The lad's fingers danced merry on the chanter, and the shiver of something to come fell on all the folk around. The old hills sported with the prancing tune; Dun Corrbhile tossed it to Drimfem, and Drimfern sent it leaping across the flats of Kilmune to the green corries of Lecknamban. “Love, love, the old tune; come and get flesh!” rasped a crow to his mate far off on misty Ben Bhreac, and the heavy black wings flapped east. The friendly wind forgot to dally with the pine-tuft and the twanging bog-myrtle, the plash of Aora in its brown linn was the tinkle of wine in a goblet. “Peace or war, peace or war; come which will, we care not,” sang the pipe-reeds, and there was the muster and the march, hot-foot rush over the rotting rain-wet moor, the jingle of iron, the dunt of pike and targe, the choked roar of hate and hunger, batter and slash and fall, and behind, the old, old feud with Appin!
Leaning forward, lost in a dream, stood the swank lads of Aora. They felt at their hips, where were only empty belts, and one said to his child, “White love, get me yon long knife with the nicks on it, and the basket-hand, for I am sick of shepherding.” The bairn took a look at his face and went home crying.
And the music still poured on. 'Twas “I got a Kiss o' the King's Hand” and “The Pretty Dirk,” and every air better than another. The fairy pipe of the Wee Folk's Knowe never made a sweeter fever of sound, yet it hurt the ears of the women, who had reason to know the payment of pipers' springs.
“Stop, stop, O Tearlach og!” they cried; “enough of war: have ye not a reel in your budget?”
“There was never a reel in Boreraig,” said the lad, and he into “Duniveg's Warning,” the tune Coll Ciotach heard his piper play in the west on a day when a black bitch from Dunstaffnage lay panting for him, and his barge put nose about in time to save his skin.
“There's the very word itself in it,” said Paruig, forgetting the taunting of Giorsal and all but a father's pride.
'Twas in the middle of the “Warning” Black Duncan, his toe on the stirrup, came up from Castle Inneraora, with a gillie-wet-foot behind, on his way to Lochow.
“It's down yonder you should be, Sir Piper, and not blasting here for drink,” said he, switching his trews with his whip and scowling under black brows at the people. “My wife is sick of the clarsach and wants the pipes.”
“I'm no woman's piper, Lochow; your wife can listen to the hum of her spinning-wheel if she's weary of her harp,” said the lad; and away rode the Chief, and back to the linn went the women, and the men to the cabar and the stone, and Tearlach, with an extra feather in his bonnet, home to Inneraora, leafing a gibe as he went, for his father.
Paruig Dali cursed till the evening at the son he never saw, and his wife poisoned his mind.
“The Glen laughs at you, man, from Carnus to Croit-bhile. It's a black, burning day of shame for you, Paruig Dall!”
“Lord, it's a black enough day for me at the best!” said the blind man.
“It's disgraced by your own ill-got son you are, by a boy with no blood on his biodag, and the pride to crow over you.”
And Paruig cursed anew, by the Cross and the Dogs of Lorn, and the White Glaive of Light the giants wear, and the Seven Witches of Cothmar. He was bad though he was blind, and he went back to the start of time for his language. “But Dhé! the boy can play!” he said at the last.
“Oh, amadain dhoill” cried the woman; “if it was I, a claw was off the cub before the mouth of day.”
“Witless woman, men have played the pipes before now, lacking a finger: look at Alasdair Corrag!”
“Allowing; but a hand's as easy to cut as a finger for a man who has gralloched deer with a keen sgian-dubh. Will ye do't or no'?”
Parig would hearken no more, and took to his pillow.
Rain came with the gloaming. Aora, the splendid river, roared up the dark glen from the Salmon Leap; the hills gathered thick and heavy round about the scattered townships, the green new tips of fir and the copper leaves of the young oaks moaned in the wind. Then salt airs came tearing up from the sea, grinding branch on branch, and the whole land smoked with the drumming of rain that slanted on it hot and fast.
Giorsal arose, her clothes still on her, put a plaid on her black head, and the thick door banged back on the bed as she dived into the storm. Her heavy feet sogged through the boggy grass, the heather clutched at her draggled coat-tails to make her stay, but she filled her heart with one thought, and that was hate, and behold! she was on the slope of the Black Bull before her blind husband guessed her meaning. Castle Inneraora lay at the foot of the woody dun, dozing to the music of the salt loch that made tumult and spume north and south in the hollow of the mountains. Now and then the moon took a look at things, now and then a night-hag in the dripping wood hooted as the rain whipped her breast feathers; a roe leaped out of the gloom and into it with a feared hoof-plunge above Carlonan; a thunderbolt struck in the dark against the brow of Ben Ime and rocked the world.
In the cold hour before the mouth of day the woman was in the piper's room at the gate of Inneraora, where never a door was barred against the night while Strong Colin the warder could see from the Fort of Dunchuach to Cladich. Tearlach the piper lay on his back, with the glow of a half-dead peat on his face and hands. “Paruig, Paruig!” said the woman to herself, as she softly tramped out the peat-fire and turned to the bed. And lo! it was over. Her husband's little black knife made a fast sweep on the sleeper's wrist, and her hand was drenched with the hot blood of her husband's son.
Tearlach leaped up with a roar in the dark and felt for his foe; but the house was empty, for Giorsal was running like a hind across the soaked stretch of Caimban. The lightning struck at Glenaora in jagged fury and confusion; the thunder drummed hollow on Creag
Dubh: in a turn of the pass at the Three Bridges the woman met her husband.
“Daughter of hell!” said he, “is't done? and was't death?”
“Darling,” said she, with a fond laugh, “'twas only a brat's hand. You can give us 'The Glen is Mine!' in the morning.”
THE SECRET OF THE HEATHER-ALE
DOWN Glenaora threescore and ten of Diarmaid's stout fellows took the road on a fine day. They were men from Carnus, with more of Clan Artair than Campbell in them; but they wore Gilleasbuig Gruamach's tartan,. and if they were not on Gilleasbuig Gruamach's errand, it makes little difference on our story. It was about the time Antrim and his dirty Irishers came scouring through our glens with flambeaux, dirk and sword and other arms invasive, and the country was back at its old trade of fighting, with not a sheiling from end to end, except on the slopes of Shira Glen, where a clan kept free of battle and drank the finest of heather-ale that the world envied the secret of.
“Lift we and go, for the Cattle's before!” said Alasdair Piobaire on the chanter of a Dunvegan great-pipe—a neat tune that roared gallant and far from Carnus to Bara-caldine; so there they were, the pick of swank fellows on the road!
At the head of them was Niall Mor a' Chamais—the same gentleman namely in story for many an art and the slaughter of the strongest man in the world, as you'll find in the writings of my Lord Archie. “God! look at us!” said he, when his lads came over the hill in the grey mouth of day. “Are not we the splendid men? Fleas will there be this day in the hose of the