MacKellars were before, like a _spreidh_ of stolen cattle, and the\nlot of the driven herd was theirs. They were laughed at and spat on,\nand dirk-hilts and _cromags_ hammered on their shoulders, and through\nBlaranbuie wood they went to the bosky elbow of Dun Corr-bhile and round\nto the Dun beyond.\n\nCalum, for all his weariness, stepped like a man with a lifetime's plans\nbefore his mind; Art looked about him in the fashion of one with an eye\nto woodcraft; Uileam slouched with a heavy foot, white at the jaw and\nwild of eye.\n\nThe wood opened, the hunting-road bent about the hill-face to give a\nlevel that the eye might catch the country spread below. Loch Finne\nstretched far, from Ardno to French Foreland, a glassy field, specked\nwith one sail off Creaggans. When the company came to a stand, Calum\nDubh tossed his head to send the hair from his eyes, and looked at what\nlay below. The Scaurnoch broke at his feet, the grey rock-face falling\nto a depth so deep that weary mists still hung upon the sides, jagged\nhere and there by the top of a fir-tree. The sun, behind the Dun,\ngave the last of her glory to the Cowal Hills; Hell's Glen filled with\nwheeling mists; Ben Ime, Ben Vane, and Ben Arthur crept together and\nheld princely converse on the other side of the sea.\n\nAll in a daze of weariness and thinking the Diarmaids stood, and looked\nand listened, and the curlews were crying bitter on the shore.\n\n\u201cOh, haste ye, lads, or it's not Carnus for us to-night,\u201d cried Niall\nMor. \u201cWe have business before us, and long's the march to follow. The\nsecret, black fellow!\u201d\n\nCalum Dubh laughed, and spat in a bravado over the edge of the rock.\n\n\u201cCome, fool; if we have not the word from you before the sun's off\nSithean Sluaidhe, your sleep this night is yonder,\u201d and he pointed at\nthe pit below.\n\nCalum laughed the more. \u201cIf it was hell itself,\u201d said he, \u201cI would not\nsave my soul from it.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook, man, look! the Sithean Sluaidhe's getting black, and any one of\nye can save the three yet. I swear it on the cross of my knife.\u201d\n\nBehind the brothers, one, John-Without-Asking, stood, with a gash on his\nface, eager to give them to the crows below.\n\nA shiver came to Uileam's lips; he looked at his father with a\nquestioning face, and then stepped back a bit from the edge, making to\nspeak to the tall man of Chamis.\n\nCalum saw the meaning, and spoke fast and thick.\n\n\u201cStop, stop,\u201d said he; \u201cit's a trifle of a secret, after all, and to\nsave life ye can have it.\u201d\n\nArt took but a little look at his father's face, then turned round on\nShira Glen and looked on the hills where the hunting had many a time\nbeen sweet. \u201cMaam no more,\u201d said he to himself; \u201cbut here's death in the\nhero's style!\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought you would tell it,\u201d laughed Niall Mor. \u201cThere was never one\nof your clan but had a tight grip of his little life.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy!\u201d said Calum Dubh; \u201cbut it's _my_ secret. I had it from one who made\nme swear on the holy steel to keep it; but take me to Carnus, and I'll\nmake you the heather-ale.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo be't, and----\u201d\n\n\u201cBut there's this in it, I can look no clansmen nor kin in the face\nafter telling it, so Art and Uileam must be out of the way first.\u201d\n\n\u201cDeath, MacKellar?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat same.\u201d\n\nUileam shook like a leaf, and Art laughed, with his face still to Shira,\nfor he had guessed his father's mind.\n\n\u201cFaith!\u201d said Niall Mor, \u201cand that's an easy thing enough,\u201d and he\nnodded to John-Without-Asking.\n\nThe man made stay nor tarry. He put a hand on each son's back and\npushed them over the edge to their death below. One cry came up to the\nlistening Diarmaids, one cry and no more--the last gasp of a craven.\n\n\u201cNow we'll take you to Camus, and you'll make us the ale, the fine ale,\nthe cream of rich heather-ale,\u201d said Niall Mor, putting a knife to the\nthongs that tied MacKellar's arms to his side.\n\nWith a laugh and a fast leap Calum Dubh stood back on the edge of the\nrock again.\n\n\u201cCrook-mouths, fools, pigs' sons! did ye think it?\u201d he cried. \u201cCome with\nme and my sons and ye'll get ale, ay, and death's black wine, at the\nfoot of Scaurnoch.\u201d He caught fast and firm at John-Without-Asking, and\nthrew himself over the rock-face. They fell as the scart dives, straight\nto the dim sea of mist and pine-tip, and the Diarmaids threw themselves\non their breasts to look over. There was nothing to see of life but\nthe crows swinging on black feathers; there was nothing to hear but the\ncrows scolding.\n\nNiall Mor put the bonnet on his head and said his first and last\nfriendly thing of a foe.\n\n\u201cYon,\u201d said he, \u201chad the heart of a man!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nBOBOON'S CHILDREN\n\n\nFROM Knapdale to Lorn three wandering clans share the country between\nthem, and of the three the oldest and the greatest are the swart\nMacdonalds, children of the Old Boboon.\n\nYou will come on them on Wade's roads,--jaunty fellows, a bit dour in\nthe look, and braggart; or girls with sloe-eyes, tall and supple, not\nwith a flat slouching foot on the soil, but high in the instep,\nbounding and stag-sure. At their head will be a long lean old man on\ncrutches--John Fine Macdonald--\n\nOld Boboon, the father and head of the noblest of wandering tribes.\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d will Boboon say to you, \u201cI am the fellow you read of in books as\nthe teller of Fingalian tales; wilt hear one of them for a poor Saxon\nshilling, or wilt buy my lures for the fish? Or perhaps a display of\nscholarly piping by my daughter's son--the gallant scamp!--who has\ncarried arms for his king?\u201d\n\nIf one must have the truth, the piping is bad piping, but the fish-lures\nand the tales are the best in the world. You will find some of the tales\nin the writings of Iain Og of Isla--such as \u201cThe Brown Bear of the Green\nGlen\u201d; but the best are to hear as Boboon minds them when he sits with\nyou on the roadside or on the heather beside the evening fire, when\nthe brown fluffy eagles bark at the mist on Braevallach. Listen well to\nthem, for this person has the gift. He had it from his father, who had\nit from _his_ father, who had it from a mother, who, in deep trouble\nand disease, lay awake through long nights gathering thoughts as healthy\nfolks gather nuts--a sweet thing enough from a sour husk.\n\nAnd if time were your property (as it should be the portion of every\nwiselike man), you might hear many tales from Old Boboon, but never the\ntale of his own three chances.\n\nIt happened once upon a time that the captain in the town took a notion\nto make Boboon into a tame house-man instead of a creature of the woods\nand highways. He took him first by himself and clapped him into a kilt\nof his own tartan eight yards round the buttocks, full pleated, with\nhose of fine worsted, and a coat with silver buttons. He put a pickle\nmoney in his sporran, and gave him a place a little way down his table.\nThe feeding was high and the work was to a wanderer's fancy; for it\nwas but whistling to a dog now and then, chanting a stave, or telling a\nstory, or roaming through the garden behind the house.\n\n\u201cHo, ho!\u201d said Boboon, \u201cam not I the sturdy fellow come to his own?\u201d and\nabout the place he would go with a piper's swagger, switching the\ngrass and shrubs with a withie as he went, in the way gentlemen use\nriding-sticks.\n\nBut when Inneraora town lay in the dark of the winter night, and the\ncaptain's household slept, Boboon would hear his clan calling on him\noutside the wall.\n\n\u201cBoboon! oh, Boboon! old hero! come and collogue with your children.\u201d\n\nHe would go to the wall, which was lower on the inside than the out\n(and is, indeed, the wall of old Quinten, where a corps of Campbells,\nslaughtered by Inverlochy dogs, lie under a Latin stone), and he would\nlook down at his friends running about like pole-cats in the darkness,\nin their ragged kilts and trews, their stringy hair tossing in the wind.\nThe women themselves would be there, with the bairns whining on their\nbacks.\n\n\u201cAy! ay! this is you, my hearty folk!\u201d he would say; \u201cglad am I to see\nyou and smell the wood-fire reek off you. How is it on the road?\u201d\n\n\u201cFrom here we have not moved since you left us, John Fine. We are camped\nin the Blue Quarry, and you never came near your children and friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod! and here's the one that's sorry for that same. But over the walls\nthey will not let me. 'If gentleman you would be,' says the captain,\n'you must keep out of woods and off the highway.'\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you like it, Boboon?\u201d\n\n\u201cLike it, heroes! But for the honour and ease of it, give me a fir-root\nfire in Glen Croe and a dinner of _fuarag_. It is not the day so much\nas the night. Lying in-by there on a posted-bed, I choke for the want of\nair, though the windows and doors are open wide.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome away with us, Boboon; we have little lack with the fish, and few\nare our stories since you took to the town.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, dears. Conan's curse, and I tell you no! In this place there is\ncomfort, and every day its own bellyful.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the freedom outbye, John, old hero! Last night we had the bravest\nof fires; the sparks flew like birds among the Duke's birches, the\nground was snug and dry, and-\u201d\n\n\u201cBegone! I tell ye no!\u201d\n\n\u201cListen! To-day we were among the white hares beyond the Beannan,\nthwacking the big fat fellows with our clubs. Such sport was not in all\nAlbainn!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhite hares!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhite hares, old John! And Alasdair Beag has some new tunes since you\nleft us--a _piobaireachd_ he picked up from a Mull man.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould it be 'Failte an Roich '?\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter than that by far; a masterly tune! Come out and hear him.\u201d\n\nBut Old Boboon leaned with his arms on the wall and made no move to be\noff with his children.\n\n\u201cCome and stravaig,\u201d said the girls, and his daughter Betty put a foot\nin a cranny and pulled herself up beside him to put coaxing arms round\nhis neck.\n\n\u201cCalf of my heart!\u201d said Boboon, stroking her hair, soft handed.\n\n\u201cWe have the fine feeding,\u201d said the girl in his ear. \u201cYesterday it was\nplotted trout in the morning and tunnag's eggs; dinner was a collop off\na fat hind.\u201d\n\n\u201cA grailoched hind?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, nor grailoched! That is a fool's fashion and the spoiling of good\nmeat. But come with us, father. Think of the burns bubbling, and the\nstars through the branches, and the fresh airs of the morning!\u201d\n\n\u201cDown, down, you bitch! Would ye tempt me?\u201d cried Boboon, pushing the\ngirl from the wall and hurrying back with shaking knees to the Latin\nstone. The night was deep black, and for all he could tell by eyesight,\nhe might have been in the middle of breezy Moor Rannoch, but the town\ngables crowded 'thick and solid round his heart. He missed the free\nflowing winds; there was a smell of peat and coal from dead house-fires,\nand he spat the dust of lime from his throat.\n\nOver the wall the clan scraped and skurried as weasels do. They dared\nmake no noise for fear the town should waken, but in hoarse voices they\ncalled all together--\n\n\u201cBoboon, Boboon, oh! come home to the wood, Boboon!\u201d\n\n\u201cAm not I the poor caged one?\u201d said Boboon to himself, and he ran in\nthat he might hear no more.\n\nIt was the same the next night and the next, and it looked like going on\nwithout end. Ever the wanderers coming at night to the wall and\ncraving their head to come out. And one night they threw over a winged\nblack-cock, that fell with beating feathers at Boboon's feet as he stood\nin the dark listening to the swart Macdonalds whining outbye.\n\nHe picked up the bird and ran kind fingers through its feathers. The\nheat coursed in its breast and burned to a fever in its wounded oxter.\nIts little heart beat on Boboon's thumb like a drumstick.\n\n\u201cPoor bird!\u201d said he; \u201cwell I ken where ye came from, and the merry\ntimes ye had. Ye hatched in the braes of Ben Bhuidhe, and clucked on the\nreedy places round about the side of that tall hill. Before your keen\neyes in the morning was the Dubh Loch, and the Shira--winding like a\nsilver belt. Sure am I ye took wing for it with the day, and over Stuc\nScardan to Aora Glen to make merry among your mates in the heather and\nthe fern. Oh! _choillich-dhuibh, choillich-dhuibh_, hard's our fate with\nbroken wings and the heart still strong!\u201d\n\nHe thrawed the bird's neck, and then went over the wall to join his\nclan.\n\nHis second chance ended no better. He was back in a new kilt and jacket\na twelvemonth later, and this time the captain tried the trick of a\ndog's freedom--oat on the road as he liked by day, but kennel at night.\n\nOne day Boboon was on his master's errand round Stron. It was the spring\nof the year. The shore, at the half-ebb, was clean and sweet, and the\ntide lapped at the edge as soft as a cat at milk.\n\nGoing round Stron on the hard yellow road, he got to think of the sea's\ngood fortune,--of the many bays it wandered into by night or day; of its\nfriendship with far-out forelands, and its brisk quarrels with the black\nrocks. Here was no dyke at any time, but all freedom, the restlessness\nand the roaming, sleep or song as the mood had it, and the ploys with\ngalleys and gabberts; the cheery halloo of the winds and the waving of\nbranches on foreign isles to welcome one.\n\nThe road opened before him in short swatches--the sort of road a\nwanderer likes, with not too much of it to be seen at one look. In the\nhazel-wood by the way the bark of the young trees glistened like brass;\nthin new switches shot out straight as shelisters.\n\nJohn Fine, with the sun heating his back, started at the singing of\nDonnacha Ban's \u201cCoire Cheathaich\u201d:--\n\n     \u201cO 'twas gladsome to go a-hunting\n     Out in the dew of the sunny mom!\n     For the great red stag was never wanting,\n     Nor the fawn, nor the doe with never a horn.\n     My beauteous corri, my misty corri!\n     What light feet trod thee in joy and pride!\n     What strong hand gathered thy precious treasures,\n     What great hearts leaped on thy craggy side!\u201d\n\nRounding Dundarave, the road lay straight before him till it thinned in\nthe distance to a needle-point pricking the trees, and at the end of it\nwas a cloud of dust.\n\n\u201cWhat have I here?\u201d said Boboon to himself, stretching out with long\nsteps, the kilt flapping against the back of his knees.\n\nThe cloud came close, and lo! here was his own clan on the march,\ndraggled and stoury, rambling, scattered like crows, along the road.\n\n\u201cBoboon! Boboon!\u201d they cried, and they hung about him, fingering his\nfine clothes.\n\nHe looked at their brown flesh, he saw the yellow soil in the crannies\nof their brogues, the men loose and blackguardly, the women red-cheeked,\nripe, and big-breasted, with bold eyes, and all had enchantment for him!\nA stir set up in his heart that he could not put down.\n\n\u201cWhere were you yesterday?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cOn the side of the Rest in Glen Croe, with dry beds of white hay and no\nhurry.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere are you for?\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you forgotten the wanderer's ways, Boboon? Where does this road go\nto?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell ye ken, my heroes! It goes to the end of a man's will. If the man'\nsays, 'I bide here,' it's the end of the road; but if he has the notion,\nit will take him to the end of days. That, by my soul! is the charm of\nall roads that are not in towns; and now that I think of it, let the\ncaptain whistle on his errand, for I'm Boboon and sick of the causey\nstones.\u201d\n\nSo night found Boboon and his clan far in at the back of Auchnabreac,\ntown-muir and bonny place, where some we ken would sooner be than\nwandering o'er the world.\n\nAnd the days passed, and at Martinmas the captain was at Kilmichael\nMarket, and he came on Boboon with his people on the edge of the\nmarket-place. Boboon in those days was as straight as a young\nsaugh-wand, sharp and thin, all thong at the joints, and as supple as a\nwild cat. He was giving a display with the _sgian-dubh_, stabbing it on\nthe ground at the back of his left heel and twisting his right arm round\nthe leg to get the blade out of the ground without bending the knee. It\nwas a trick to take the eye, but neither bardic nor soldierly, yet\nthere was a throng of drovers about him. Along with him was his daughter\nBetty, who took after him for looks, but had her dead mother's dainty\ntongue, and from her mother a little book-schooling John Fine had never\nthe need of.\n\nThe eye of the captain fell on the two of them as they stood there, with\ntheir forty clan-folk going about the market, and he was gripped by a\nnew notion to give Boboon the third and the last chance.\n\n\u201cBoboon!\u201d he said, \u201ccome back to the town this once, and I'll put you\nand your daughter up together in a house of your own.\u201d\n\nBefore a week was out the thing was as he wanted. Boboon and Betty got a\nroom in Macvicar's Land, with a wooden floor, and a fire on the side\nof the wall with a built-in chimney, and other gentilities beside. They\nstayed for months, and they stayed for years, and the clan craved them\nin vain to come home. Betty was put to the books and the arts of ladydom\nby the captain's mother and sister, and she took to them like a Ridir's\ndaughter. She lost the twang of the road-folk; she put her errant hair\nin leash; she grew to the habit of snodding and redding, until for grace\nand good looks she was the match of them that taught her.\n\nOne day the captain, walking in his garden in deep cogitation, fell in\nthe way of the girl as she roamed among the bushes. He got for the first\ntime the true glance of her (for one may look at a person for years and\nnot see the reality till a scale falls from the eyes), and behold! here\nwas a woman who set his heart drumming.\n\nIt was that very night Boboon put an end to his last chance.\n\nThe strong sun of the day left the night hot and clammy, and a haze\nhung on the country such as one sees in these parts in keenest frost.\nMacvicar's Land was full of smells--of sweating flesh and dirty water,\nof fish and the rotting airs of sunless holes--and the dainty nose of\nMacdonald took a disgust. He flung open door and window, and leaned out\nat the window with his neck bared and his mouth stretched wide gasping\nto the air. The bairns in the back-land looked up and laughed.\n\n\u201cLook at Boboon, Boboon, Boboon, the father of Lady Betty!\u201d they cried,\nand John Fine shook his fist and cursed their families.\n\nBut there was no ease from the trouble in this fashion, so he got up and\nwent behind the town, and threw himself under the large trees with an\near to the ground. Beside him the cattle crunched the sappy grass in so\nsweet and hearty mouthfuls that he could well wish he had the taste of\nnature himself, and they breathed great breaths of content. His keen\nears could catch the hopping of beasts on the grass and the scratching\nof claws in the wood, he could hear the patter of little feet, and the\nbirds above him scraping on the bark when they turned in their sleep.\nA townman would think the world slept, so great was the booming of\nquietness; but Boboon heard the song of the night, the bustle of the\nhalf world that thrives in shade and starshine.\n\nLeaning now on an elbow, he let his eyes rove among the beeches, into\nthe bossy tops, solemn and sedate, and the deep recesses that might\nbe full of the little folk of fairy-land at their cantrips. And then\nfarther back and above all was Dunchuach the stately, lifting its face,\nwood-bearded, to the stars!\n\n\u201cIf a wind was here it was all I wanted,\u201d said Boboon, and when he\nsaid it the wind came--a salty air from the sea. The whole country-side\ncooled and gave out fresh scents of grass and earth.\n\n\u201cO God! O God!\u201d cried the wanderer, \u201chere we are out-by, the beasts and\nthe birds and the best of Boboon together! Here is the place for ease\nand the full heart.\u201d\n\nHe up and ran into the town, and up to the captain's gate and in.\n\n\u201cMaster,\u201d he cried, 'it's the old story,--I must be taking the road for\nit; here's no rest for John Fine Macdonald!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you'll leave the girl,\u201d said the captain, who saw the old fever in\nthe man's eyes; \u201cI have taken a notion of her, and--\u201d\n\n\u201cSo be it! let her bide.\u201d\n\n\u201cI'll marry her before the morn's out.\u201d\n\n\u201cMarry!\u201d cried Boboon, putting back his hair from his face with a\nnervous hand. \u201cYou would marry a wanderer's child?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, they'll talk, no doubt; but she has gifts to make them forget,\nand she's good enough to make a king's woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Boboon, \u201cI have but one thing to say, and that's our\nown Gaelic old-word, 'There are few lapdogs in a fox's litter.'\u201d The\ncaptain's face got as red as his vest, and he had a ready hand up for an\nanswer to Boboon, but he had mind the man was the girl's father.\n\n\u201cI'll risk it,\u201d he said, \u201cand you can go your wandering ways, for Betty\nis willing.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo doubt, no doubt,\u201d said Boboon, and he went. In the hollow of the\nnight he was hooting back like a boy at the hoolets on the slopes of\nCoillevraid, and at the mouth of day, in a silver wet light, he was\nstanding on the edge of the hills that look on two lochs, his head high\nlike a scenting deer's. He turned him round about to all airts with his\neyes from Cruachan to Cowal, and as far between Knapdale and Lorn as\na wanderer has vision, and yonder, down at Kames, was the camp of his\nclan!\n\nBetty his daughter left Macvicar's Land in the morning and went to be\ncaptain's wife, with a seat in the kirk and callers from the castle\nitself.\n\n\u201cWait, wait,\u201d said old Craignure, when the tale reached him, \u201cyou'll see\nthe fox come out on her ere long.\u201d\n\nBut the fox was not there; it was skipping a day, as the fox will do\nsometimes when the day before has been good hunting. All went well with\nthe woman till the worst that might have been the best happened, and\nshe died with her first child. It was the year of the stunted oats, that\nbrought poverty to Inneraora and black bread to the captain's board; but\nblack bread and brochan would have been the blithest of meat for him if\nBetty was left to share it. He took to the bottle, and left the boy to\nwomen who had no skill of wild youth.\n\nAnd the child grew like a fir-tree, straight and tall, full of hot\nblood, swung about by whim and the moment's fancy. For him it was ever\nthe horse and gun, a snatched dinner and hearty, and off to the wood\nor hill. He got to know the inner ways of the beasts that hide in the\ncoarse grasses and the whin; at a whistle he could coax flapping birds\nto come to heel. A loose vest and a naked neck for ever were marring his\ngentility, and his closest friends were countrymen with hard hands and\nthe loud ready laugh.\n\nOne day it came to the captain's mind that something must be made of\nthis young blade, and he sent for him.\n\n\u201cBoy,\u201d said he, \u201care you at your books?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, but--but I ken a short way with the badgers,\u201d the lad made answer.\n\n\u201cDid you have a lesson this morning?\u201d\n\n\u201cNever a lesson,\u201d said the lad; \u201cI was too busy living.\u201d\n\n\u201cLiving, said ye?\u201d\n\n\u201cLiving. I was at the swimming at the Creags, and beaking in the sun\non the braes above the Garron beside the march wall where the hedgehogs\ncreep, and I am new from the shinty,\u201d and he shook the shinty-stick in\nhis hand.\n\nThe captain took to pondering, his chin on his hand and his elbows on\nthe table, where a bottle and glass lay beside him.\n\nAfter a bit he said, \u201cLook ye, my son, what are ye meaning to be?\u201d\n\n\u201cI'm for the sword-work,\u201d the lad said, in a flash, his face twitching.\n\n\u201cI would sooner see you in hell first!\u201d cried the captain, thumping the\nboard till the glass rang. He had seen foreign wars himself and had a\nhack on the groin.\n\nThat was the first of the feud between them. They fought it dour and\nthey fought it hard, the father for the crafts of peace and the lad for\nhis own way, and at last one day the captain said--\n\n\u201cTo the door, brat, and your lair with the Boboons you belong to! Faith,\nand your grandfather was right when he said there was never a lapdog in\na fox's litter.\u201d\n\nWho he came of, the lad had no notion, for the swart Macdonalds never\ncame near the town after Boboon left it for the last time; but he put on\nhis bonnet, and went out of the house and on to the highroad.\n\nIt was well on to winter, a brawling day, with the leaves of the Duke's\ntrees swishing thick and high over the thatch and through the streets\nof the Duke's town. Snug stood the gables, friendly and warm, and the\nwindow-lozens winked with the light of big peat-fires within. Over the\nbreast the seabirds yelped and crows craked without a stop, stirring\nabout in the branches behind Macvicar's Land. And the salt wind! It blew\nin from the low bay at one end of the town and through it to the other,\nand before it went a lad into the wide world that starts at the factor's\ncorner.\n\n\u201cBy the shore-side to the low country, or by the woods to the hills?\u201d\n the lad asked himself. He had the _caman_ still in his hand, and he\ntossed it in the air. \u201cBas for the highway, _cas_ for the low,\u201d said he.\nThe shinty fell _bos_, and our hero took to it for the highway to the\nnorth. He swithered at the Arches, and looked back on the front of the\ntown and the quay with the oil-lights on it. He was half in the humour\nto bide, but he put the notion behind him and stretched to the brae,\nwhistling a piper's march. At the head of the brae the town houses were\nlost to him, and this so soon he could not put up with, so he went down\non a way to the right a little and stood on the grass of the Winterton\nfield.\n\nFast and dark the night was falling, a heavy smirr of rain was drooking\nthe grass, and the trees on every hand shook the water in blobs from the\nbranches. Through them the lights of the finest town in the world shone\ndamp and woe-begone.\n\n\u201cThere are good folk in't, and bad folk in't,\u201d said the lad to himself;\n\u201cbut somehow 'twas never the place for me!\u201d\n\nHe turned and went into the road through the wood, savage at heart,\nwithout a thought of where his sleep would be. When he came to\nKennachregan, there was the scad of a fire above the trees beside the\nroaring river, and he went down and looked over a march dyke at a band\nof wanderers under the trees. Young and old, men and women, they lay\nsteaming on soft beds of springy spruce-branches with their toes to the\ncrackling logs, snoring as snore sound sleepers, sheltered from the rain\nby the thick branches, the side of the hill, and here and there a canvas\ncovering. There was but one of them up--a long old man with lank jaws\nand black eyes--John Fine Macdonald. He was stirring up the logs with\nthe shod of a crutch and humming a Perth song, and before the hottest of\nthe fire a plucked bird was roasting.\n\nThe smell of the meat and the wood-fire rose to the dykeside where the\nlad stood shivering in his wet clothes, and the comfort of the camp was\nsomething he could not pass by.\n\nHe took a jump over the dyke and went out in the light of the fire,\nwondering what would be his welcome. Old Boboon looked up with his hand\nover his eyes, then rose on his crutches and put a hand on the young\nfellow's shoulder.\n\n\u201cYou're from Inneraora town?\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cI am,\u201d said the lad; \u201cbut it's Inneraora no more for me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHo! ho!\u201d laughed the old wanderer. \u201cSit ye down, ye scamp, and take\nyour fingers to a pick of your grandfather's hen. Boboon's children may\nbe slow and far, but home's aye home to them!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE FELL SERGEANT.\n\n\nIT is ill enough to have to die in Glenaora at any season, but to get\nthe word for travelling from it on yon trip in the spring of the year is\nhard indeed. The gug-gug will halloo in your ears to bid you bide a\nwee and see the red of the heather creep on Tom-an-dearc; the soft and\nsap-scented winds will come in at the open door, and you will mind,\nmaybe, of a day long-off and lost when you pulled the copper leaves of\nthe bursting oak and tossed them among a girl's hair. Oh! the long days\nand the strong days! They will come back to you like the curious bit in\na tune that is vexatious and sweet, and not for words or a set thought.\nYou will think of the lambs on the slopes, of the birds tearing through\nthe thousand ways in the woods, of the magic hollows in below the\nthick-sown pines, of the burns, deep at the bottom of _eas_ and corri,\nspilling like gold on a stair. And then, it may be, Solomon Carrier's\ncart goes by to the town, the first time since the drifts went off the\nhigh road; you hear the clatter of the iron shoes, and your mind will go\nwith him to the throng street where the folks are so kind and so free.\n\nBut to turn your back for the last at that time on Lecknamban must come\nsorest of all. For Lecknamban has seven sheilings hidden in its hills,\nwhere the grass is long and juicy, and five burns that are aye on the\ngiggle like girls at a wedding, and the Aora daunders down in front of\nthe knowe, full of fish for the Duke alone, but bonny for earl or caird.\n\nIt was in this same glen, in this same Lecknamban, in the spring of a\nyear, a woman was at her end. She was a woman up in years but not old,\na black Bana-Mhuileach who had seen pleasant things and trials like all\nwho come to this queer market-place; but now when the time was come\nto take the long road with no convoy, only the good times were in her\nrecollection. And though Glenaora was not her calf-country (for she came\nbut a year ago to bide with a friend), she was swear't to turn heel on a\nplace so cosy.\n\nShe sat propped up in a box-bed, on pillows, with her face to the open\ndoor, and the friendly airs of the country-side came in to stir her\nhair. With them came scents of the red earth and the grass, birch-tree\nand myrtle, from the moor. But more than all they brought her who was at\nher end a keen craving for one more summer of the grand world. Strong\nin her make and dour at the giving-in, she kept talking of the world's\naffairs and foolishness to the folk about her who were waiting the\nAlmighty's will and the coming of the stretching-board. Her fingers\npicked without a stop at the woolly bits of the blankets, and her eyes\nwere on as much of the knowe below the house as she could see out at the\nopen door. It was yellow at the foot with flowers, and here and there\nwas a spot of blue from the cuckoo-brogue.\n\n\u201cWomen, women,\u201d she said with short breaths, \u201cI'm thinking aye, when I\nsee the flowers, of a man that came from these parts to Duart. He sang\n'Mo Nighean Dubh' in a style was never heard before in our place, and he\nonce brought me the scented cuckoo-brogues from Aora.\u201d\n\nSaid the goodwife, \u201cAoirig, poor woman, it is not the hour for ancient\nold _sgeuls_; be thinking of a canny going.\u201d\n\n\u201cGoing! it was aye going with me,\u201d said the woman in the bed. \u201cAnd it\nwas aye going when things were at their best and I was the keener for\nthem.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's the way of God, my dear, _ochanie!_\u201d said one of the two Tullich\nsisters, putting a little salt in a plate for-the coming business.\n\n\u201cO God! it's the hard way, indeed. And I'm not so old as you by two or\nthree clippings.\u201d\n\n\u201cPeace, Aoirig, heart; you had your own merry times, and that's as much\nas most of us have claim to.\u201d\n\n\u201cMerry times! merry times!\u201d said Aoirig, humped among the bedding, her\nmind wandering.\n\nCurls of the peat-reek coiled from the floor among the _cabars_ or\nthrough the hole in the roof; a lamb ran by the door bleating for its\nmother, and the whistling of an _uiseag_ high over the grass where his\nnest lay ran out to a thin thread of song. The sound of it troubled the\ndying woman, and she asked her friends to shut the door. Now and again\nMaisie would put a wet cloth to her lips and dry the death-sweat from\nher face. The goodwife was throng among chests and presses looking for\nsheets, shrouds, and dead-caps.\n\n\u201cIt's a pity,\u201d said she, \u201cyou brought no grave-clothes with you from\nMull, my dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you grudging me yours?\u201d asked Aoirig, coming round from wandering.\n\n\u201cNo, nor grudging; fine ye ken it, cousin. But I know ye have them, and\nit's a pity you should be dressed in another's spinning than your own.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, they're yonder sure enough: clean and ready. And there's more than\nthat beside them. The linen I should have brought to a man's home.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou and your man's home! Is it Duart, my dear, among your own folk, or\ndown to Inishail, you would have us take you?\u201d Aoirig coughed till the\nred froth was at her lips.\n\n\u201cDuart is homely and Inishail is holy, sure enough, but I would have it\nKilmalieu. They tell me it's a fine kirkyard; but I never had the luck\nto see it.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's well enough, I'll not deny, and it would not be so far to take\nyou. Our folk have a space of their own among the MacVicars, below the\nparson.\u201d\n\nThe woman in the bed signed for a sip of water, and they had it fast at\nher lips.\n\n\u201cCould you be putting me near the Macnicols?\u201d she asked in a weakening\nvoice. \u201cThe one I speak of was a Macnicol.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, ay,\u201d said the goodwife; \u201cthey were aye gallant among the girls.\u201d\n\n\u201cGallant he was,\u201d said the one among the blankets. \u201cI see him now. The\nbest man ever I saw. It was at a wedding----\u201d\n\nThe woman's breast racked and the spume spattered over the home-spun\nblankets.\n\nMaisie was heating a death-shift at the peat-fire, turning it over in\nher hands, letting the dry airs into every seam and corner.\n\nLooking at her preparation, the dying woman caught back her breath to\nask why such trouble with a dead-shift.\n\n\u201cYe would not have it on damp and cold,\u201d said Maisie, settling the\nbusiness. \u201cI doubt it'll be long in the sleeves, woman, for the goodwife\nhas a lengthy reach.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was at a marriage in Glenurchy,\u201d said Aoirig in a haver, the pillows\nslipping down behind her back. \u201cYonder he is. A slim straight lad.\nRonnal, O Ronnal my hero! What a dancer! not his match in Mull. Aye\nso----\u201d\n\nA foot could be heard on the road, and one of the two sisters ran out,\nfor she knew whom it would be. They had sent word to the town by\nSolomon in the morning for Macnicol the wright to come up with\nthe stretching-board, thinking there was but an hour more for\npoor Macnicol's were the footsteps, and there he was with the\nstretching-board under his arm--a good piece of larch rubbed smooth\nby sheet and shroud, and a little hollow worn at the head. He was a fat\nman, rolling a bit to one side on a short leg, gross and flabby at the\njowl, and thick-lipped; but he might have been a swanky lad in his day,\nand there was a bit of good-humour in the corner of his eye, where you\nwill never see it when one has been born with the uneasy mind. He was\nhumming to himself as he came up the brae a Badenoch ditty they have in\nthese parts on the winter nights, gossiping round the fire. Whom he\nwas going to stretch he had no notion, except that it was a woman and a\nstranger to the glen.\n\nThe sister took him round to the corner of the house and in at the byre\ndoor, and told him to wait. \u201cIt'll not be long now,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cThen she's still to the fore,\u201d said the wright. \u201cI might have waited\non the paymaster's dram at Three Bridges if I had ken't. Women are aye\nthrawn about dying. They'll put it off to the last, when a man would be\nglad to be taking the road. Who is she, poor woman?\u201d\n\n\u201cA cousin-german of Nanny's,\u201d said the sister, putting a bottle before\nhim, and whipping out for some bannock and cheese. He sat down on a\nshearing-stool, facing the door, half open, between the byre he was\nin and the kitchen where Aoirig was at the dying. The stretching-board\nleaned against the wall outside.\n\n\u201cAye so gentle, so kind,\u201d the woman in the bed was saying in her last\ndover. \u201cHe kissed me first on a day like this. And the blue flowers from\nAora?\u201d\n\nIn the byre the wright was preeing the drink and paying little heed to\nfood. It was the good warm stuff they brew on the side of Lochow, the\nheart of the very heart of the barley-fields, with the taste of gall and\npeat, and he mellowed with every quaich, and took to the soft lilting of\nNiall Ban's song:--\n\n     \u201c'I am the Sergeant fell but kind\n     (Ho! ho! heroes, agus ho-e-ro! );\n     I only lift but the deaf and blind,\n     The wearied-out and the rest-inclined.\n     Many a booty I drive before,\n     Through the glens, through the glens.'\n                         said the Sergeant Mor.\u201d\n\nBen the house the goodwife was saying the prayers for the dying woman\nthe woman should have said for herself while she had the wind for it,\nbut Aoirig harped on her love-tale. She was going fast, and the sisters,\nputting their hands to her feet, could feel that they were cold as the\nrocks. Maisie's arms were round her, and she seemed to have the notion\nthat here was the grip of death, for she pushed her back.\n\n\u201cI am not so old--so old. There is Seana, my neighbour at Duart--long\npast the fourscore and still spinning--I am not so old--God of grace--so\nold--and the flowers----\u201d\n\nA grey shiver went over her face; her breast heaved and fell in; her\nvoice stopped with a gluck in the throat.\n\nThe women stirred round fast in the kitchen. Out on the clay floor the\ntwo sisters pushed the table and laid a sheet on it, the goodwife put\naside the pillows and let Aoirig's head fall back on the bed. Maisie put\nher hand to the clock and stopped it.\n\n\u201cOpen the door, open the door!\u201d cried the goodwife, turning round in a\nhurry and seeing the door still shut.\n\nOne of the sisters put a finger below the sneck and did as she was told,\nto let out the dead one's ghost.\n\nOutside, taking the air, to get the stir of the strong waters out of his\nhead, was the wright.\n\nHe knew what the opening of the door meant, and he lifted his board and\nwent in with it under his arm. A wafting of the spring smells came in at\nhis back, and he stood with his bonnet in his hand.\n\n\u201cSo this is the end o't?\u201d he said in a soft way, stamping out the fire\non the floor.\n\nHe had but said it when Eurig sat up with a start in the bed, and the\nwomen cried out. She opened her eyes and looked at the man, with his fat\nface, his round back, and ill-made clothes, and the death-deal under his\noxter, and then she fell back on the bed with her face stiffening.\n\n\u201cHere's the board for ye,\u201d said the wright, his face spotted white and\nhis eyes staring. \u201cI'll go out a bit and take a look about me. I once\nknew a woman who was terribly like you, and she came from Mull.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nBLACK MURDO\n\n\n     \u201cMas breug uam e is breug thugam e.\u201d\n\n    --Gaelic Proverb.\n\n\nI.\n\nBLACK MURDO'S wife was heavy, and 'twas the time the little brown nats\nwere pattering in Stronbuie wood. Stronbuie spreads out its greenness\nto the sun from the slope of Cladich. It is, in its season, full of the\npiping of birds and the hurry of wings, and the winds of it have the\nsmell of a fat soil. The Diarmaids were the cunning folk to steal it;\nfor if Stronshira is good, Stronbuie is better; and though the loops\nof Aora tangle themselves in the gardens of the Red Duke, Lochow has\nenchantment for the galley of a king. Fraoch Eilean, Innis Chonell, and\nInnis Chonain--they cluster on the bend of it like the gems on a brooch,\nInishail of the Monks makes it holy, and Cruachan-ben, who lords it\nover Lorn, keeps the cold north wind from the shore. They may talk of\nGlenaora, but Stronbuie comes close, close to the heart!\n\nFor all that, 'twas on a time a poor enough place for a woman in yon\nplight; for the rest of the clan crowded down on Innistiynich,\nall fighters and coarse men of the sword, and a skilly woman or a\nstretching-board was no nearer than a day's tramp over the hill and\ndown Aora glen to the walls of Inneraora. If one died on Cladich-side\nthen--and 'twas a dying time, for the Athol dogs were for ever at\nthe harrying--it was but a rough burying, with no corranach and no\nmort-cloth; if a child came, it found but cold water and a cold world,\nwhatever hearts might be. But for seven years no child came for Black\nMurdo.\n\nThey say, in the Gaelic old-word, that a stolen bitch will never throw\nclean pups nor a home-sick woman giants. Murdo recked nothing of that\nwhen he went wooing in a time of truce to Croit-bhile, the honey-croft\nthat makes a red patch on the edge of Creag Dubh. He brought Silis home\nto the dull place at Stronbuie, and she baked his bannocks and ploughed\nhis bit of soil, but her heart never left salt Finne-side. In the\nmorning she would go to the hill to look through the blurred glen, and\nshe would have made bargains with the ugliest crow that could flap on\nfeathers for a day's use of his wings. She could have walked it right\noften and gaily to her people's place, but Black Murdo was of Clan\nArtair, and Artairich had not yet come under the _bratach_ of Diarmaid,\nand bloody knives made a march-dyke between the two tartans.\n\nSeven years and seven days went by, and Black Murdo, coming in on an\nevening after a hard day at the deer, found Silis making the curious\nwee clothes. He looked at her keen, questioning, and she bleached to the\nlips.\n\n\u201cSo!\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cJust so,\u201d said she, breaking a thread with her teeth, and bending till\nthe peat-flame dyed her neck like wine.\n\n\u201cGod, and I'm the stout fellow!\u201d said he, and out he went, down all the\nway to Portinsherrich, and lusty he was with the ale among the pretty\nmen there.\n\nWeeks chased each other like sheep in a fank, and Silis grew sick at the\nheart. There's a time for a woman when the word of a woman is sweeter\nthan a harp; but there were only foolish girls at Innistrynich, and\ncoarse men of the sword. So Murdo stayed in from the roes when the time\ncrept close. To see him do the heavy work of the house and carrying in\nthe peats was a sorry sight.\n\nSilis kept dreaming of Finne-side, where she had heard the long wave in\nthe spring of the year when she had gone home on a password to a woman's\nwedding with Long Coll. The same Long Coll had brothers, and one had\nput a man's foolish sayings in her ears before ever she met Murdo, she\na thin girl like a saugh-wand and not eighteen till Beltane. They called\nhim--no matter--and he had the way with the women. Faith, it's the\nstrange art! It is not looks, nor dancing, nor the good heart, nor wit,\nbut some soft fire of the eye and maybe a song to the bargain. Whatever\nit was, it had Silis, for all that her goodman Murdo had a man's\nqualities and honesty extra.\n\nThey say, \u201c_Cnuic is sluic is Alpeinich, ach cuin a th\u00e0inig\nArtharaich?_\u201c(1) in the by-word; but Artharaich had age enough for a\n_taibhsear_ whatever, for Black Murdo had the Sight.\n\n     1  The hills and hollows and Clan Alpine came together, but\n     when arose Clan Artair?\n\nIt's the curious thing to say of a man with all his parts that he should\nbe _taibhsear_ and see visions; for a _taibhsear_, by all the laws,\nshould be an old fellow with little use for swords or shinny-sticks.\nBut Murdo missed being a full taibhsear by an ell, so the fit had him\nseldom. He was the seventh son of a mother who died with the brand of a\ncross on her brow, and she was kin to the Glenurchy Woman. And something\ncrept over him with the days, that put a mist in his eyes when he looked\nat Silis; but \u201cI'm no real _taibhsear_,\u201d he said to himself, \u201cand I\nswear by the black stones it is no cloth. A man with all the Gift might\ncall it a shroud high on her breast, but----\u201d\n\n\u201cSilis, _a bhean!_ shall it be the Skilly Dame of Inneraora?\u201d\n\nA light leaped to the woman's eyes, for the very thing was in her mind.\n\n\u201cIf it could be,\u201d she said, slowly; \u201cbut it's not easy to get her, for\nblack's your name on Aoraside.\u201d\n\n\u201cBlack or white, Murdo stands in his own shoes. He has been at the gate\nof Inneraora when Strong Colin the warder had little thought of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, oh heart! it must be soon--tomorrow--but----\u201d\n\nThe mouth of day found Silis worse, and Murdo on his way to Inneraora.\n\nHe stepped it down Glenaora like Coll Mor in the story, or the man with\nthe fairy shoes. A cloud was over Tullich and a wet wind whistled on\nKennachregan. The man's target played dunt on his back, so hasty was he,\nfor all that the outposts of Big Colin had hawk's eyes on the pass. He\nhad got the length of Alt Shelechan when a Diarmaid came out on him\nfrom the bracken with a curse on his mouth. He was a big Diarmaid,\nhigh-breasted and stark, for there's no denying there was breed in the\npigs.\n\n\u201cHo, ho, lad!\u201d said he, crousely, \u201cit's risking it you are this day!\u201d\n\nBlack Murdo's hands went to his sides, where a ready man's should ready\nbe; but he had sight of Silis. He could see her in Stronbuie in the\nbothy, on the wee creepy-stool beside the peats, and he knew she was\nsaying the Wise Woman's Wish that Diarmaid mothers have so often need\nof. Length is length, and it's a far cry to Lochow sure enough; but even\nhalf a _taibhsear_ takes no count of miles and time.\n\nHe spoke softly. \u201cI go to Inneraora for the Skilly Woman. My wife is a\ndaughter of your folks, and she'll have none but the dame who brought\nherself home.\u201d\n\n\u201cDeath or life?\u201d asked the Diarmaid, a freckled hand still on the\nbasket-hilt. He put the question roughly, for nobody likes to lose a\nploy.\n\n\u201cLife it is, my lad. It's not to dress corpses but to wash weans she's\nwanted.\u201d\n\n\u201cHo-chutt!\u201d went the blade back against the brass of the scabbard (for\nhe was _duin-uasal_ who carried it), and the man's face changed.\n\n\u201cPass!\u201d he said. \u201cI would not stand in a bairn's way to life. Had it\nbeen shrouds instead of sweelers, we could have had it out, for a corpse\nis in no great hurry. But troth it's yourself is the tight one, and I\nwould have liked a bit of the old game.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo more than Murdo, red fellow!\u201d\n\n\u201cMurdo! So be't; yet Murdo will give me his dirk for gate-pay, or\nthey'll be saying farther down that Calum, as good a man, kept out of\nhis way.\u201d\n\nThe _biodag_ went flying into the grass at Calum's feet, and Murdo went\nleaping down the glen. It was like stalking deer for the Diarmaids. Here\nand there he had to go into the river or among the hazel-switches, or\ncrawl on his stomach among the gall.\n\nFrom Kilmune to Uchdan-barracaldine the red fellows were passing, or\nplaying with the _clachneart_ or the _cabar,_ or watching their women\ntoiling in the little fields.\n\n\u201cThorns in their sides!\u201d he said to himself, furious at last, when\nanother keen-eyed Diarmaid caught sight of his tartan and his black\nbeard among some whins. It was a stripling with only a dirk, but he\ncould gather fifty men on the crook of his finger.\n\n\u201cStand!\u201d cried the Diarmaid, flashing the dirk out. \u201cWhat want ye so far\nover this way?\u201d\n\nMurdo, even in the rage, saw Silis, a limp creature, sweating in her\npains, her black eyes (like the sloe) keen on the door. So close,\nso sure, so sorrowful! He could have touched her on the shoulder and\nwhispered in her ear.\n\n\u201cI am Black Murdo,\u201d he told the lad. \u201cI am for Inneraora for the Skilly\nWoman for my wife, child of your own clan.\u201d\n\n\u201cDeath or life?\u201d\n\n\u201cLife.\u201d\n\n\u201c'Tis a bonny targe ye have, man; it might be doing for toll.\u201d\n\nThe lad got it, and Murdo went on his way. He found the Skilly Woman,\nwho put before him sour milk and brose. But he would not have drink or\nsup, so back through the Diarmaids they went without question (for the\nwoman's trade was as good as the chief's convoy), till they came to\nTom-an-dearc. Out upon them there a fellow red and pretty.\n\n\u201cHold!\u201d he said, as if it had been dogs. \u201cWhat's the name of ye, black\nfellow?\u201d Murdo cursed in his beard. \u201cMy name's honest man, but I have\nnot time to prove it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTroth that's a pity. But seeing there's the _ca\u00fcleach_ with you,\nyou must e'en go your way. There's aye some of you folk on the\nstretching-board. Ye want heart, and ye die with a flaff of wind. Lend\nme your sword, _'ille!_''\n\n\u201cSquint-mouth!\u201d cried Murdo, \u201cyour greedy clan took too much off me this\nday already for me to part with the sweetest blade Gow-an-aora ever beat\non iron. I took it from one of your cowards at Carnus, and if it's back\nit goes, it's not with my will.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen it's the better man must have it,\u201d said the red fellow, and, Lord,\nhe was the neat-built one! They took off their coats, and for lack of\nbucklers rolled them round their arms, both calm and canny. The Diarmaid\nwas first ready with his brand out, and Murdo put to his point. For a\nlittle the two men stood, spread out, hard-drawn behind the knees, with\nthe cords of the neck like thongs, then at it with a clatter of steel.\n\nThe Skilly Woman, with the plaid pulled tight over her grey hair, sat\nwith sunk eyes on a stone and waited without wonder. She had sons who\nhad died in brawls at Kilmichael market, or in the long foray far\nin Kintail; and her man, foster-brother to a chief, got death in the\nstrange foreign wars, where the pay was not hide and horn but round\ngold.\n\nA smoky soft smirr of rain filled all the gap between the hills, though\nSithean Sluaidhe and Dunchuach had tips of brass from a sun dropping\nbehind the Salachary hills. The grass and the gall lost their glitter\nand became grey and dull; the hill of Lecknamban, where five burns are\nborn, coaxed the mist down on its breast like a lover. It was wet, wet,\nbut never a drop made a rush bend or a leaf fall. Below the foot the\nground was greasy, as it is in a fold at the dippingtime; but the two\nmen pulled themselves up with a leap on it as if it might be dry sand,\nand the brogues made no error on the soil.\n\nFirst the Diarmaid pressed, for he had it over the other man in youth,\nand youth is but tame when it's slow or slack. Murdo waited, all eyes\nthat never blinked, with the basket well up, and kept on his toes.\n\u201cSplank, sp-ll-ank, sp-ll-ank--_siod e_!\u201d said the blades, and the\nDiarmaid's for a time made the most of the music, but he never got\ninside the black fellow's guard. Then Murdo took up the story with a\nsnap of the teeth, skelping hard at the red one till the hands dirled in\nthe basket like a bag of pins. The smirr gathered thicker, and went\nto rain that fell solid, the brogues grew like steeped bladders on the\nfeet, a scatter of crows made a noisy homing to the trees at Tullich,\nand Aora gobbled like swine in a baron's trough.\n\n\u201cHaste ye, heroes,\u201d said the old woman, cowering on the wet stone;\n\u201chaste ye, dears; it's mighty long ye are about it.\u201d\n\nThe Diarmaid turned the edge twice on the coated arm, and Murdo wasted\nhis wind to curse. Then he gave the stroke that's worth fifty head of\nkyloes (fine they know that same all below Cladichl), and a red seam\njumped to the Diarmaid's face. All his heart went to stiffen his\nslacking heavy arm, and he poured on Murdo till Murdo felt it like a\nrain of spears. One hot wandering stroke he got on the bonnet, and for\nwant of the bowl of brose at Inneraora, the wind that should go to help\nhim went inside, and turned his stomach. Sweat, hot and salt, stung his\neyes, his ears filled with a great booming, he fell in a weary dream of\na far-off fight on a witched shore, with the waves rolling, and some one\nelse at the fencing, and caring nought, but holding guard with the\nbest blade Gow-an-aora ever took from flame. Back stepped the Diarmaid,\nsudden, and sweep went his steel at the shaking knees.\n\nA bairn's cry struck Murdo's ear through the booming and sent him full\nawake. He drew back the stretched foot fast, and round the red one's\nsword hissed through air. \u201cFoil! foil!\u201d said Murdo, and he slashed him\non the groin.\n\n\u201cThat'll do, man; no more,\u201d said the Skilly Woman, quickly,\n\n\u201cI may as well finish him; it's lame he'll be all his days any way, and\nlittle use is a man with a halt in a healthy clan.\u201d\n\n\u201cHalt or no halt, let him be; he's my second cousin's son.\u201d\n\nMurdo looked for a bit at the bloody thing before him, but the woman\ncraved again with bony fingers on his wrist; so he spat on the dirty\ngreen tartan and went. The smoke rose from him and hung about with a\nsmell of wearied flesh, the grey of the mist was black at Carnus. When\nthe pair came over against Lochow, where one can see the holy isle when\nit is day, the night was deep and cold; but the woman bent at the cross\nwith a \u201c_Mhoire Mhathair_,\u201d and so did the man, picking the clotted\nblood from his ear. They dropped down the brae on the house at last.\n\nFor a little Black Murdo's finger hung on the sneck, and when he heard a\nsound he pushed in the door.\n\nAll about the house the peat-reek swung like mist on the mountain. Wind\nand rain fought it out on Cladich brae, and when it was not the wind\nthat came bold through the smoke-hole in the roof, 'twas the rain, a\nbeady slant that hissed on the peats like roasting herrings. The woman\nlay slack on the bed, her eyes glossed over with the glass that folks\nsee the great sights through, and her fingers making love over the face\nand breast of a new-born boy that cried thinly at her knees. A lighted\ncruisie spluttered with heavy smell at the end of a string on a rafter.\n\n\u201cO Skilly Woman, Skilly Woman, it's late we are,\u201d said Black Murdo.\n\n\u201cLate enough, as ye say, just man. Had ye bartered an old sword for\ntwenty minutes on the Tom-an-dearc, I was here before danger.\u201d\n\nThen the Skilly Woman set him on the wet windy side of the door, and\nwent about with busy hands.\n\nThe man, with the ragged edge of his kilt scraping his knees and the\nrain bubbling in his brogues, leaned against the wattled door and\nsmeared the blood from his brow. A cold wind gulped down from Glenurchy\nand ghosts were over Inishail. The blast whirled about and whirled\nabout, and swung the rowan like a fern, and whistled in the gall, and\ntore the thatch, all to drown a child's cry. The blackness crowded close\nround like a wall, and flapped above like a plaid--Stronbuie was in a\ntent and out of the world. Murdo strained to hear a voice, but the wind\nhad the better of him. He went round to the gable, thinking to listen at\nthe window, but the board on the inside shut the wind and him out. The\nstrange emptiness of grief was in his belly.\n\nInside, the Skilly One went like a witch, beak-nosed and half-blind.\nThere was clatter of pans and the dash of water, the greeting of the\nchild and the moan of the mother. What else is no man's business. For\nall she was skilly the old dame had no thought of the woman sinking.\n\n\u201cYou'll have blithe-meat in the morning,\u201d she said, cheerily, from the\nfireside.\n\nSilis made worse moan than before.\n\n\u201cSuch a boy, white love! And hair like the copper! His hide is mottled\nlike a trout's back; calf of my heart!\u201d\n\nSilis, on her side, put out white craving arms. \u201cGive it to me, wife;\ngive it to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWheesht! rest ye, dear, rest ye,\u201d said the Skilly Dame.\n\nBut she put the bairn in its mother's arms. Silis, when she had it on\nher breast, sobbed till the bed shook.\n\n\u201cIs not he the hero, darling?\u201d said the Skilly Woman. \u201cIt's easy seen\nhe's off Clan Diarmaid on one side, for all that yoar hair is black as\nthe sloe. Look at the colour of him!\u201d\n\nFright was in the mother's face. \u201cCome close, come close till I tell\nyou,\u201d she said, her long hair damp on her milky shoulders.\n\nThe Skilly Woman put down her head and listened with wonder.\n\n\u201cMe-the-day! Was I not the blind one to miss it? His name, white love?\nNo one shall ken it from me, not even Murdo.\u201d\n\nA man's name took up the last breath of Silis; she gave a little shiver,\nand choked with a sound that the old crone had heard too often not to\nknow.\n\nShe looked, helpless, for a little at the bed, then felt the mother's\nfeet. They were as cold as stone.\n\nA cry caught Murdo's ear against the wattles, and he drove in the door\nwith his shoulder, heeding no sneck nor bar.\n\n\u201cAm not I the blind fool?\u201d said the crone.\n\n\u201cThere's your wife gone, cheap enough at the price of a yard of steel.\u201d\n\nThey stood and looked at the bed together, the bairn crying without\nnotice.\n\n\u201cI knew it,\u201d said the man, heaving; \u201c_taibhsear_ half or whole, I could\nsee the shroud on her neck!\u201d\n\nThe grey light was drifting in from Cladich. The fir-trees put stretched\nfingers up against the day, and Murdo was placing a platter of salt on a\nbosom as cold and as white as the snow.\n\n\u201cYou're feeding him on the wrong cloth,\u201d said he, seeing the crone give\nsuck to the child from a rag of Diarmaid tartan dipped in goat's milk.\n\n\nII.\n\nThe boy grew like a tree in a dream, that is seed, sapling, and giant in\none turn on the side. Stronbuie's wattled bothy, old and ugly, quivered\nwith his laughing, and the young heather crept closer round the door.\nThe Spotted Death filled Inishail with the well-fed and the warm-happed;\nbut the little one, wild on the brae, forgotten, sucking the whey from\nrags and robbing the bush of its berries, gathered sap and sinew like\nthe child of kings. It is the shrewd way of God! There was bloody\nenough work forby, for never a sheiling passed but the brosey folks came\npouring down Glenstrae, scythe, sword, and spear, and went back with the\ncattle before them, and redness and smoke behind. But no raider put hand\non Black Murdo, for now he was _taibhsear_ indeed, and the _taibhsear_\nhas magic against dub or steel. How he became _taibhsear_ who can be\ntelling? When he buried Silis out on the isle, his heart grew heavy,\ngloom seized him, the cut of the Diarmaid's sword gave a quirk to his\nbrain that spoiled him for the world's use. He took to the hills no more\nin sport, he carried Gow-an-aora's sword no more in battle, for all that\nit cost him so dear. A poor man's rig was his at the harvest because of\nhis Gift, and the cailzie cock or the salmon never refused his lure.\n\nSkill of the daymore, the seven cuts, and yon ready slash worth fifty\nhead of kyloes, he gave to the boy, and then the quick cunning parry,\nand the use of the foot and knee that makes half a swordsman.\n\nBut never a spot of crimson would he have on Rory's steel.\n\n\u201cFirst dip in the blood of the man with the halt, and then farewell\nto ye!\u201d he said, wearying for the day when the boy should avenge his\nmother.\n\nFolks--far-wandered ones--brought him news of the man with the halt that\nwas his giving, the Diarmaid whose bargain for a sword on Tom-an-dearc\ncost Silis her life. He passed it on to the boy, and he filled him with\nold men's tales. He weaved the cunning stories of the pigs of Inneraora,\nfor all that the boy's mother came from their loins, and he made\nthem--what there may well be doubts of--cowards and weak.\n\n\u201cThey killed your mother, Rory: her with the eyes like the sloe and the\nneck like snow. Swear by the Holy Iron that the man with the halt we ken\nof gets his pay for it.\u201d\n\nRory swore on the iron. It is an easy thing for one when the blood is\nstrong and the _biodag_ still untried. He lay awake at night, thinking\nof his mother's murderer till the sweat poured. He would have been on\nthe track of him before ever he had won his man's bonnet by lifting the\n_clach-cuid-fear_, but Murdo said, \u201cLet us be sure. You are young yet,\nand I have one other trick of fencing worth while biding for.\u201d\n\nAt last, upon a time, Murdo found the boy could match himself, and he\nsaid, \u201cNow let us to this affair.\u201d\n\nHe took the boy, as it were, by the hand, and they ran up the hills and\ndown the hills, and through the wet glens, to wherever a Diarmaid might\nbe; and where were they not where strokes were going? The hoodie-crow\nwas no surer on the scent of war. Blar-na-leine took them over the six\nvalleys and the six mountains; Cowal saw them on the day the Lamonts got\ntheir bellyful; a knock came on them on the night when the Stewarts took\ntheir best from Appin and flung themselves on Inneraora, and they went\nout without a word and marched with that high race.\n\nBut luck was with the man with the halt they sought for. At muster\nfor raid, or at market, he was there, swank man and pretty but for the\nlameness he had found on an ill day on Tom-an-dearc. He sang songs\nround the ale with the sweetness of the bird, and his stories came ready\nenough off the tongue. Black Murdo and the boy were often close enough\non his heel, but he was off and away like the corp-candle before they\nwere any nigher. If he had magic, it could have happened no stranger.\n\nOnce, a caird who went round the world with the jingle of cans on his\nback and a sheaf of withies in his oxter, told them that a lame Diarmaid\nwas bragging at Kilmichael fair that he would play single-stick for\nthree days against the country-side. They sped down to Ford, and over\nthe way; but nothing came of it, for the second day had found no one to\ncome to the challenge, and the man with the halt was home again.\n\nBlack Murdo grew sick of the chase, and the cub too tired of it. For his\nfather's fancy he was losing the good times--many a fine exploit among\nthe Atholmen and the brosey folks of Glenstrae; and when he went down to\nInnistrynich to see the lads go out with belt and plaid, he would give\ngold to be with them.\n\nOne day, \u201cI have dreamed a dream,\u201d said Murdo, \u201cOur time is come: what\nwe want will be on the edge of the sea, and it will be the third man\nafter dawn. Come, son, let us make for Inneraora.\u201d\n\nInneraora lies now between the bays, sleeping day and night, for the\nold times are forgot and the nettle's on Dunchuach. Before the plaid of\nMacCailein Mor was spread from Cowal to Cruachan, it was the stirring\nplace; high and dry on the bank of Slochd-a-chubair, and the dogs\nthemselves fed on buck-flesh from the mountains, so rowth the times! One\nwe ken of has a right to this place or that place yonder that shall not\nbe named, and should hold his head as high on Aora as any chief of the\nboar's snout; but _mo thruaigh! mo thruaigh!_ the black bed of Macartair\nis in the Castle itself, and Macartair is without soil or shield. How\nDiarmaid got the old place is a sennachie's tale. \u201cAs much of the land\nas a heifer's hide will cover,\u201d said the foolish writing, and\nMacCailein had the guile to make the place his own. He cut the hide of\na long-backed heifer into thin thongs, and stretched it round Stronbuie.\nThere is day about to be seen with his race for that! Over to Inneraora\nthen went Murdo, and Rory clad for fighting, bearing with him the keen\nold sword. 'Twas a different time going down the glen then from what it\nwas on the misty day Murdo fetched the Skilly Dame; for the Diarmaids he\nmet by the way said, \u201c'Tis the Lochow _taibhsear_ and his tail,\u201d and let\nthem by without a word, or maybe with a salute. They went to the Skilly\nDame's house, and she gave them the Gael's welcome, with bannocks and\ncrowdie, _marag-dkubh_ and ale. But she asked them not their business,\nfor that is the way of the churl. She made them soft-scented beds of\nwhite hay in a dirty black corner, where they slept till cockcrow with\nsweet weariness in their bones.\n\nThe morning was a grey day with frost and snow. Jumping John's bay below\nthe house was asleep with a soft smoke like a blanket over it. Lean deer\nfrom behind the wood came down trotting along the shore, sniffing\nthe saltness, and wondering where the meat was. With luck and a good\n_sgian-dubh_ a quick lad could do some gralloching. The tide was far\nout from Ard Rannoch to the Gallows-tree, and first there was the brown\nwrack, and then there was the dun sand, and on the edge of the sand a\nbird went stalking. The old man and the young one stood at the gable and\nlooked at it all.\n\nIt was a short cut from below the castle to the point of Ard Rannoch,\nif the tide was out, to go over the sand. \u201cWhat we wait on,\u201d said Murdo,\nsoftly, \u201cgoes across there. There will be two men, and them ye shall\nnot heed, but the third is him ye ken of. Ye'll trap him between the\nwhin-bush and the sea, and there can be no escaping unless he takes to\nthe swimming for it.\u201d\n\nRory plucked his belts tight, took out the good blade wondrous quiet,\nbreathing fast and heavy. The rich blood raced up his back, and tingled\nhot against his ruddy neck.\n\n\u201cWhat seest thou, my son?\u201d said Murdo at last.\n\n\u201cA man with a quick step and no limp,\u201d quoth the lad.\n\n\u201cLet him pass.\u201d\n\nThen again said the old man, \u201cWhat seest thou?\u201d\n\n\u201cA _bodach_ frail and bent, with a net on his shoulder,\u201d said Rory.\n\n\u201cLet him pass.\u201d\n\nThe sun went high over Ben Ime, and struck the snow till the eyes were\nblinded. Rory rubbed the sweat from his drenched palm on the pleat of\nhis kilt, and caught the basket-hand tighter. Over Aora mouth reek went\nup from a fishing-skiff, and a black spot stood out against the snow.\n\n\u201cWhat seest thou now, lad?\u201d asked Murdo.\n\n\u201cThe man with the halt,\u201d answered the lad.\n\n\u201cThen your time has come, child. The stroke worth the fifty head, and\npith on your arm!\u201d\n\nRory left the old man's side, and went down through a patch of\nshelisters, his mouth dry as a peat and his heart leaping. He was across\nthe wrack and below the pools before the coming man had noticed him. But\nthe coming man thought nothing wrong, and if he did, it was but one man\nat any rate, and one man could use but one sword, if swords were going.\nRory stepped on the edge of the sand, and tagged the bonnet down on his\nbrow, while the man limped on between him and the sea. Then he stepped\nout briskly and said, \u201cStop, pig!\u201d He said it strangely soft, and\nwith, as it were, no heart in the business; for though the lame man was\nstrong, deepbreasted, supple, and all sound above the belt, there was a\nlook about him that made the young fellow have little keenness for the\nwork.\n\n\u201cPig?\u201d said the Diarmaid, putting back his shoulders and looking under\nhis heavy brows. \u201cYou are the Lochow lad who has been seeking for\nme?\u201d\n\n\u201cHo, ho! red fellow; ye kent of it, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cRed fellow! It's red enough you are yourself, I'm thinking. I have no\ngreat heed to draw steel on a lad of your colour, so I'll just go my\nway.\u201d And the man looked with queer wistful eyes over his shoulder at\nthe lad, who, with blade-point on the sand, would have let him pass.\n\nBut up-by at the house the _taibhsear_ watched the meeting. The quiet\nturn it took was beyond his reading, for he had thought it would be but\nthe rush, and the fast fall-to, and no waste of time, for the tide was\ncoming in.\n\n\u201cWhite love, give him it!\u201d he cried out, making for the shore. \u201cHe looks\nlame, but the pig's worth a man's first fencing.\u201d\n\nUp went the boy's steel against the grey cloud, and he was at the throat\nof the Diarmaid like a beast. \u201cMalison on your black heart, murderer!\u201d\n he roared, still gripping his broadsword. The Diarmaid flung him off\nlike a child, and put up his guard against the whisking of his blade.\n\n\u201cOh, foolish boy!\u201d he panted wofully as the lad pressed, and the grey\nlight spread over sea and over shore. The quiet tide crawled in about\ntheir feet; birds wheeled on white feathers with mocking screams; the\nold man leaned on his staff and cheered the boy. The Diarmaid had all\nthe coolness and more of art, and he could have ended the play as he\nwanted. But he only fended, and at last the slash worth fifty head found\nhis neck. He fell on his side, with a queer twisted laugh on his face,\nsaying, \u201cLittle hero, ye fence--ye fence----\u201d\n\n\u201cHaste ye, son! finish the thing!\u201d said the _taibhsear,_ all shaking,\nand the lad did as he was told, hocking at the spurt the blood made. He\nwas pushing his dirk in the sand to clean it, when his eye fell on the\nSkilly Woman hirpling nimbly down to the shore. She was making a loud\ncry.\n\n\u201cGod I God! it's the great pity about this,\u201d said she, looking at Murdo\ncutting the silver buttons off the corpse's jacket. \u201cKen ye the man\nthat's there dripping?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe man's no more,\u201d said Rory, cool enough. \u201cHe has gone travelling,\nand we forgot to ask his name.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen if happy you would be, go home to Lochow, and ask it not, nor\naught about him, if you wouldn't rue long. You sucked your first from a\nDiarmaid rag, and it was not for nothing.\u201d\n\nMurdo drew back with a clumsy start from the dead man's side and looked\ndown on his face, then at the boy's, queerly. \u201cI am for off,\u201d said he at\nlast with a sudden hurry. \u201cYou can follow if you like, red young one.\u201d\n And he tossed the dead man's buttons in Rory's face!\n\n\n\n\nTHE SEA-FAIRY OF FRENCH FORELAND.\n\n\nONCE I saw a fairy King, and it was in the Castle up-by. The Castle took\nfire, and a fine blaze it made at the foot of Dunchaach. A boy, I ran\nwith the rest to carry out the MacCailein's rich gear, and behold! I\nwandered and lost my way in that large place where is a window for every\nday in the year. Up the long stairs and through the far passages, and\nover the shining sounding floors went I, barefoot, with a feared eye on\nevery hole and corner. At every door it was, \u201cSurely now I'm with the\nfolks at the fire\u201d; but every door was a way into a quieter quietness,\nand the Castle was my own. I sat at last on a black chair that had a\ncurious twisted back, and the tears went raining on the lap of my kilt.\n\nLong, long I sat, and sore I grat, my mind full, not so much of my way\nlost, but of the bigness of things, and the notion of what it would\nbe to have to live in a castle at night, with doors on every hand for\nghosts to rap at, and crooked passages without end for gowsty winds to\nmoan in. Thinks I, \u201cThe smallest hut in the town for me, with all plain\nbefore me, with the one door shut and my face to it, and the candlelight\nseeking into every crack and cranny!\u201d\n\nIt was then that the fairy King came on me out of the sewed cloth\nhanging on the wall.\n\nHe was a dainty wee man, in our own tartan, with a steel plate on his\nbreast baronly-style, and strange long curly hair. I ran my wet eyes\ndown seven silver buttons the shape of salmon on the front of his vest\nbefore I let myself go, but go I must, so I put fast heels on my fright.\nI galloped with a frozen tongue through miles of the Duke's castle till\na door brought me out on the grass of Cairnban, in front of the friendly\nbleeze that my own folks were pouring the stoups of water on.\n\nThat was the only time the quiet folk and I came to a meeting, though\nour family was always gleg at seeing things. A cousin-german once saw\nthe fairy bull that puts up in Loch Steallaire-bhan behind the town.\nIt came on a jaunt to the glen in the guise of a rich maiden, and my\ncousin, the son of the house, made love to her. One night--in a way that\nI need not mention--he found himself in her room combing down her yellow\nhair, and what was among her hair but fine sand that told the whole\nstory? \u201cYou are a _gruagach_ of the lake!\u201d cried the lad, letting the\ncomb drop on the floor, with his face white, and the thing tarned to its\nown shape and went bellowing to the shore.\n\nAnd there was a man--blessings with him! for he's here no more--who\nwould always be going up on Sithean Sluaidhe to have troke with the wee\npeople on that fine knowe. He would bring them tastings of honey and\nbutter to put them in a good key, and there they would dance by the hour\nfor his diversion to the piping of a piper who played on drones of grass\nwith reeds made of the midge's thrapple.\n\nStill, in all my time I know but one body who could find the way to the\nden of the Sea-Fairies, and she was a lass whose folks were in Ceannmor\nat the time the French traffickers were coming here to swap casks of\nclaret wine for the finest herrings in the wide world.\n\nIt was her custom to go down on the hot days to the shore at the\nWater-foot when the tide was far out, and the sand was crusting with\nsalt in the sun, and the wrack-balls burst with the heat, and the water\nlay flat like oil, and lazy, for want of a breath of wind. Sometimes it\nwould be the French Foreland she would seek, and sometimes Dalchenna;\nbut when the Frenchmen were at the Foreland she kept clear of it by the\ncounsel of a cautious father.\n\nUp the loch they would sail, the Frenchmen, in their gabberts, and\nhove-to with their casks to change for the cured herrings. A curious\npeople they were, not much like our own good Gaels in many a way, but\nblack-avised and slim; still with some of the Gael's notions about\nthem too, such as the humour of fighting and drinking and scouring the\ncountryside for girls.\n\nBut it happened that one year they left behind them only a wine of\nsix-waters, and did some other dirty tricks forbye, and there was for\nlong a feud, so that the Frenchmen behooved to keep to their boats and\nbargain with the curers over the gun'le.\n\nOn a day at that time, Marseli that I speak of had been bathing at\nthe Ceannmor rocks--having a crave for salt water the Ceannmor folks\nnowadays are not very namely for. When she had her gown on again, she\nwent round to Dalchenna sands and out far to the edge of the tide, where\nshe sat on a stone and took to the redding of her hair, that rolled in\ncopper waves before the comb--rich, thick, and splendid.\n\nBefore her, the tide was on the turn so slow and soft that the edge\nof it lifted the dry sand like meal. All about on the weedy stones the\ntailor-tartans leaped like grasshoppers, the spout-fish stuck far out of\nthe sand and took a fresh gloss on their shells from the sun.\n\nYou might seek from shire to shire for a handsomer maid. She was at\nthe age that's a father's heartbreak, rounding out at the bosom and\nmellowing at the eyes; her skin was like milk, and the sigh was at her\nlips as often as the song. But though she sighed, it was not for the\nCeannmor fishermen, coarse-bearded, and rough in their courting; for\nshe had vanity, from her mother's side, and queer notions. The mother's\nfamily had been rich in their day, with bards and thoughtful people\namong them.\n\n\u201cIf a sea-fairy could see me now,\u201d said Marseli, \u201cit might put him\nin the notion to come this way again,\u201d and she started to sing the\nchild-song--\n\n     \u201cLittle folk, little folk, come to me,\n     From the lobbies that lie below the sea.\u201d\n\n\u201c_So agad el_\u201d cried a gull at her back, so plainly that she tamed fast\nto look, and there was the fairy before her!\n\nUp got Marseli, all shaking and ready to fly, but the fairy-man looked\nharmless enough as he bowed low to her, and she stayed to put her hair\nbehind her ears and draw her gown closer.\n\nHe was a little delicate man the smallest of Marseli's brothers could\nhave put in his oxter, with close curled hair, and eyes as black as\nRidir Lochiel's waistcoat. His clothes were the finest of the fine,\nknee-breeches with silk hose, buckled brogues, a laced jacket, and a\ndagger at his belt--no more like a fairy of the knowe than the green\ntree's like the gall.\n\n\u201cYou're quick enough to take a girl at her word,\u201d said Marseli, cunning\none, thinking to hide from him the times and times she had cried over\nthe sands for the little sea-folks to come in with the tide.\n\nThe fairy-man said something in his own tongue that had no sense for the\ngirl, and he bowed low again, with his bonnet waving in his hand, in the\nstyle of Charlie Munn the dancer.\n\n\u201cYou must speak in the Gaelic,\u201d said Marseli, still a bit put about; \u201cor\nif you have not the Gaelic, I might be doing with the English, though\nlittle I care for it.\u201d\n\n\u201cFaith,\u201d said the fairy-man, \u201cI have not the Gaelic, more's the pity,\nbut I know enough English to say you're the prettiest girl ever I set\neyes on since I left my own place.\u201d\n\n(Ho! hoi was he not the cunning one? The fairies for me for gallantry!)\n\n\u201cOne of such judgment can hardly be uncanny,\u201d thought Marseli, so she\nstayed and cracked with him in the English tongue.\n\nThe two of them walked up over the sand to the birch-trees, and under\nthe birches the little fellow asked Marseli to sit down.\n\n\u201cYou are bigger than I looked for in a sea-fairy,\u201d said she when the\ncrack was a little bit on.\n\n\u201cA fairy?\u201d said the little fellow, looking at her in the flash of an\neye.\n\n\u201cYes! Though I said just now that you took one fast at her word, the\ntruth to tell is, that always when the tide went out I sang at your\nback-doors the song you heard to-day for the first time. I learned it\nfrom Beann Francie in the Horse Park.\u201d\n\nThe stranger had a merry laugh--not the roar of a Finne fisherman--and\na curions way of hitching the shoulders, and the laugh and the\nshoulder-hitch were his answer for Marseli.\n\n\u201cYou'll be a king in the sea--in your own place--or a prince maybe,\u201d\n said the girl, twisting rushes in her hand.\n\nThe man gave a little start and got red at the face.\n\n\u201cWho in God's name said so?\u201d asked he, looking over her shoulder deep\ninto the little birch-wood, and then uneasy round about him.\n\n\u201cI guessed it,\u201d said Marseli. \u201cThe kings of the land-fairies are\nby-ordinar big, and the dagger is ever on their hips.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, indeed,\u201d said the little fellow, \u201cto say I was king were a\nbravado, but I would not be just denying that I might be Prince.\u201d\n\nAnd that way their friendship began.\n\nAt the mouth of many nights when the fishing-boats were off at the\nfishing, or sometimes even by day when her father and her two brothers\nwere chasing the signs of sea-pig and scart far down on Tarbert, Marseli\nwould meet her fairy friend in a cunning place at the Black-water-foot,\nwhere the sea puts its arms well around a dainty waist of lost land.\nHere one can see Loch Finne from Ardno to Strathlachlan: in front lift\nthe long lazy Cowal hills, and behind is Auchnabreac wood full of deer\nand birds. Nowadays the Duke has his road round about this cunning fine\nplace, but then it lay forgotten among whins that never wanted bloom,\nand thick, soft, salty grass. Two plantings of tall trees kept the wind\noff, and the centre of it beaked in warm suns. It was like a garden\nstanding out upon the sea, cut off from the throng road at all tides by\na cluster of salt pools and an elbow of the Duglas Water.\n\nHere the Sea-Fairy was always waiting for the girl, walking up and down\nin one or other of the tree clumps. He had doffed his fine clothes after\ntheir first meeting for plain ones, and came douce and soberly, but aye\nwith a small sword on his thigh.\n\nThe girl knew the folly of it; but tomorrow was always to be the last of\nit, and every day brought new wonders to her. He fetched her rings once,\nof cunning make, studded with, stones that tickled the eye in a way the\ncairngorm and the Cromalt pearl could never come up to.\n\nShe would finger them as if they were the first blaeberries of a season\nand she was feared to spoil their bloom, and in a rapture the Sea-Fairy\nwould watch the sparkle of eyes that were far before the jewels.\n\n\u201cDo your folk wear these?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cNow and then,\u201d he would say, \u201cnow and then. Ours is a strange family:\nto-day we may have the best and the richest that is going, to-morrow who\nso poor, without a dud to our backs and a mob crying for our heads?\u201d\n\n\u201c_Ochanorie!_ They are the lovely rings any way.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey might be better; they would need to be much better, my dear, to be\ngood enough for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cFor me!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey're yours--for a kiss or two,\u201d and he put out an arm to wind round\nthe girl's waist.\n\nMarseli drew back and put up her chin and down her brows.\n\n\u201c'_Stad!_\u201d she cried. \u201cWe ken the worth of fairy gifts in these parts.\nYour rings are, likely enough, but chuckie-stones if I could but see\nthem. Take them back, I must be going home.\u201d\n\nThe little man took the jewels with a hot face and a laugh.\n\n\u201cTroth,\u201d he said, \u201cand the same fal-fals have done a lover's business\nwith more credit to them before this. There are dames in France who\nwould give their souls for them--and the one they belong to.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have travelled?\u201d said Marseli. \u201cOf course a sea-fairy-\u201d\n\n\u201cCan travel as he likes. You are not far wrong, my dear. Well, well, I\nken France! O France, France! round and about the cold world, where's\nyour equal?\u201d\n\nHis eyes filled with tears, and the broad-cloth on his breast heaved\nstormily, and Marseli saw that here was some sad thinking.\n\n\u201cTell me of Fairydom,\u201d said she, to change him off so dull a key.\n\n\u201c'Tis the same, the same. France and fairyland, 'tis the same,\nself-same, madame,\u201d said the sea-prince, with a hand on his heart and a\nbow.\n\nHe started to tell her of rich and rolling fields, flat and juicy,\nwaving to the wind; of country houses lost and drowned among flowers.\n\u201cAnd all the roads lead one way,\u201d said he, \u201cto a great and sparkling\ntown. Rain or shine, there is comfort, and there is the happy heart!\nThe windows open on the laughing lanes, and the girls lean out and\nlook after us, who prance by on our horses. There is the hollow hearty\nhoof-beat on the causey stones; in the halls the tables gleam with\nsilver and gold; the round red apples roll over the platter among the\nslim-stemmed wine-beakers. It is the time of soft talk and the head full\nof gallant thoughts. Then there are the nights warm and soft, when the\nopen doors let out the laughing and the gliding of silk-shooned feet,\nand the airs come in heavy with the scent of breckan and tree!\u201d\n\n\u201cOn my word,\u201d said Marseli, \u201cbut it's like a girl's dream!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou may say it, black-eyes, _mo chridhe!_ The wonder is that folk can\nbe found to live so far astray from it. Let me tell you of the castles.\u201d\n And he told Marseli of women sighing at the harp for far-wandered ones,\nor sewing banners of gold. Trumpets and drums and the tall chevaliers\ngoing briskly by with the jingle of sword on heel on the highway to\nwars, every chevalier his love and a girl's hands warm upon his heart.\n\nThat night Marseli went early abed to wander in fairydom.\n\nNext day the sea-gentleman had with him a curious harp that was not\naltogether a harp, and was hung over the neck by a ribbon.\n\n\u201cWhat hast here?\u201d asked Marseli.\n\n\u201cA salve for a sore heart, lass! I can play on it some old tunes, and by\nthe magic of it I'm back in my father's home and unafeared.\u201d\n\nHe drew his white fingers over the strings and made a thin twittering\nof music sweeter than comes from the _clarsach_-strings, but foreign and\nuncanny. To Marseli it brought notions of far-off affairs, half sweet,\nhalf sad, like the edges of dreams and the moods that come on one in\nloneliness and strange places, and one tune he played was a tune she had\nheard the French traffickers sing in the bay in the slack seasons.\n\n\u201cLet me sing you a song,\u201d said he, \u201call for yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are bard?\u201d she said, with a pleased face.\n\nHe said nothing, but touched on the curious harp, and sang to the girl's\neyes, to the spark of them and the dance of them and the deep thought\nlurking in their corners, to her lips crimson like the rowan and curled\nwith pride, to the set of breast and shoulder, and the voice melting on\nthe tongue.\n\nIt was all in the tune and the player's looks, for the words were fairy\nto the girl, but so plain the story, her face burned, and her eyes\nfilled with a rare confusion.\n\n\u201c'Tis the enchantment of fairydom,\u201d said she. \u201cAm not I the _oinseach_\nto listen? I'll warrant yon have sung the same to many a poor girl in\nall airts of the world?\u201d\n\nThe little one laughed and up with the shoulders. \u201cOn my sword,\u201d quo'\nhe, \u201cI could be content to sing to you and France for all my time. Wilt\ncome with a poor Prince on a Prince's honour?\u201d\n\nHe kissed her with hot lips; his breath was in her hair; enchantment\nfell on her like a plaid, but she tore herself away and ran home, his\ncraving following at her heels.\n\nThat night Marseli's brothers came to knives with the French\ntraffickers, and the morning saw the black-avised ones sailing out\nover-sea for home. Back to French Foreland they came no more, and\nFinne-side took to its own brewing for lack of the red wine of France.\n\nThat, too, was the last of the Sea-Fairy.\n\nMarseli went to the Water-foot and waited, high tide and low; she cried\nthe old child tune and she redded her hair, but never again the little\nman with the dainty clothes, and the sword upon his thigh.\n\n\n\n\nSHUDDERMAN SOLDIER\n\n\nBEYOND the Beannan is the Bog of the Fairy-Maid, and a stone-put\nfarther is the knowe where Shudderman Soldier died in the snow. He was\na half-wit who was wise enough in one thing, for he knew the heart of a\nmaid, and the proof of it came in the poor year, when the glen gathered\nits com in boats, and the potato-shaws were black when they burst the\nground, and the catechist's horse came home by Dhuloch-side to a widow\nthat reckoned on no empty saddle. And this is the story.\n\n\u201c_Ho, ho, suas e!_\u201d said the nor' wind, and the snow, and the black\nfrost, as they galloped down Glenaora like a leash of strong dogs. It\nwas there was the pretty business! The Salachary hills lost their sink\nand swell in the great drifts that swirled on them in the night; the\ndumb white swathes made a cold harvest on the flats of Kilmune;\nthe frost gripped tight at the throats of the burns, and turned the\nSalmon-Leap to a stack of silver lances. A cold world it was, sure\nenough, at the mouth of day! The bloodshot sun looked over Ben Ime for\na little, and that was the last of him. The sheep lay in the shoulder\nof the hill with the drift many a crook's-length above them, and the\ncock-of-the-mountain and the white grouse, driven on the blast, met\ndeath with a blind shock against the edge of the larch-wood.\n\nUp from Lochow, where Kames looks over to Cruachan, and Cruachan cocks\nhis grey cap against Lorn, a foolish lad came that day for a tryst that\nwas made by a wanton maid unthinking. Half-way over the hill he slipped\non the edge of a drift, and a sore wound in the side he got against a\nsplinter of the blue stone of the Quey's Rock; but he pushed on, with\nthe blood oozing through his cut vest. Yet, in spite of himself, he\nslept beyond the Bog of the Fairy-Maid. _Mo-thruaigh! mo-thruaigh!_\n\nThe Fairy-Maid came and covered him up close and warm with a white\nblanket that needs no posting, and sang the soft tune a man hears but\nonce, and kissed him on the beard as he slept in the drift--and his name\nhad been Ellar Ban.\n\nRound by the king's good highroad came Solomon the carrier with his\ncart, and many a time he thought of turning between Carnus and Kilmune.\nBut he was of the stuff of Clan Coll, and his mare was Proud Maisie. He\nhad a boll of meal from Portinsherrich, from the son of a widow woman\nwho was hungry in Inneraora and waiting for that same.\n\n\u201cNo Ellar here yet!\u201d he said at Kilmune when he asked, and they told\nhim. \u201cThen there's a story to tell, for if he's not here, he's not at\nKarnes, and his grave's on the grey mountain.\u201d\n\nLater came Luath, the collie of Ellar, slinking through the snow wet and\nweary, and without wind enough for barking. 'Twas as good as the man's\nghost.\n\nThe shepherds came in from the fanks, and over from the curling at\nCarlonan, to go on a search.\n\nLong Duncan of Drimfem, the slim swarthy champion, was there before\nthem. He was a pretty man--the like never tied a shoe in Glenaora--and\nhe was the real one who had Mairi's eye, which the dead fellow thought\nhad the laugh only for him. But, lord! a young man with a good name with\nthe shinty and the _clachneart_ has other things to think of than the\nwhims of women, and Donacha never noticed.\n\n\u201cWe'll go up and see about it--about him at once, Main,\u201d he said,\nsick-sorry for the girl. All the rest stood round pitying, because her\nkists were said to be full of her own spinning for the day that was not\nto be.\n\nMairi took him to the other side of the peat-stack, and spoke with a red\nface.\n\n\u201cIs it any use your going till the snow's off the hill, Drimfem?\u201d she\nsaid, biting at the corner of her brattie, and not looking the man in\nthe face.\n\n\u201c_Dhia gleiih sinn!_ it's who knows when the white'll be off the snouts\nof these hills, and we can't wait till---- I thought it would ease your\nmind.\u201d And Donacha looked at the maid stupid enough. For a woman with\nher heart on the hill, cold, she was mighty queer on it.\n\n\u201cYes, yes; but it's dangerous for you to go up, and the showers so heavy\nyet. It's not twenty finger-lengths you can see in front of you, and you\nmight go into the bog.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs't the bog I would be thinking of, Main? It's little fear there is of\nthat, for here is the man that has been on Salachary when the mist was\nlike smoke, as well as when the spittle froze in my mouth. Oh, I'm not\nthe one to talk; but where's the other like me?\u201d\n\nMairi choked. \u201cBut, Dona---- but, Drimfem, it's dead Ellar must be;\nand--and--you have a widow mother to mind.\u201d Donacha looked blank at the\nmaid. She had the sweet face, yon curve of the lip, and the soft turn of\nthe neck of all Arthur's children, ripe of the cheek, with tossed hair\nlike a fairy of the lake, and the quirk of the eye that never left a\nplain man at ease if he was under the threescore. There were knives out\nin the glen for many a worse one.\n\nIt was the lee of the peat-stack they stood in, and the falling flakes\nleft for a while without a shroud a drop of crimson at the girl's feet.\nShe was gripping tight at her left wrist under the cover of her apron\ntill the nails cut the flesh. There was the stress of a dumb bard's\nsorrow in her face; her heart was in her eyes, if there had been a woman\nto see it; but Drimfern missed it, for he had no mind of the dance at\nthe last Old New Year, or the ploy at the sheep-dipping, or the nuts\nthey cracked on the hot peats at Hallowe'en.\n\nThe girl saw he was bound to go. He was as restless as if the snow was a\nswarm of _seangans_. She had not two drops of blood in her lips, but she\ntried to laugh as she took something out from a pocket and half held it\nout to him. He did not understand at first, for if he was smart on the\n_caman_ ball, 'twas slow in the ways of women he was.\n\n\u201cIt's daft I am. I don't know what it is, Donacha, but I had a dream\nthat wasn't canny last night, and I'm afraid, I'm afraid,\u201d said the poor\ngirl. \u201cI was going to give you----\u201d\n\nDrimfern could not get the meaning of the laugh, strained as it was. He\nthought the maid's reason was wandering.\n\nShe had, whatever it was--a square piece of cloth of a woman's\nsewing--into the man's hand before he knew what she would be after; and\nwhen his fingers closed on it, she would have given a king's gold to\nget it back. But the Tullich lads, and the Paymaster's shepherd from\nLecknamban, with Dol' Splendid and Francie Ro, in their plaids, and with\ntheir crooks, came round the gable-end. Luath, who knew Glenaora as well\nas he knew Creag Cranda, was with them, and away they went for the hill.\nAll that Donacha the blind one said, as he put the sewing in his pocket\nto look at again, was, \u201cBlessing with thee!\u201d for all the world like a\nman for the fair.\n\nStill the nor' wind, and the snow, and the dark frost said \u201c_Suas e!_\u201d\n running down the glen like the strong dogs on the peching deer; and the\nmen were not a hundred yards away from the potato-pit when they were\nghosts that went out altogether, without a sound, like Drimendorran's\nGrey Dame in the Red Forester's story.\n\nA white face on a plump neck stood the sting of the storm dourly, though\nthe goodwife said it would kill her out there, and the father cried\n\u201cShame!\u201d on her sorrow, and her a maiden. \u201cWhere's the decency of you?\u201d\n says he, fierce-like; \u201cif it was a widow you were this day you couldn't\nshow your heart more.\u201d And into the house he went and supped two cogies\nof brose, and swore at the _sgalag_ for noticing that his cheeks were\nwet.\n\nWhen the searchers would be high on the hill Shudderman came on the\nmaid. He was a wizened, daft old one, always in a tinker Fencible's\ntartan trews and scarlet doublet. He would pucker his bare brown face\nlike a foreign Italian, and whistle continually. The whistle was on his\nface when he came on the girl standing behind the byre, looking up with\na corpse's whiteness where the Beannan should be.\n\n\u201cTe-he! Lord! but we're cunning,\u201d said the soldier. \u201cIt's a pity about\nEllar, is it not, white darling?\u201d\n\nMairi saw nothing, but swallowed a sob. Was this thing to know her\nsecret, when the wise old women of the glen never guessed it? There was\nsomething that troubled her in his look.\n\nThe wee creature put his shoulder against the peats, and shoved each\nhand up the other sleeve of his doublet, while he whistled soft, and\ncunningly looked at the maid. The cords of her neck were working, and\nher breast heaved sore, but she kept her teeth tight together.\n\n\u201cAy, ay, it's an awful thing, and him so fond, too,\u201d he went on; and\nhis face was nothing but a handful of wrinkles and peat-smoke. It was a\nbigger ploy for the fool than a good dinner.\n\n\u201cWhat--who--who are you talking about, you poor _amadan?_\u201d cried Mairi,\ndesperately.\n\n\u201cOch, it's yourself that'll know. They're saying over at Tullich and\nupbye at Miss Jean's, Accurach, that it's a bonny pair you would make,\nyou and Ellar. Yonnat Yalla says he was the first Lochow man ever she\nsaw that would go a mile out of his way for a lass, and I saw him once\ncome the roundabout road by Cladich because it was too easy to meet you\ncoming the short cut over the hill. Oh! there's no doubt he was fond,\nfond, and-\u201d\n\n\u201c_Amadan!_\u201d cried the maid, with no canny light in her eyes.\n\n\u201cHoots! You're not angry with me, darling. I ken, I ken. Of course\nDrimfern's the swanky lad too, but it's not very safe this night on yon\nsame hill. There's the Bog of the Fairy-Maid that never was frozen yet,\nand there's the Quey's Rock, and--te-he! I wouldn't give much for some\nof them not coming back any more than poor Ellar. It's namely that\nDrimfem got the bad eye from the Glenurchy woman come Martinmas next\nbecause of his taking up with her cousin-german's girl, Morag Callum.\u201d\n\n\u201cYon _sp\u00e0gachd_ doll, indeed!\u201d\n\n\u201cGod, I do not know about that! but they're telling me he had her up at\nall the reels at Baldy Geepie's wedding, whatever, and it's a Maclean\ntartan frock she got for the same--I saw it with my own eyes.\u201d\n\n\u201cLies, lies, lies,\u201d said the girl to herself her lips dry, her hands and\nfeet restless to do some crazy thing to kill the pain in her heart.\n\nShe was a little helpless bird in the hands of the silly one.\n\nHe was bursting himself inside with laughing, that couldn't be seen for\nthe snow and the cracks on his face.\n\n\u201cBut it's not marriages nor tartan you'll be thinking on, Mairi, with\nyour own lad up there stiff. Let Morag have Drimfem----\u201d\n\n\u201cYou and your Morag! Shudderman, if it was not the crazy one you were,\nyou would see that a man like Donacha Drimfern would have no dealings\nwith the breed of MacCallum, tinker children of the sixty fools.\u201d\n\n\u201cFools here or fools there, look at them in the castle at Duntroon! And\nDrimfern is----\u201d\n\n\u201cDrimfern again! Who's thinking of Drimfern, the mother's big pet, the\nsoft, soft creature, the poor thing that's daft about the shinty and the\ngames--and--and---- Go inbye, haverer, and----oh, my heart, my heart!\u201d\n\n\u201cCripple Callum,\u201d whistled the daft wee one; and faith it was the great\nsport he was having! The flame sparkled in the lass's eyes; she stamped\nfuriously in the snow. She could have gone into the house, but the\nShudderman would follow, and the devil was in him, and she might just as\nwell tell her story at the cross-roads as risk. So she stayed.\n\n\u201cCome in this minute, O foolish one!\u201d her mother came to the door and\ncraved; but no.\n\nThe wee _bodach_ took a wee pipe from his big poke and started at the\nsmoking. When his match went out the dark was almost flat on the glen,\nand a night-hag complained with a wean's cry in the planting beyond the\nburn. At each draw of the pipe the eyes of the soldier glinted like a\nferret's, and like any ferret's they were watching. He put in a word\nbetween-while that stabbed the poor thing's heart, about the shame of\nlove in maids uncourted, and the cruelty of maids that cast love-looks\nfor mischief. There were some old havers about himself here and there\namong the words: of a woman who changed her mind and went to another\nman's bed and board; of sport up the glen, and burials beyond; and\nEllar Ban's widow mother, and the carry-on of Drimfem and the Glenurchy\nwoman's cousin-german's girl. And it was all ravelled, like the old\nstory Loch Finne comes up on the shore to tell when the moon's on\nSithean Sluaidhe.\n\nThe girl was sobbing sore. \u201cMan!\u201d she said at last, \u201cgive me the peace\nof a night till we know what is.\u201d The _amadan_ laughed at her, and went\nshauchling down to the cotter's, and Mairi went in out of the darkness.\n\nThe hours passed and passed, and the same leash of strong dogs were\nscouring like fury down Glenaora, and the moon looked a little through\na hole, and was sickly at the sight, and went by in a hurry. A collie's\nbark in the night came to the house where the people waited round the\npeats, and \u201cOh, my heart!\u201d said poor Mairi.\n\nThe father took the tin lantern with the holes in it, and they all went\nout to the house-end. The lantern-light stuck long needles in the night\nas it swung on the goodman's finger, and the byre and the shed and the\npeat-stack danced into the world and out of it, and the clouds were only\nan arm's-length overhead.\n\nThe men were coming down the brae in the smother of snow, carrying\nsomething in a plaid. The dog was done with its barking, and there was\nno more sound from the coming ones than if they were ghosts. Like enough\nto ghosts they looked. No one said a word till the goodman spoke.\n\n\u201cYou have him there?\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cAy, _beatmachi leis!_ all that there is of him,\u201d said the Paymaster's\nman; and they took it but an' ben, where Mairi's mother had the white\ndambrod cloth she had meant for herself, when her own time came, on the\ntable.\n\n\u201cIt's poor Ellar, indeed,\u201d said the goodman, noticing the fair beard.\n\n\u201cWhere's Donacha? where's Drimfern?\u201d cried Mairi, who had pulled herself\ntogether and come in from the byre-end, where she had waited to see if\nthere was none of the watchers behind.\n\nThe Paymaster's man was leaning against the press-door, with a face like\nthe clay; Dol' Splendid was putting a story in the _sgalag's_ ear;\nthe Tullich men were very busy on it taking the snow off their boots.\nOutside the wind had the sorry song of the curlew.\n\n\u201cMe-the-day! it's the story of this there is to tell,\u201d at last said\nFrancie Ro, with a shake of the head. \u201cPoor Drimfern----\u201d\n\n\u201cDrimfem--ay, where's Drimfem in all the world?\u201d said the goodman, with\na start. He was standing before his girl to keep her from seeing the\nthing on the table till the wife had the boots covered. It was the face\nof a _cailleach_ of threescore Mairi had.\n\n\u201cIt's God knows! We were taking Ellar there down, turn about resting. It\nwas a cruel business, for the drifts. There's blood on his side where he\nfell somewhere, and Drimfern had to put a clout on it to keep the blood\noff his plaid. That's Drimfern's plaid. When Donacha's second turn was\nover up at the bog, we couldn't get a bit of him. He's as lost as the\ndeer the Duke shot, and we looked and whistled for hours.\u201d The maid gave\na wee turn to the door, shivered, and fell like a clod at her mother's\nfeet.\n\n\u201cLook at yon, now! Am not I the poor father altogether?\u201d said the\nold man with a soft lip to his friends. \u201cWho would think, and her so\nhealthy, and not married to Ellar, that she would be so much put about?\nYou'll excuse it in her, lads, I know, for she's not twenty till the\ndipping-time, and the mother maybe spoiled her.\u201d\n\n\u201cOch, well,\u201d said the Splendid one, twisting his bonnet uneasy in his\nhands, \u201cI've seen them daft enough over a living lad, and it's no great\nwonder when this one's dead.\u201d They took the maid beyond to the big room\nby the kitchen, and a good mother's morning for Drimfern was set by the\nmen. They had a glass before going home, and when they were gone the\n_bochdans_ came in the deep hollow of the night and rattled the windows\nand shook the door-sneck; but what cared yon long white thing on the\ngoodwife's dambrod tablecloth?\n\nAt the mouth of day there was one woman with a gnawing breast looking\nabout the glen-foot among the snow for the Shudder-man soldier. She\nfound him snedding the shaft of a shinny-stick at the Stronmagachan\nGate, and whistling as if it was six weeks south of Whitsunday and the\nwoods piping in the heat.\n\n\u201cI ken all about it, my white little lamb,\u201d he said with a soft speech.\n\u201cAll about them finding Ellar, and losing a better man, redding put her\nto rights. A search in the maybe, but any way one that some will miss\nmore.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod's heavy, heavy on a woman!\u201d said the poor child. \u201cI gave Donacha a\nsampler with something sewn on it yesterday, and the men, when they\ngo up the hill to look for him to-day, will get it on him--and--it\nwould----\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, ay, ay! I ken, my dear. We'll put that right, or I'm no soldier.\u201d\n And the little man cocked his bonnet on his head like a piper. Then he\nwas sorry for the pride of it, and he pulled it down on his face, and\nwhistled to stop his nose from jagging.\n\n\u201cMy heart! my bruised heart! they're saying sorry things of Ellar, and\nDonacha dead. The cotter's wife was talking this morning, and it'll send\nme daft!\u201d\n\n\u201cBlind, blind,\u201d quo' the soldier; \u201cbut you'll not be shamed, if the\n_amadan_ can help it.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut what can you do, my poor Shudderman? And yet--and yet--there's no\none between Carnus and Croit-bhile I can speak to of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo home, white love, and I'll make it right,\u201d said the daft one, and\nfaith he looked like meaning it.\n\n\u201cWho knows?\u201d thought the girl. Shudderman was chief enough with the\nGlenurchy woman, and the Glenurchy woman sometimes gave her spells to\nher friends. So Mairi went home half comforted.\n\nA cogie of brose and a bit braxy in his belly, and a farl of cake in his\npoke, and out stepped the Shudderman with never a word to any one about\nthe end of his journey. Dol' Splendid had told him the story of the\nnight before, and whereabout Drimfern was lost, close beyond the\nBeannan. He would find the body and the sampler, he promised himself as\nhe plunged up the brae at Taravh-dubh. The dogs were nearly as furious\nas the night before, and the day's eye was blear. Hours passed, and the\nflats of Kilmune were far below.\n\nThere was nothing in all the world but whiteness, and a silly old\n_bodach_ with a red coat trailing across it. Shudderman Soldier sank his\nhead between his shoulders as he pushed himself up with his hazel crook,\nhis tartan trews in rags about his ankles, his doublet letting in the\nteeth of the wind here and there, and at the best grudging sore its too\ntight shelter for his shrunk body. He had not the wind to whistle, but\nhe gasped bits of \u201cFaill-il-o,\u201d and between he swore terribly at the\nwhite hares that jerked across in front of him with the ill-luck of a\nlifetime on their backs.\n\nIf it was the earth that was white, the sky was not far behind it; if\nthey were paper, it would take schooling to write on them straight, for\nthere wasn't a line between them. The long sweep of Balantyre itself\nwas lost, and the Beannan stone was buried. The creature's brogues were\nclods of snow, ugly, big, without a shape: his feet were lumps of ice;\nhis knees shook under his frail skinful of bones; but, by the black\nstones, 'twas the man's heart he had!\n\nWhen the snow made a paste on his win'ard cheek, he had it off with a\njerk of the head, and one of the jerks put off his bonnet. Its frozen\nribbons had been whipping his eyes, and he left it where it fell, with\nnever a glance over his shoulder. His hair clogged with flakes that kept\nthe frost even after they fell. It was a peching effort for the foot of\nthe Beannan brae.\n\n\u201cPoor lamb, poor Mairi, calf of my heart!\u201d gasped the soldier to\nhimself. He was staggering half blind through the smother of snow, now\nand then with a leg failing below him, and plunging him right or left.\nOnce his knees shut like a gardener's gully, and he made a crazy heap in\nthe drift. His tired wrists could hardly bring him up, and the corpse of\nthe world swung in his eyes when he was on his feet again and trying to\nsteady himself.\n\nThere's a green knoll beside the Bog of the Fairy-Maid, where the\nwee folks dance reels when the moon's on it, and there the old fellow\nstruggled to. He thought if he was up there he would see some sign of\nwhat he wanted. Up he pushed, with the hazel _cromag_ bending behind\nhim, and his brogues slipping on the round snow-soles. Up he went, with\nthe pluck of a whole man, let alone a poor silly object; up he went\ntill he got his foot on the top, and then his heart failed, for he saw\nnothing of what he sought.\n\n\u201cI'll look again when I'm out of this foolish sleep,--I'll see better\nwhen I waken,\u201d said the poor _amadan;_ and behold the dogs were on him!\nand he was a man who was.\n\n*****\n\nFor all that, the story tells, Drimfern was no ghost. When he was lost\nhe found Kames, where the Callum girl was that came to his fire-end\nlater and suckled his clan. And Ellar's mother, dressing her son's\ncorpse in the house at Kilmune, found on his wound a sampler that went\nwith him to his long home in green Inishail. Its letters, sewn in the\nfolly of a woman, told her story:--\n\n\u201cLet him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better\nthan wine.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nWAR.\n\n\nI.\n\nIT was the pause of the morning, when time stands, and night and day\nbreathe hard ere they get to grips. A cock with a foggy throat started\nat the crowing, down at Slochd-a-Chubair. Over from Stron a shrewd thin\nwind came to make stir among the trees in the Duke's big garden, and the\ncrows rasped their beaks on the beech-branches, for they knew that here\nwas the day's forerunner. Still and on the town slept, stretched full\nout, dour set on the business. Its quirky lanes and closes were as black\nas the pit. There was only one light in all the place, and a big town\nand a bonny it is, house and house with high outside stairs and glass\nwindows, so that the wonder is the King himself does not take thought to\nstay in it, even if it were only for the comfort of it and the company\nof the MacCailein Mor. Only one light, and that was splashing, yellow,\nand mixed with a thick peat-reek, out of Jean Rob's open door, facing\nthe bay, on the left, on the Lowlands road. Now and then Jean would come\nto the door and stand, a blob of darkness in the yellow light, to see\nif the day was afoot on Ben Ime, or to throw a look at the front of the\ntown for signs of folk stirring.\n\n\u201cNot a peep, not a peep! Sleep! sleep! Few of them part with a man\nto-day with so sore a heart as Jean Rob.\u201d\n\nThen back to her Culross girdle, for she was at the baking of bannocks\nto go in her husband's _dorlach_ for the wars.\n\nShe had not shut an eye all night. Rob snored at her side slow and heavy\nwhile she lay on her back on a bed of white hay, staring up at the black\nlarch joists glinting with the red scad of the peats. She was a Crarae\nwoman, and that same people were given to be throng with the head,\nand she kept thinking, thinking even on. At last she could bide it no\nlonger, so she up with a leap on the floor to face a new day and all the\nluck of it.\n\nAbout the luck being good or ill there might be little doubt. It was the\nyear after they started at the building of the Castle, a laggard spring\nat the hind-end of a cruel winter, with not a fin in all the seas for\nthe poor fishermen, and black mutton at six Saxon shillings the side.\nAnd what the wars were about Jean Rob or her like little knew or cared.\nVery little, like enough, as is the way with wars, but any way wars\nthere were: the Duke and his House would have it that their people must\nup and on with belt and target, and away on the weary road like their\nfathers before them. Some said it was the old game with the Inverlochy\ndogs (rive them and seize them!); others, that some bastard was at\nvariance with the Duke about the Papist Stewarts--a silly lad called\nTearlach with a pack of wild Irishers and daddy Macleans and Macdonalds\nand Camerons from the Isles and the North at his back.\n\n\u201cBundle and Go\u201d it was any way in Campbell country from Cruachan to\nCowal, from Cantyre to the march of Keppochan, and that's the fine\nrolling land of sappy grasses and thick woods. In the heart and midst\nof it Duke Archie played dirl on the boss of his shield on a cold March\nday, and before night swords were at the sharping from shore to shore.\nThat's war for ye--\n\nquicker than flame, surer than word of mouth, and poor's the man who\nsays \u201cWhat for?\u201d to his chief.\n\nRob Donn, for all that, was vassal to no man; for he was come of the\nswordsmiths of the glen, and they had paper to show that their rigs were\nheld for no service other than beating out good fighting steel on the\nanvil. Poor, as he was, he could wear one feather in his bonnet if his\nfancy was on feathers, and no one bragged more of his forefolk. But\nElrigmor--a thin old man with little stomach for quarrels--offered\ntwenty pounds English for a man to take his place with the Campbells;\nand Rob took the money and the loan of Elrigmor's sword, half for the\nsake of the money and half for the sake of a bit play with Sir Claymore.\n\nSaid he to his wife, jingling the Geordies in his hand on the day he got\nthem, \u201cHere's the price of a hero; and troth it's little enough for a\ngood armsmith's blood!\u201d\n\n\u201cDon't say it, Rob,\u201d said Jean.\n\n\u201cOch! I am but laughing at thee, good-wife. Brave dogs would they be\nthat would face the tusks of the Diarmaid boars. Like the wind on the\nchaff--troosh!--we'll scatter them! In a week I'll be home.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn a week?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure, Jean. I'll buy with the money a stot or two on the road\nto bring back with me, for there's little lifting in the Duke's corps,\nmore's the pity! My grandfather seldom came back from the wars without a\nfew head of cattle before him.\u201d\n\nSo the money went in Rob Donn's sporran, and Jean would have bit her\ntongue out before she would crave for part o't from a man going among\nstrangers and swords.\n\nThe bairn had but one word for her father from then till he started, and\nthat was \u201cCockade.\u201d What it was the little one never knew, but that it\nwas something braw and costly, a plaything for a father to go far off\nfor.\n\n\u201cTwo or three of them, my white love!\u201d would Rob Donn say, fond and\nhearty. \u201cThey'll be as thick as nuts on the ground when we're done of\nthe gentry that wear them on their bonnets.\u201d And he had a soft wet eye\nfor the child, a weakling, white and thin, never quite the better of\nthe snell winds of winter. If cockades, indeed, were to be had for the\nfighting of a fortnight without sleep, Rob Donn would have them for her.\n\nSo now was the morning to put on fighting gear and go on the foray for\nwhite cockades.\n\nBy-and-by a cruisie-light crept out at the gables of the town, and the\ndarkness filled with the smell of new peat burning. Aora, spluttering\npast Jean Rob's door with a gulp into the Cooper's Pool, made, within\nthe house, the only sound of the morning.\n\nJean scraped the meal off her hands and went again to the door to look\nabout and listen.\n\n\u201cAy, ay! up at last,\u201d she said to herself.\n\n\u201cThere's the Major's light, and Kate Mhor up for the making of his\nbreakfast, and a lowe in the weaver's shed. The Provost's is dark--poor\nman!--it's little his lady is caring!\u201d\n\nShe was going to turn about and in, when the squeal of a bagpipe came\nfrom the town-head, and the player started to put his drones in order.\n\u201cOchan! ochan!\u201d said poor Jean, for here, indeed, was the end of her\nhopes; there was no putting back from the Duke's errand. She listened a\nlittle to the tuning as if it was the finest of _piobaireachds_, and it\nbrought a curious notion to her mind of the first reel she danced with\nher man to the squeezing of that same sheepskin. Then the reeds roared\ninto the air of \u201cBaile Inneraora.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Och a Dh\u00e9! siod e nis! Eirich, eirich, Rob!\u201d_ she cried in to the man\namong the blankets, but there was no need for the summons. The gathering\nrang far ben in the chambers of sleep, and Rob was stark awake, with a\ngrasp at his hip for the claymore.\n\n\u201cTroth! I thought it was the camp! and them on us,\u201d he laughed foolishly\nin his beard.\n\nUp and down the street went Dol' Dubh, the Duke's second piper, the same\nwho learned the art of music right well from the Macruimens of Boreraig,\nand he had as sweet a finger on the chanter as Padruig himself, with the\nnerve to go round the world. Fine, fine it was for him, be sure, to\nbe the summoner to battle! Lights jumped to the little lozens of the\nwindows and made streaks on the cracks of the doors, and the Major's man\ncame from his loft ganting with a mouth like the glee'd gun, a lantern\nswinging on a finger, making for the stable to saddle his master's\nhorse. A garret window went up with a bang, and Peter MacIntyre, wright,\npat out a towsy head and snuffed the air. It was low tide in the two\nbays, and the town was smelling less of peat-reek than of sea-wrack and\nsaltness. One star hung in the north over Dunchuach.\n\n\u201cThey have the good day for starting the jaunt, whatever,\u201d said the\nwright. \u201cIf I was a stone or two lighter, and had one to look after the\nshop, it's off on this ploy I would be too.\u201d He took in his head, the\ntop nodding briskly on his Kilmarnock bonnet, and wakened the wife to\nhelp him on with his clothes.\n\n     \u201cAora, Aora, Baile Inneraora,\n     I got a bidding to Baile Inneraora;\n     I got the bidding, but little they gave me,\n     Aora, Aora, Baile Chailein Mhoir!\u201d\n\nDol' Dubh was up at the Cross, swelled out like a net-bow, blasting\nfuriously, his heart athump with the piper's zest. Doors drummed,\nwindows screeched in their cases, women's voices went from land to land,\nand the laugh and cry of bairns new roused from the hot toss of dreams.\nFar up the highroad a horse's hoofs were dunting hollow and hearty on\nthe stones, and by-and-by through the Arches trotted the Cornal, his\ntall body straight and black against the dun of the gables. He had\na voice like a rutting deer. \u201cMaster Piper,\u201d he roared to Dol' Dubh,\ntugging his beast back on its haunches, \u201cstop that braggart air and give\nus 'Bundle and Go,' and God help the Campbell that's not on the Cadger's\nQuay before the sun's over Stron Point!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is the air like it?\u201d said Dol' to himself, slacking a reed with a\nthumb-nail. \u201cWell they ken it where little they love it with its\nvaunting!\u201d But he up with his drones on his shoulder and into the tune\nthat had the Cornal's fancy. Beside him the Cornal stood at his horse's\nstirrup in the grey-brown of the morning, his head still light with the\nbottle of claret wine his lady in Lecknamban had put before him ere he\nhad boot over saddle.\n\nThen the town stirred to its affairs. The Major's horse went clattering\nover the cobblestones to his door-end, the arm-room door opened, and old\nNanny Bheag, who kept the key, was lifted off her feet and in, on the\nrush of young lads making for the new guns Lome Clerk had up from the\nLow Country. On the belts of the older men, loth to leave the fire-end,\nmothers and wives were hanging bags with thick farls of cake, and\ncheese, and the old Aora salve for swordcuts.\n\nIf they had their way of it, these _caille-achan_, the fighting gear\nwould be all kebbucks of cheese and dry hose, and no powder and ball.\nThe men blustered, high-breasted, with big words in their beards, and\nno name too dirty for the crew they were off to scatter--praising\nthemselves and making the fine prophecies, as their folks did before\nthem with better rights when the town was more in the way of going to\nwars. Or they roundly scolded the weans for making noise, though their\neyes were learning every twist of the copper hair and every trick of the\nlast moment, to think on when long and dreary would be the road before\nthem.\n\nThere was a break in Dol' Dubh's music, and high over the big town rang\nthe Cornal's voice, starting the bairns in their sleep and setting them\nup and screaming.\n\n\u201cLaggards! laggards! O lazy ones! Out! out! Campbells before were never\nso swear't to be marching. It is time to be steeping the withies!\u201d\n\nHard back went the stout doors on the walls, and out ran the folk. The\nbrogues skliffed and hammered; men with muskets, swords, dirks, and\ntarges ran down the street, and women and children behind them. A tumult\nfilled the town from side to side and end to end, and the lanes and\ncloses were streaming with the light from gaping doors.\n\nOld and young, the boy and the snooded girl, women with bairn at breast,\n_bodach_ and _cailleach_, took to the Cross muster, leaving the houses\nopen to the wind and to the world. The cats thrummed by the fires, and\nthe smell of the sea-wrack came in beside them.\n\n\u201cI have you here at last,\u201d said the Cornal, dour and dark, throwing his\nkeen eyes along the row of men. \u201cLittle credit are ye to my clan and\nchief, and here's to the Lowlands low, and would to God I was there now\namong the true soldados with stomachs for slaughter and the right skill\nof fence and musketoon! A short tulzie, and a tow at the thrapple of\nbastard Chevalier would there be in that case. Here's but a wheen herds,\nweavers, and gillies holding Brown Betty like a kail-runt!\u201d\n\nHe was one of the Craignish Campbells, the Cornal--Dugald, brother\nof Lachan who got death at a place called Fontenoy in the summer\nbefore--very sib to the Duke, and it behoved the town-men to say\nnothing. But they cursed his eyes to each other on the corners of their\nmouths, and if he knew it he had sense enough to say nothing.\n\nThe women and bairns and the old folks stood in a great crowd behind\nthe Cornal's horse. The Major's mare with him in the sell was dancing an\nuncanny spring near the Arches, full of freshness and fine feeding as\na battle-horse should be, but overly much that way for a man sixteen\nfinger-lengths round the belly and full of fish and ale. From Glen\nBeag came the slow morning, gusty and stinging; Stob-an-Eas stood\nblack against the grey of it; the tide stretched from shore to shore\nunfriendly and forlorn.\n\nJean Rob, with the bairn at her brattie-string, was with the other women\nseeing her man away, stupid with two sorrows--one because he was going,\nand the other because he had twenty pounds in his sporran that he might\nwell be doing without; for he was leaving the woman without a groat, and\nonly a boll of meal in the girnel and a wee firkin of salted fish.\n\nThe steady breeze came yet from Stron, and sat snug in the sails of the\nsix boats that carried the Duke's men over to Cowal. Brog-and-Turk's\nskiff put out first, himself at the helm in his tarry jacket; the\nothers, deep down, followed close on her heels. One by one they fell\noff from the quay. The men waved their bonnets and cried cheerily and\nvaunting, as was aye the good grace of Clan Diarmaid at the first and\nthe last of forays.\n\n\u201cBlessings with ye!\u201d cried the folk left behind, wet-eyed; and even the\nProvost's wife took a grief at her inside to see her man with a shaking\nlip look round the sail of the hin'most boat. Cheering and weeping,\nsinging and _ochain!_ there they were on the quay and on the sea, our\nown folk, our dear folk; and who were ever like them when it came to the\nbit, and stout hearts or kind hearts were wanted?\n\n\u201cStand back, kindred!\u201d cried the Cornal, putting spurs to his horse, and\nhe pranced up the town-head, a pretty man, to join the Major and gallop\nround the loch-head to join the corps at Cairn-dubh.\n\nDol' Dubh stopped his playing at the bow of Brog-an-Turk's skiff when\nshe gulped the first quaich of brine, and the men in all the boats\nstarted to sing the old boat-song of \u201cAora Mo Chridhe tha mi seoladh\u201d--\n\n     \u201cAora, my heart, I am sailing, sailing,\n     Far to the South on the slope of the sea;\n     Aora _mo chridhe_, it is cold is the far land,\n     Bitter the stranger with wands on his doorway.\n     Aora Mochree!\u201d\n\nIt came back on the wind with a sorrow to break hearts, sinking and\nswelling as the wind took the fancy, and the long-necked herons stood\non the fringe of the tide with their heads high to listen. The sails got\nscattered and shrunk, and the tune got thin and low, and lost at last in\nthe swish of the waves on the shore, and the ears of those who listened\nheard the curlew piping cursedly loud over the Cooper's Pool. A grey\ncold day with rain on the tail of it. High Creag Dubh with its firs and\nalders and rowans stark and careless over the hollow town. Broad day and\nbrightness, and the cruisies and candles burning the ghosts of flame in\nthe empty houses, with doors wide to the empty street and the lanes and\ncloses!\n\n\nII.\n\nThe wanderer has ever the best of it, and wae wae are the hearts behind\nI Is it for war or sport, or for the red gold, that a man turns heel on\nhis home and takes the world for his pillow? In his pack is the salve\nfor care as well as for sword-cuts, for ever and always are new things\nhappening. The road crooks through the curious glens; the beasts trot\namong the grass and fern and into the woods; the girls (the dear ones,\nthe red-lipped ones!) come from the milking of the white-shouldered\ncattle and look with soft black eyes as he passes, and there is a new\ntale at the corner of every change-house fire. All that may befall a\npackman; but better's the lot of the fighter with steel at his haunch,\nfire at his heart, and every halt a day closer to them he would be\nseeking.\n\nBut the folks behind in the old place! _Mo thruaigh! mo thruaigh!_\nDaybreak, and hot sun, and the creeping in of the night, when the door\nmust be snecked on the rover; the same place, and still with a want in\nit, and only guessing at where and how is the loved one out on strange\nways on the broad world.\n\nFar up the long Highlands the Campbells were on their way. Loch Sloy and\nGlen Falloch, Rannoch's bleakness and Ben Alder's steepness, and each\nmorning its own wet grass and misty brae, and each night its dreams on\nthe springy heather.\n\nA woman was weeping on Achadunan because that her man was gone and her\nchimney stone was cold, and Rob Donn's sporran was emptied at her feet,\nthough he knew not so much as the name of her. But he took a thought\nand said, \u201cI'll keep the half, for long's the way before us, and ill is\ntravelling among strangers without a round-piece in the purse.\u201d That was\nbut a day's march from Jean Rob, and she was making a supper of crowdie\nthat was the first meal of the day.\n\nOn Spey-side was the camp of the Argylls, and card-play round the fires,\nwith the muskets shining, and the pipes playing sweeter for slumber than\nfor rouse.\n\n\u201cI will put my watch on this turn,\u201d said a black Lowlander in the heat\nof the game.\n\n\u201cRob Donn's watch is the sun on Toman-uardar,\u201d said our hero, \u201cbut here\nare ten yellow Geordies,\u201d and out went his fortune among the roots of\nthe gall.\n\n\u201c_Troosh! beannachd leat!_\u201d and the coin was a jingle in the other one's\npouch.\n\n\u201cI have plenty more where it came from, and cattle enough forbye,\u201d said\nour braggart, and he turned on his elbow whistling \u201cCrodh Chailein.\u201d\n\nBut let them follow the drum who will, for us the story's beside the\nhearth. It is not a clatter of steel and the tulzies of Chevaliers, but\nthe death of an only bairn.\n\nIn her house on the Lowlands road Jean Rob starved with the true\nHighland pride, that sets a face content against the world at kirk or\nmarket. Between her and a craving stomach lay but shell-fish and herbs,\nfor she had not a plack to spend, and the little one got all the milk\nthat came from Mally, the dappled one, drying up for calving. Break of\nday would see the woman, white, thin, keen-eyed, out on the ebb before\nthe fishing-boats were in, splashing in the pools in the sand for\npartans and clabbie-doos, or with two ready fingers piercing the sand to\npull the long spout-fish from his hiding. Or she would put little stakes\nin the sand, and between them a taut line with baited hooks to coax the\nfish at high tide. But ill was her luck, indeed, for few were the fish\nthat came to the lure to be lifted again at ebb.\n\nAbove Kilmalieu on the sea side of Dunchu-ach, in the tangle and dark of\nthe trees, among the soft splashing soil, the wild leeks gave a scent to\nthe air. These would Jean gather, and the nettle too, and turn them to\nthin broth; but that same was no fare for a Crarae stomach.\n\nAt night when the wee one slept, the mother would have her plaid on her\nhead, and through the town, barefoot, in the darkness, passing the folk\nat the close-mouths quickly for fear they would speak to her, and her\nheart would crave for share of the noble supper that made steam from the\ndoor of her cousin the rich merchant.\n\nLike a ghost sometimes, wandering about the Cadger's Quay or the\ngutting-stools, where she would be looking for a dropped giley or a bake\nfrom the nets, she would come on a young woman.\n\n\u201c_Dhe!_ Jean Rob! is it thyself that is here?\u201d\n\n\u201cJust Jean, my darling, for a little turn, because of the stir in the\ntown, and the smell of the barking nets. Well I like the smell of the\nbark, and the wind takes little of it up the Lowlands road.\u201d\n\n\u201cThou art not coming out much since the men went to the North. Art well\nat the house--the little one, now, bless her?\u201d\n\n\u201cSplendid, splendid, _m' eudail_. Faith, it is too fat we will be\ngetting on the fortune Rob got from Elrigmor.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed, yes, Jean, it was the great luck! When a poor person comes----\u201d\n\n\u201cHut tut! Poor nor rich, my people had their own place on Lochowside,\nand little did my Rob need MacNicol's dirty money; but he was aye fond\nof a 'horo-yally,' and that's the way of his being among them.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well, if that's the way, our own people were good enough on a\ntime; but a pedigree, thou wilt allow, is a poor plaster for a pain in\nthe stomach. For me, I would have a good shaking of herring and money\nin the town. It was but black brochan for our one meal to-day, and my\nmother poorly.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear! _och_, my dear! and I to brag of plenty! Little enough, in\ntruth, is on my own board; but I have a boiling of meal if you come for\nit in the morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cKindly, kindly, thou good dame. It would be but a loan.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, indeed, one will be running out of the wherewithal now and again,\nand 'twas aye 'Mine is yours and yours is mine' in Gaeldom. But I must\nbe stepping.\u201d\n\nAnd while Jean Rob starved, there was never a word from the best and\nbravest off at the wars, or how they fared, only now and then a half\ntale from a travelling caird or a Low-Country carrier about gatherings\nand skirling pipes and hard knocks. His Grace himself kept a horse or\ntwo and a good rider on the other side of the Rest, to gallop hot-hoof\ninto the Castle with the first news of how his clan won; but weary was\nthe waiting.\n\nThe town took to its old appearance, the aged men clack-clacking with\nthe shuttle, the boys scattering seed over the rig-and-fur of the\nploughed fields, the women minding their houses. And that, too, is war\nfor ye! The dirk is out, the brogues trail over the hills and through\nthe glens, the clans meet and clash, the full heart belches blood, the\ngrass soaks, the world and the chance of it is put on the luck of a\nswinging stroke at yon one's neck. War! war! red and lusty--the jar of\nit fills the land! But oh, _mo chridhe!_ home in Glen Shie are women and\nbairns living their own day's life, and the crack will be blithe in the\nsheilings to come, for all your quarrels. Where is Hector, and where is\nGilean-of-the-Axe, and where is Diarmaid of the boar's snout? They are\nall gone but for an old song at the sheiling-fire, and life, love, and\nthe Fell Sergeant still come and go in the place the warriors made such\nstir in! A stranger would think there was little amiss in the Duke's\ntown. The women sang their long songs of love and yore as they span\nabout the wheel and carded the wool; the bairns guddled in Jumping\nJohn's burn, and tore their kilts among the whins, and came home with\nthe crows, redfaced and hungry-warned. At the ale-house there was traffic\nby day, and heavy drovers and gaugers stamped their feet to the choruses\nat night. The day lengthened, and comforting winds came from the two\nbonny black glens; the bracken put on new growths, like the crook of St\nMolach that's up-by in the Castle; Easachosain reeled to the piping of\nbirds.\n\nThere might be an eye many times a-day on the Stron Point to see if a\nhorseman was rounding it, and the cruisies were kept burning a little\nlonger at night in case the news would come in the darkness like the\nAthol thieves. But patience was ever the gift of the Gael, and few lost\nheart.\n\nAnd at last the news came of Culloden Moor.\n\nIt was on a Sunday--a dry clear day--and all the folk were at the\nchurch, with old Colin the minister sweating at it for the good of the\nCeannloch fishermen in the loft. He was in the middle of his prayer\nwhen a noise came over the town, a dunting of hoofs on the causey of the\nProvost's house-front.\n\n\u201cAmen!\u201d said the cunning Colin, quick as could be, and then, \u201cFriends,\nhere is news for us,\u201d and down the pulpit steps he ran briskly like a\nlad of twenty.\n\nPeter MacIntyre set back the bolt from the door with a bang, and past\nhim the people made rush. The Duke's rider from over the Rest was there\nin the saddle of a grey garron foaming at the mouth and its hurdies in a\ntremble.\n\n\u201cYour tidings, your tidings, good man!\u201d cried the people.\n\nThe lad sat stark in the saddle, with his eyes wet and his nose pricking\nwith the Gaelic pride.\n\n\u201cI have been at the Castle, and-\u201d\n\n\u201cYour news, just man.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have been at the Castle, and Mac-Cailein Mor, who said I rode well\nfrom the Rest, said I might come in-by and carry my budget to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cOut with it, Paruig, little hero. Is't good or ill?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat would it be, my heroes, with our own lads, but good? Where's the\nbeat of them? It's 'The Glen is Mine' Dol' Dubh will be playing this day\non Culloden, for ours is the battle. They scattered the dirty Northmen\nand the Irishers like chaff, and Cailein Mor himself gave me a horn of\nale from his own hands on the head o't.\u201d\n\nA roar went up that stirred the crows on Scaurnoch, and there was\na Sunday spoiled for you; for the ale went free and merry in the\nchange-house at the Duke's charge till the moon was over Ben Ime.\n\nBut there were five houses with the clocks stopped (for the ghosts take\nno heed of time); five houses with the glasses turned face to the\nwall (for who dare look in glass to see a wraith at the back of the\nshoulder?); there were four widows and five mothers wet faced, keening\nfor five fine men who had been, and whose names were now writ on paper\non the church door.\n\n\nIII.\n\nDay followed day, and still home came no Campbells. They were far to the\ndreary North, plying sword and fire among the bad clans, harrying for\nthe glory of Mac-Cailein Mor.\n\nAnd at last on a day the sea-pigs rolled and blew off Stron Point,\nand the scarts dived like arrows from the sun's eye, deep into a loch\nboiling with fish. Night found the brown sails bellying out on the\nscudding smacks, and the snouts of skiff and galley tearing the waves to\nget among the spoil. Bow-to-back, the nets spotted Finne mile on mile;\nthe kind herrings crowded thick into them; the old luck was back, and\nthe quays in the morning heard the fine tune of the cadger's clinking\nsilver. In a hurry of hurries the fleet came up to the mouth of\nShira--Tarbert men, Strathlachlan men, Minard men, black fellows from\nMacCallum country, and the wine-traffickers from French Foreland to swap\nsour claret for the sweet fat fish.\n\nIt was ho-rol and spill the bicker in yon town, for all that the best of\nits men were away and afar at the killing. The smoke was black from\nthe fires in the Cooper's Pool, the good healthy smell of the gut-pots\nsought up to the Castle door. Little doubt his Grace (_beannachd leis!_)\nwould come out to the door-step and curse because it made him bock his\nbreakfast, dainty man!\n\nThrong though the town was, round about the little house on the left of\nthe Lowlands Road crept a queer quietness. The cow had dried, and the\ndull weather kept the spout fish too deep down in the sand for the ready\nfingers to reach them. So the household of Rob Donn starved to the bone.\n\n\u201cTo-morrow--they will be home tomorrow,\u201d said Jean to herself every day\nto keep up her heart; but the days went by, and though it was something\nto know that Rob was not among the killed at Culloden, it was not\nsomething to stay the stomach. A stone-throw off were the best and\nkindest hearts in the world: the woman's cousin, the rich merchant,\nwould give all he had on his board if he knew her trouble, and friends\nwithout number would share the last bite with her. But to ask it would\nbe to say she was at the lowest, and to tell that Rob had left her\nnothing, and she would sooner die in her pride.\n\nSuch people as passed her way--and some of them old gossips--would have\ngone in, but the withie was aye across the door, and that's the sign\nthat business is doing within no one dare disturb. The withie was\never there except at night, when Jean was scouring the countryside for\nsomething to eat.\n\nThe bairn dwined so fast that even the mother (and blind indeed's\nthe mother at that bit) saw a little of it. There was no longer the\ncreepie-stool at the back of the house, in the sun, and the bairn on it,\nwatching the birds; her shanks grew thin like spirtles; her eyes sank\nfar ben in her face, and she would not go the length of the door. She\nsat at the fireside and laughed her poor cold laugh less every day, till\none long thought came to her that kept her busy at the thinking from\nmorning till night with a face like a _cailleach_ of eighty.\n\n\u201cWhite love, white love,\u201d Jean would be saying, \u201cyour father is on the\nroad with stots and a pouch of cockades.\u201d\n\nAt that the bairn would come back from her roaming; but soon she was off\nagain into the deeps of mind, her wide eyes like the windows of an empty\nhouse for all that could be seen through them.\n\n\u201cOh! but it will be the fine cockade,\u201d poor Jean would press--\u201cwhat am\nI saying?--the pack of your father will be full of them. Not the white\nones of silk only, but the red and the grassy green, my little calf.\nYou'll be wearing them when you will.\u201d\n\nNo heeding in the bairn's face.\n\nThen Jean would go out and pull the tansy at the door, and give it to\nthe little one to get the fine scent. The curious shells from the shore,\ntoo, would she gather, and lay in rings about the chair, and call her\nthe Queen in her castle. For ever would there be a song at her lips,\neven if the drops would be in her eyes--old daft songs from fairs and\nweddings, and fairy rhyming and cheery stories about the Good People up\non Sithean Sluaidhe. Her fingers were for ever soft about the bairn, her\nflesh and blood, stroking in the hair, softening the cushion, petting\nher in every hand's-turn. She made a treat to herself by asking her, now\nand then, something that had to be answered \u201cYes\u201d or \u201cNo,\u201d and \u201cMother\u201d\n was so sweet in her ears that she would be content to hear no more in\nall her lifetime.\n\nAll the day the bairn crouched up in a hoop-chair with her neck slack\nand her chin on her breast. Jean was loth to leave her in her bed in the\nmornings, for she had a notion that to get her out of the blankets and\nto put her in the clothes of the busy world would be to keep her in the\ntrim for living on.\n\nStill there was no sign of the men returning. Often was Jean's foot at\nthe door and her hand over her eyes to see if there was no stir at Stron\nor Kilachatrine, and but for good stuff, her heart failed five-score\ntimes a-day.\n\nAt last, on a day of days, the bairn could not be stirred to notice\nanything. The tansy fell out of her fingers, and she picked at the wool\nof the plaid that wrapped her; the shells had no charm for her eye.\n\nJean made the pack of the coming father as routh as a magic cave. \u201cThat\nfather of yours, darling, what a many wonderful things he will bring! I\nsee him on the road. Stots, and cows with milk brimming from the udders,\nand a pet sheep for his _caileag bheag_; pretty gold and silver things,\nand brooches and shining stuff. That father of yours! Hurry, father,\nhurry! Jingling things, and wee fairy-men, and bells to ring for you,\nm' eudail; pretty glasses and dishes to play with, and--O my darling! my\ndarling!\u201d\n\nThe bairn's face lost the deep red spots; her little mouth slacked and\nfell; her eyes shut on the sight of the fine things her poor mother made\nfor her out of a rich and willing mind.\n\nJean lifted her and put her on the bed, and ran with a gutting-knife to\nwhere Mally the dappled one lay at the back.\n\n\u201cI must be doing it!\u201d said the woman, and she bled the brute as they do\nin the poor years in Lorn, and took the cogie of blood into the house to\nmake a pudding of. The last handful of meal in the girael went into the\npot with the warm blood, and she was stirring it with a spoon over the\nfire when the child cluttered at the throat.\n\nJean turned about with a cry, and at the minute a bagpipe's lilting came\nover the glassy bay from Stron Point.\n\nIt was Clan Campbell back from the wars, the heroes! clouted about the\nheads and with stains on their red waistcoats that were thicker than\nwine makes. Dol' Dubh played the old port, sweet and jaunty, at the head\nof them; the Cornal and the Major snuffed the herrings and said, \u201cHere's\nour own place, sure enough! See the smoke from our own peats! And the\nfine cock of the cap on Dunchuach!\u201d\n\nOn the Lowlands road the town emptied itself, and the folks ran fast and\nfurious--the boys first, the young women next, and the old folks peching\nbehind. But if the town was up on the warriors soon, the Duke himself\nwas before it. He saw the first of the Company from the Castle, and he\nwas in the saddle for all his threescore, like a boy, and down like the\nwind to Boshang Gate.\n\n\u201cHalt!\u201d cried the Cornal to his men, and Dol' Dubh's bag emptied itself\nwith a grant.\n\n\u201c_Tha sibh an sol!_ You are here, cousin,\u201d said the Duke. \u201cProud am I\nto see you and our good lads. They did the old trick well!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey did that, MacCailein. The stuff's aye to the fore.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt's in the blood, man. We have't in us, high or low. I have but one\nthing to vex me.\u201d\n\n\u201cName it, cousin.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell ye ken, Cornai. It's that I had not been with you to see the last\ncrushing Clan Campbell may need to give to an asp's head.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was a good ploy missed, I'll not deny.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat about the Tearlach one? Well plucked, they are telling me?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs foolish a lad as ever put tartan on hip, my lord! Frenchy, Frenchy,\nMacCailein! all outside and no cognisance. Yourself or any of your\nforebears at the head of his clans could have scoured all Albainn of\nGeordie's Low-Country red-coats, and yet there were only six thousand\ntrue Gaels in all the fellow's corps.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo read my letters, you would think the whole North was on fire!\u201d\n\n\u201cA bantam's crow, cousin. Clan Campbell itself could have thrawed the\nneck of it at any time up to Dunedin.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey made a fair stand, did they not?\n\n\u201cUch! Poor eno'--indeed it was not what you would call a coward's tulzie\neither.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well, that's over, lads I I am proud of my clan and town. _Slochd\na Chubair gu bragh!_ Stack your guns in the arm-room, see your wives and\nbairns, and come up-by to the Castle for the heroes' bite and sup. Who's\nthat with the white cockade in his bonnet? Is't Rob Donn?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is Rob Donn, cousin, with a bit of the ribbon contrivance for the\ndiversion of his bairn. He tore it from the bonnet of the seventh man he\nput an end to.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere's luck in the number, any way, though it was a dear plaything.\nMarch!\u201d Down the road, with their friends hanging about them, and the\nboys carrying guns and knapsacks, went the men for the town, and Rob\nDonn left the company as it passed near his own door.\n\n\u201cFaith! 'tis a poor enough home-coming, without wife or bairn to meet\none,\u201d said he, as he pushed in the door.\n\n\u201cWife! wife!\u201d he cried ben among the peat-reek, \u201cthere's never a stot,\nbut here's the cockade for the little one!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nA FINE PAIR OF SHOES\n\n\nTHE beginnings of things are to be well considered--we have all a little\nof that art; but to end well and wisely is the gift of few. Hunters and\nherds on the corri and the hill--they are at the simple end of life, and\nken the need for the task complete. The stag must be gralloched ere ye\nbrag of him, the drove must be at the market ere ye say anything of the\nhonesty of the glens ye pass through.\n\nAnd what I like best about our own Gaels is their habit of bringing the\nwork of a day or the work of a lifetime to what (in their own notions)\nis an end round and polished.\n\nWhen our women die, they do it with something of a daintiness. Their\ndead-clothes are in the awmrie; I have seen them with the cakes toasted\nand the board set for their funerals. Travelling wide on unfriendly\nforeign roads, living by sword or wit, you know that our men, the\npoorest among them, with an empty sporran, kept the buttons of their\nduds of good silver, to pay, if need be, for something more than a\ngangrel's burial. I like to think of him in story who, at his end in\nbed, made the folk trick him out in gallant style with tartan, targe,\nbrogue, and bonnet, and the sword in his hand.\n\n\u201cA Gaelic gentleman,\u201d said he, \u201cshould come to his journey's end\nsomewhat snod and well-put-on.\u201d And his son played \u201cCha till mi tuilidh\u201d\n (\u201cI return no more\u201d) on the bag-pipe by his firm command.\n\nIt is not even in this unco undertaking of Death that the polish must\nbe put on the task (though poor's the creature who dies clumsily); it\nshould be the same with every task of a day.\n\nAnd so Baldi Crom, making a fine pair of shoes on a day in Carnus, put\nthe best skill of his fingers to every stitch. He had been working at\nthem since the command came in the morning, and now it was the mouth of\nnight, and on one of them the finest of the fine sewing was still to do.\nAbout the place there was nobody but the old man, for he was the last,\nin a way, of the old stock of Carnus (now a _larach_ of low lintels, and\nthe nettle over all); and he was without woman to put _caschrom_ to\nhis soil or hip to a creel of peats. And so he lived on the brae of\nCamus--that same far up and lonely in the long glen.\n\n\u201cThey'll be the best I ever put brog in,\u201d said he, looking fondly at the\nfine work, the yellow thread standing out on the toes, patterned like\na leaf of the whortleberry, set about with the serpent-work of the old\ncrosses. Bite nor sap, kail nor crowdie, did he taste all day. Working\nin the light of his open door, he could see, if he had the notion, the\nwhole glen rolled out before him, brimming with sun, crossed in the heat\nof the day by deer from Dalavich seeking for the woods of Loch Finne;\nthe blue reek of the townships at the far end might have cheered him\nwith the thought that life was in sight though his house was lonely. But\ncrouped over the lap-stone, he made love to his work, heeding nothing\nelse but the sewing of the fine pair of shoes.\n\nIt was the night before the town market. Droves of bellowing\ncattle--heifers, stots, and stirks--were going down the glen from Port\nSonachan, cropping hurried mouthfuls by the way as they went and as the\ndogs would let them. And three Benderloch drovers came off the road and\ninto Baldi Crom's house, after the night was down on the glen and he had\nthe cruisie lighted. They sat them down round the fire in the middle of\nthe floor and ate bannocks and cheese.\n\n\u201cHow's thy family, 'Illeasbuig?\u201d said a drover, stirring up the peat as\nif he were at his own door-end. Down on the roadside the cattle, black\nand yellow, crushed the sappy grass and mourned in bellows for their\nlost fields.\n\n\u201cSplendid! splendid!\u201d said the old man, double over his shoes, fondling\nthem with the fingers of a mother on a first baby. The light was low\nin the cruisie, for the oil was well down, and the fire and the cruisie\nmade a ring of light that could scarcely slip over the backs of the men\nsitting round the peats. A goat scratched his head but-and-ben against\nthe wattles; in corners the darkness was brown and thick.\n\n\u201cI hear Cailen's in the Low-country, but what has come of Tormaid?\u201d said\none, with knee-breeches, and hose of coarse worsted.\n\nThe old man gave a quick start, and the lapstone fell from his knees,\nthe shoe he was at with it. He bent over and felt like a blind man for\nthem on the floor before he made answer.\n\n\u201cTormaid, my gallant son! Ye have not heard of him lately, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cNever a word, 'Illeasbuig. People on the going foot, like drovers, hear\nall the world's gossip but the _sgeuls_ of their own _sgireachd_. We\nhave been far North since Martinmas: for us there must be many a story\nto tell 'twixt here and Inneraora. A stout lad and pretty, Tormaid too,\nas ever went to the beginning of fortune! Where might he be enow?\u201d\n\n\u201cHere and there, friend, here and there! A restless scamp, a wanderer,\nbut with parts. Had he not the smart style at the game of _camanachi?_\nHe was namely for it in many places.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs neat a player as ever took shinty in hand, master! I have the name\nof a fair player myself, but that much I'll allow your lad. Is he to the\nWest side, or farther off?\u201d\n\n\u201cFarther off, friend. The pipes now--have you heard him as a player on\nthe chanter?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs a piper, 'Illeasbuig! His like was not in three shires. I have\nheard him at reel and march, but these were not his fancy: for him the\n_piobaireachds_ that scholarly ones play!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy gallant boy!\u201d said Baldi Crom, rubbing soft on the shoe with the\npalm of a hand.\n\n\u201cOnce upon a time,\u201d said the drover, \u201cwe were on our way to a Lowland\nTryst. Down Glen Falloch a Soccach man and I heard him fill the\nnightfall with the 'Bhoilich' of Morar, with the brag of a whole clan in\nhis warbling. He knew piping, the fellow with me, and the tear came to\nhis cheek, thinking of the old days and the old ploys among the dirks\nand _sgians_.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was never the beat of him,\u201d said the shoemaker.\n\n\u201cThroughither a bit--\u201d\n\n\u201cBut good, good at heart, man! With a better chance of fortune he might\nbe holding his head to-day as high as the best of them.\u201d The drovers\nlooked at each other with a meaning that was not for the eyes of the old\nman; but he had small chance of seeing it, for he was throng at his fine\npair of shoes.\n\n\u201cHe had a name for many arts,\u201d said the man with coarse hose, \u201cbut\nthey were not the arts that give a lad settlement and put money in his\npurse.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe hot young head, man! He would have cured,\u201d said the old man, sewing\nhard. \u201cThink of it,\u201d said he: \u201cwas ever a more humoursome fellow to walk\na glen with? His songs, his stories, his fast jump at one's meaning,\nand his trick of leaving all about him in a good key with themselves and\nhim. Did ever one ask a Saxon shilling from his purse that it was not a\ncheery gift if the purse held it?\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue, indeed!\u201d said the drovers, eating bannocks and cheese.\n\n\u201c'Twixt heaven and hell,\u201d said the fellow with the coarse hose, \u201cis but\na spang. It's so easy for some folk to deserve the one gate--so many\ntheir gifts--that the cock-sureness leaves them careless, and they\nwander into the wrong place.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou were speaking?\u201d said Baldi, a little angry, though he heard but\nhalf.\n\n\u201cI said thy son was a fellow of many gifts,\u201d answered the drover, in a\nconfusion.\n\n\u201cHe had no unfriends that I ken of,\u201d said the old man, busy at the\nshoes; \u201cyoung or old, man or woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cEspecially woman,\u201d put in another drover, wrinkling at the eyes.\n\n\u201cI've had five sons: three in the King's service, and one in the\nLow-country; here's my young wanderer, and he was--he is--the jewel of\nthem all!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou hear of him sometimes?\u201d\n\n\u201cI heard of him and from him this very day,\u201d said Baldi, busy at the\nbrogues, white and drawn at the face and shaking at the lips. \u201cI have\nworked at these shoes since morning, and little time is there to put bye\non them, for at Inneraora town must they be before breakfast. Solomon\nCarrier, passing at three, gives me a cry and takes them.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey're a fine pair of shoes.\u201d\n\n\u201cFine indeed; the finest of the fine! They're for a particular one.\u201d\n\n\u201cDuke John himself, perhaps?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, man; a particular one, and were they not his in time a sorry man\nwas I. They're the best Baldi Crom ever put leather on.\u201d\n\nTill the turn of the night the drovers slept in their plaids, their\ncattle steaming out-by in the dark, munching the coarse grass selvedge,\nbreathing heavy. And when the men and their beasts went in the darkness\nof the morning, Baldi Crom was still throng at his fine pair of shoes.\n\n\u201cI'm late, I'm surely late,\u201d said he, toiling hard, but with no\nsloven-work, at his task.\n\nThe rain had come with the morning, and was threshing out-by on peat and\nthatch. Inside, the fire died, and the cruisie gave warnings that its\noil was low, but Baldi Crom was too throng on the end of his task to\nnotice. And at last his house dropped into darkness.\n\n\u201cTormaid! Tormaid! my little hero--I'm sore feared you'll die without\nshoes after all,\u201d cried the old man, staggering to the door for\ndaylight. He had the door but opened when he fell, a helpless lump, on\nthe clay floor. The rain slanted on his grey hairs and spat on a fine\nshoe.\n\nFar down the good long glen the drovers were tramping after their\ncattle, and the dun morning was just before them when they got to the\ngate of Inneraora. Here there was a great to-do, for the kind gallows\nstood stark before the Arches. Round about it were the townspeople\nwaiting for a hanging.\n\n\u201cWho is't, and what is't for?\u201d asked the drover with the knee-breeches\nand the coarse hose, pushing into the crowd.\n\n\u201cTormaid, the son of the Carnus cobbler,\u201d said a woman with a plaid over\nher head. \u201cHe killed a man in a brawl at Braleckan and raped his purse.\nLittle enough to put tow to a pretty lad's neck for, sure enough!\u201d\n \u201cStand clear there!\u201d cried a sharp voice, and the hangman and his friend\ncame to the scaffold's foot with a lad in front of them, his hands\nshackled behind his back. He was a strong straight lad, if anything\noverly dour in the look, and he wore a good coat and tiews, but neither\nboot nor bonnet. Under the beam he put back his shoulders with a jerk\nand looked at the folk below, then over at Dunchuach with the mist above\nthe fort like smoke.\n\n\u201cThey might have given him a pair of old baucbels, if no better, to die\nin,\u201d said the drover in the woman's ear.\n\n\u201c_Ochanoch!_ and they might!\u201d she said. \u201cThe darling! He lost his shoes\nin swimming Duglas Water to get clear, and they say he sent yesterday to\nhis father for a pair, but they're not come. Queer, indeed, is that, for\n'twas the brag of the folks he came of that they aye died with a good\npair of shoon on their feet!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCASTLE DARK.\n\n\nYOU know Castle Dark, women?\n\n\u201cWell, we know the same, just man and blind!\u201d\n\nAnd you, my lads?\n\n\u201cNone better, Paruig Dali; morning and night, in the moon and in the\nfull white day!\u201d\n\nThen of Castle Dark is my story. Is the cruisie alight on the rafter?\nMore peats, little one, on the fire.\n\nOnce upon a time Castle Dark was a place of gentility and stirring days.\nYou have heard it,--you know it; now it is like a deer's skull in Wood\nMamore, empty, eyeless, sounding to the whistling wind, but blackened\ninstead of bleached in the threshing rains. When the day shines and the\nsun coaxes the drowsy mists from the levels by the river, that noble\nhouse that was brisks up and grey-whitens, minding maybe of merry times;\nthe softest smirr of rain--and the scowl comes to corbie-stone and\ngable; black, black grow the stones of old ancient Castle Dark! Little\none, _m' eudail_, put the door to, and the sneck down.\n\n\u201cTrue for you, Paruig Dali; you know the place as if you had seen it.\u201d\n\nWith eyes Paruig Dali has never seen it. But my friends tell me what\nthey know, and beyond I have learned of myself. Up the river-side, many\na time I pass to the place and over its low dykes, dry-stone, broken and\ncrumbling to the heel. The moss is soft on the little roads, so narrow\nand so without end, winding round the land; the nettle cocks him right\nbraggardly over the old home of bush and flower, poisoning the air.\nWhere the lady dozed in her shady seat below the alder-tree, looking\nout between half-shut eyes at the proud Highlands--loch, glen, and\nmountain--is but a root rotten, and hacked by the woodman's whittle.\nA tangle of wild wood, bracken, and weed smothers the rich gardens of\nCastle Dark.\n\n\u201cIt is so, it is so, Paruig Dali, blind man, prince among splendid\npipers and storied men!\u201d\n\nAnd to stand on the broad clanging steps that lifted from the\nhunting-road to the great door--that is a thinking man's trial. To me,\nthen, will be coming graveyard airs, yellow and vexatious, searching\neager through my bones for this old man's last weakness. \u201cThou sturdy\ndog!\u201d will they be saying, \u201csome day, some day! Look at this strong\ntower!\u201d With an ear to the gap on the side of the empty ditch, I can\nhear the hollowness of the house rumbling with pains, racked at _cabar_\nand corner-stone, the thought and the song gone clean away. There is\nno window, then, that has not a complaint of its own; no loop-hole, no\nvent, no grassy chimney that the blind fellow cannot hear the pipe of.\nStraight into the heart's core of Castle Dark looks the sun; the deep\ntolbooth of the old reivers and the bed-chamber of the maid are open\nwide to the night and to the star!\n\n\u201c_Ochan! ochan!_\u201d\n\nYou that only ken the castle in common day or night and plain man's\nweather have but little notion of its wonders. It was there, and black\nand hollow, ere ever you were born, or Paruig Dali. To see Castle Dark\none must take the Blue Barge and venture on two trips.\n\n\u201cThe Blue Barge, just man?\u201d\n\nThat same. The _birlinn ghorm_, the galley of fairy Lorn. It lies in the\nsunlight on the bay, or the moonlight in certain weathers, and twelve\nof the handsomest sit on the seats with the oars in their hands, the red\nshirt bulging over the kilt-belt. At the stem of the barge is the chair\nof the visitor. Gentle or semple, 'tis the same boat and crew, and the\nsame cushioned chair, for all that make the jaunt to Castle Dark. My\nstory is of two trips a man made by Barge Blue up the river to the white\nstairs.\n\nHe roved round the Lowlands road on a fine summer day, and out on the\nsands among the running salt threads of ebb tide. Among the shells, his\neyes (as it might be) fell on the castle, and he had a notion to make\nthe trip to it by a new road. Loudly he piped to sea. If loudly he\npiped, keen was the hearing, for yonder came the galley of fairy Lorn,\nthe twelve red-shirts swinging merry at the oars and chanting a Skye\n_iorram_.\n\n\u201cHere's an exploit!\u201d said the man of my story. \u201cThere's dignity in yon\ncraft, or less than red-shirts was the wearing of the scamps who row\nher.\u201d\n\nThe loch curled like a feather before her and frothed far behind, and\nsoon her nose ran high on the sand. No word was said, but the first pair\nof rowers let out a carved plank, and the fellow of my story went over\nit and behind to the chair with the cushioned seat.\n\n\u201cTo the castle?\u201d asked the captain (as it might be), in the way of one\nwho speaks a master, and Adventurer said, \u201cCastle be it.\u201d The barge was\npushed off the sand, the oars fell on the water, and she curved into the\nriver-mouth.\n\nWhen Adventurer reached the bridge, it was before the time of war, and\nthe country from end to end sat quiet, free, and honest. Our folks lived\nthe clean out-by life of shepherds and early risers. Round these hills,\nthe woods--the big green woods--were trembling with bird and beast,\nand the two glens were crowded with warm homes--every door open, and\nthe cattle untethered on the hill. Summer found the folks like ourselves\nhere, far up on sappy levels among the hills, but their sheilings more\ntheir own than ours are, with never a reiver nor a broken clan in all\nthe land. Good stout roads and dry went down the passes to Castle Dark\nfrom all airts of Albainn--roads for knight and horse, but free and\nsafe for the gentlest girl ever so lonely. By sea came gabberts of far\nFrance with wine and drink; by land the carriers brought rich cloths,\nspices, and Italian swords such as never were before or since. I made a\nsmall _piobaireachd_ once on such a blade; if you put me over my pipes,\nI--\n\n\u201cLater the pipes, Paruig Dali, the best player in the world! to thy\nstory this time.\u201d Is the cup to my right or left? Blessings! The Castle\nand Barge were my story.\n\nUp and on, then, under the bridge, went Adventurer and his company of\ntwelve, and he trailed white fingers over the low side of the boat, the\ntide warm like new milk. Under the long arch he held up his head and\nwhooped gaily, like the boy he was in another dream, and Mactallamh\nlaughed back from behind the smell of lime-drop and _crotal_ hanging to\nthe stones. Then into the sun again, on the wide flat river, with the\nfields sloping down on each hand, nodding to the lip with rush and\nflower.\n\n\u201cFaith and here's fortune!\u201d said Adventurer. \u201cSuch a day for sailing and\nsights was never before.\u201d\n\nAnd the Blue Barge met nor stone nor stay, but ever the twelve fine lads\nswinging cheerily at the oars, till they came to the white stairs.\n\nOff the boat and up the clanging steps went Adventurer as bold as\nEachan, and the bushes waving soft on every side. The gravel crunched\nto his foot--the white round gravel of Cantyre; kennelled hounds cried\nwarning from the ditch-side; round him were the scenting flowers and the\nfeeling of the little roads winding so without end all about the garden.\n\n\u201cQueer is this!\u201d said he, feeling the grass-edge with his feet and\nfingering the leaves. \u201cHere, surely, is weed nor nettle, but the trim\nbush and the swinging rose. The gardeners have been busy in the gardens\nof old ancient Castle Dark!\u201d\n\nWhen he came to the ditch, the drawbrig was down. To the warm airs of\nthe day the windows, high and low, were open; a look of throng life was\nover the house, and in-by some one plucked angrily at the strings of a\nharp. Reek rose lazy and blue over the chimneys, the smell of roasting\nmeats and rich broths hung on the air.\n\nUnder a tree got Adventurer and deep in thought. And soon the harping\ncame to an end. A girl stepped to the bridge and over into the garden.\nShe took to the left by the butter-house and into My Lady's Canter,\nlined with foreign trees. Along the wide far road came a man to meet\nher, good-shaped, in fine clothes, tartan trews fitting close on leg and\nhaunch, and a leather jacket held at the middle by a _crioslach_.\n\nUnder his tree stood Adventurer as they passed back, and close beside\nhim the courtier pushed the hilt of a small-sword to his back and took\nthe woman in his arms.\n\n\u201cThen if ye must ken,\u201d said he, shamefacedly, \u201cI am for the road\nto-morrow.\u201d\n\nThe girl--ripe and full, not over-tall, well balanced, her hair waved\nback from over brown eyes, gathered in a knot and breaking to a curl on\nthe nape of the neck like a wave on the shell-white shore--got hot at\nthe skin, and a foot drummed the gravel in an ill temper.\n\n\u201cFor yon silly cause again?\u201d she asked, her lips thinning over her\nteeth.\n\n\u201cFor the old cause,\u201d said he; \u201cmy father's, my dead brothers', my\nclan's, ours for a hundred years. Do not lightly the cause, my dear; it\nmay be your children's yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou never go with my will,\u201d quo' the girl again. \u201cHere am I, far from a\nhousehold of cheery sisters, so lonely, so lonely! Oh! Morag and Aoirig,\nand the young ones! were I back among them from this brave tomb!\u201d\n\n\u201cTomb, sweet!\u201d\n\n\u201cTomb said I, and tomb is it!\u201d cried the woman, in a storm. \u201cWho is here\nto sing with me and comfort me in the misty mornings, to hearten me\nwhen you are at wood or hill? The dreary woods, the dreary, dreary\nshore--they give me the gloom! My God, what a grey day!\u201d\n\n(And yet, by my troth, 'twas a sunny day by the feel of it, and the\nbirds were chirming on every tree!)\n\nThe gentleman put his hands on the girl's shoulder and looked deep\nin her eyes, thinking hard for a wee, and biting at his low lip in a\nnervous way.\n\n\u201cAt night,\u201d said he, \u201cI speak to you of chase and the country-side's\ngossip. We have sometimes neighbours in our house as now,--old Askaig's\ngoodwife and the Nun from Inishail--a good woman and pious.\u201d\n\nUp went the lady's head, and she laughed bitter and long.\n\n\u201cMy good husband,\u201d she said, in a weary way, \u201cyou are like all that wear\ntrews; you have never trained your tracking but to woodcraft, or else\nyou had found the wild-kit in a woman's heart.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere's my love, girl, and I think you love--\u201d\n\n\u201cTuts, man! I talked not of that. Love is--love, while it lasts, and ye\nbrag of Askaig's wife and the Nun (good Lord!), and the old harridans\nyour cousins from Lochow!\u201d\n\n\u201c'Tis but a tirrivie of yours, my dear,\u201d said the man, kindly, kissing\nher on the teeth, and she with her hands behind her back. \u201cTomorrow the\nsaddle, Sir Claymore, and the south country! Hark ye, sweet, I'll fetch\nback the most darling thing woman ever dreamt of.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat might his name be?\u201d asked the girl, laughing, but still with a\nbitterness, and the two went round to the ditch-brig and in-by.\n\nAdventurer heard the little fine airs coming from the west, coiling,\nfull of sap-smell, crooning in turret and among the grassy gable-tops,\nand piping into the empty windows.\n\n'Twas a summer's end when he went on the next jaunt, a hot night and\nhung with dripping stars. The loch crawled in from a black waste of\nsorrow and strange hills, and swished on the shore, trailing among the\nwreck with the hiss of fingers through ribbons of silk. My dears, my\ndears! the gloom of hidden seas in night and lonely places! 'Tis that\ndauntens me. I will be standing sometimes at the night's down-fall over\nabove the bay, and hearkening to the grinding of the salt wash on rock\nand gravel, and never a sound of hope or merriment in all that weary\nsong. You that have seeing may ken the meaning of it; never for Paruig\nDali but wonder and the heavy heart!\n\n\u201c'Tis our thought a thousand times, just man; we are the stour that wind\nand water make the clod of! You spoke of a second jaunt?\u201d\n\nAs ye say. It was in winter; and the morning--\n\n\u201cWinter, said ye, Paruig Dali? 'Twas summer and night before.\u201d\n\nWinter I said, and winter it was, before _faoilteach_, and the edge of\nthe morning. The fellow of my _sgeul_, more than a twelvemonth older,\nwent to the breast wall and cried on Barge Blue that's ever waiting for\nthe sailor who's for sailing on fairy seas.\n\nIn she came, with her twelve red-shirts tugging bravely at the oars, and\nthe nose of her ripping the salt bree. Out, too, the carved plank, made,\nI'll warrant, by the Norwegian fellow who fashioned the Black Bed of\nMacArtair, and over it to the cushioned seat Adventurer!\n\nThe little waves blobbed and bubbled at the boat's shoulders; she put\nunder the arch and up the cold river to the white stairs.\n\nIt was the middle and bloodiest time of all our wars. The glens behind\nwere harried, and their cattle were bellowing in strange fields. Widows\ngrat on the brae-sides and starved with their bairns for the bere and\noat that were burned. But Adventurer found a castle full of company, the\nrich scum of water-side lairds and Lowland gentry, dicing and drinking\nin the best hall of Castle Dark. Their lands were black, their homes\nlevelled, or their way out of the country--if they were Lowland--was\nbarred by jealous clans. So there they were, drinking the reddest and\neating the fattest--a wanton crew, among them George Mor, namely for\nwomen and wine and gentlemanly sword-play.\n\nThey had been at the cartes after supper. Wine lay on the table in\nrings and rivers. The curtains were across the window, and the candles\nguttered in the sconces. Debauched airs flaffed abroad in the room. At\nthe head of the board, with her hair falling out of the knot, the\nlady of the house dovered in her chair, her head against George Mor's\nshoulder, and him sleeping fast with his chin on his vest. Two company\ngirls from the house in the forest slept forward on the table, their\nheads on the thick of their arms, and on either hand of them the\nlairds and foreigners. Of the company but two were awake, playing at\n_bord-dubh_, small eyed, oozing with drink. But they slept by-and-by\nlike the lave, and sleep had a hold of Castle Dark through and through.\n\nAdventurer heard the cock crow away at the gean-tree park.\n\nOne of the girls, stirring in her sleep, touched a glass with her\nelbow, and it fell on its side, the dark wine splashing over the\ntable, crawling to the edge, thudding in heavy drops on the shoe of the\nmistress of the house, who drew back her foot without waking. But her\nmoving started up the man at her ear. He looked at her face, kissed her\non the hair, and got to his feet with no noise. A sour smile curdled\nhis face when he looked about the room, drunken and yellow-sick in the\nguttering candlelight.\n\nStretching himself, he made for the window and pulled back the curtain.\n\nThe mountain looked in on the wastrel company, with a black and blaming\nscowl--the mountain set in blackness at the foot, but its brow touching\nthe first of a cold day.\n\nTree and bush stood like wraiths all about the garden, the river\ncried high and snell. George Mor turned and looked at the room and its\nsleeping company like corpses propped in chairs, in the light of candle\nand daybreak.\n\nThe smell of the drunken chamber fogged at the back of his throat.\nHe laughed in a kind of bitter way, the lace shaking at his neck and\nwrist-bands: then his humour changed, and he rued the night and his\nmerry life.\n\n\u201cI wish I was yont this cursed country,\u201d said he to himself, shivering\nwith cold. \u201c'Tis these folk lead me a pretty spring, and had George Mor\nbetter luck of his company he was a decent man. And yet--and yet--who's\nGeorge Mor to be better than his neighbours? As grow the fir-trees, some\nof them crooked and some of them straight, and we are the way the winds\nwould have us!\u201d\n\nHe was standing in the window yet, deep in the morning's grief, running\nhis fingers among his curls.\n\nWithout warning the door of the room opened, and a man took one step in,\nsoft, without noise, white-faced, and expecting no less than he found,\nby the look in his eyes. It was the goodwife's husband, still with the\nmud on his shoes and the sword on his belt. He beckoned on the fellow\nat the window, and went before him (the company still in their sleep),\nmaking for the big door, and George Mor as he followed lifted a sword\nfrom a pin.\n\nClose by Adventurer the two men stopped. It was on a level round of old\nmoss, damp but springy, hid from the house by some saugh-trees.\n\nThe master of the house spoke first. Said he, \u201cIt's no great surprise;\nthey told me at the ferry over-by that strange carry-on and George Mor\nwere keeping up the wife's heart in Castle Dark.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe's as honest a wife as ever--\u201d\n\n\u201cFairly, fairly, I'll allow--when the wind's in that airt. It's been a\ndull place this for her, and I have small skill of entertainment; but,\nman, I thought of her often, away in the camp!\u201d\n\nHe was taking off his jacket as he spoke, and looking past George Mor's\nshoulder and in between the trees at the loch. And now the day was\nfairly on the country.\n\n\u201cA bit foolish is your wife--just a girl, I'm not denying; but true at\nthe core.\u201d\n\n\u201cYoung, young, as ye say, man! She'll make, maybe, all the more taking\na widow woman. She'll need looks and gaiety indeed, for my poor cause is\nlost for good and all.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe saved the castle for you, at any rate. But for my friends in-by and\nmyself the flambeau was at the root o't.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo, my hero? In another key I might be having a glass with you over\nsuch friendship, but the day spreads and here's our business before us.\u201d\n\n\u201cI've small stomach for this. It's a fool's quarrel.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Thoir an aire!_--Guard, George Mor!\u201d\n\nThey fought warmly on the mossy grass, and the tinkle of the thin blades\nset the birds chirping in the bushes, but it could not be that that\nwakened my lady dovering in her chair in the room of guttering candles.\n\nShe started up in a dream, and found George Mor gone, and the mark of\nmuddy brogues near the door fitted in with her dream. She wakened none\nof her drugged company, but hurried to the garden and in between the\nforeign trees to the summons of the playing swords.\n\n\u201cStop, stop, husband!\u201d she cried before she saw who was at the fighting;\nbut only George Mor heard, and he half turned his head.\n\nShe was a little late. Her man, with a forefinger, was feeling the way\nto the scabbard, and a gout of blood was gathering at the point of his\nsword, when she got through the trees.\n\n\u201cMadame,\u201d said he, cool enough but short in the breath, and bloody\na little at the mouth, \u201chere's your gallant. He had maybe skill\nat diversion, but I've seen better at the small-sword. To-night my\nun-friends are coming back to harry Castle Dark, and I'm in little\nhumour to stop them. Fare ye weel!\u201d\n\nA blash of rain threshed in Adventurer's face; the tide crept at his\nfeet, the fall of the oars on Barge Blue sank low and travelled far off.\nIt was the broad day. Over above the river, Castle Dark grew black, but\nthe fellow of my story could not see it.\n\n\u201cAnd the woman, Paruig Dali? What came of the woman?\u201d\n\nAnother peat on the fire, little one. So! _That_ the fellow of my story\nwould need another trip to see. But Barge Blue is the ferry for all,\nhigh tide or low, in the calm and in the storm.\n\n\n\n\nA GAELIC GLOSSARY.\n\n\nA bhean! O wife!\n\nA pheasain! O brat!\n\nAmadant fool. Amadaitt dhoill! O blind fool!\n\nBas, the haft of a shinty in this case.\n\nB\u00e0s, death. B\u00e0s Dhiarmaid, death to Diarmaid! Beannachd, blessing.\nBeannachdlets! blessing with him!\n\nBeannachd leat! blessing with thee, farewell! Biodag, a dirk.\n\nBtrlinn ghorm, blue barge.\n\nBochdan, a ghost.\n\nBodach, an old man.\n\nBord-dubh, black-board, the game of draughts.\n\nBratach, a banner.\n\nCabar, a rafter, a log of wood for throwing in Highland sports.\n\nCaileag bkeag, a little girl.\n\nCailleach, old woman. Cailleachan, old women.\n\nCamatty, club used in the game of shinty. Camanachd, the game of shinty.\n\nCas, foot. Cas-chrom, a primitive hand-plough. Choillich-dhuibh, O\nblack-cock!\n\nClach-cuid-fear, a lifting-stone for testing a man's strength.\n\nClackneart, putting-stone.\n\nClarsack, harp.\n\nCothrom na Feinne, the fair-play of Finne; man to man. Crioslach, belt,\ngirdle.\n\nCromag, a shepherd's crook.\n\nCrotal, lichen.\n\nCrunluadh, a movement in piping. Crunluadh breabach, a smarter movement\nCrunluadh mack, the quickest part of a piobaireachd.\n\nDh\u00e9! O God! Dia, God. Dhia gleidh sinn! God keep us!\n\nDorlach, a knapsack.\n\nDuitn'-nasal, gentleman.\n\nEas, waterfall or cataract.\n\nFaoiltcach, the short season of stormy days at the end of January.\n\nFeadan, the chanter or pipe on which pipers practise tunes before\nplaying them on the bagpipes. Fuarag, hasty-pudding, a mixture of\noatmeal and cold water, or oatmeal and milk or cream.\n\nGruagach, a sea-maiden in this case.\n\n'Ille! lad! 'Illean! lads!\n\nIolair, eagle lorram, a boat-song.\n\nLaochain! hero! comrade!\n\nLarach, site of a ruined building.\n\nLondubh, blackbird.\n\nMallachd ort! malediction on thee!\n\nMarag-dkubh, a black pudding, made with blood and suet.\n\nM' eudail, my darling, my treasure.\n\nMhoire Mkathair, an ave, \u201cMary Mother.\u201d\n\nMo chridhe! my heart!\n\nMo thruaigh! alas, my trouble!\n\nOch! ochan! ochanoch! ochanie! ochanorie! exclamations of sorrow, alas!\nOch a Dh\u00e9! siod e nis! Eirich, eirich, Rob--O God! yonder it is now!\nRise, rise, Rob!\n\nOinseach, a female fool.\n\nPiobaireachd, the symphony of bagpipe music, usually a lament, salute,\nor gathering Piob-mhor, the great Highland bagpipe.\n\nSeangan, an ant.\n\nSgalag, a male farm-servant.\n\nSgeul, a tale, narrative.\n\nSgiati-dubh, black knife, worn in the Highlander's stocking.\n\nSgireachd, parish.\n\nSiod e! there it is!\n\nSiubhal, allegro of the piobaireachd music.\n\nSlochd-a-chubair gu bragh! the rallying cry of the old Inneraora\nburghers, \u201cSlochd-a-chubair for ever!\u201d\n\nSo! here! So agad e! here he is!\n\nSp\u00e0gachd, club-footed, awkward at walking.\n\nSpreidh, cattle of all sorts, a drove.\n\nStad! stop!\n\nSuas e! up with it! A term of encouragement.\n\nTaibhsear, a visionary; one with second-sight.\n\nTha sibk an so! you are here!\n\nThoir an aire! beware! look out!\n\nUiseag, the skylark.\n\nUrlar, the ground-work, adagio, or simple melody of a piobaireachd.","title":"The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":40477}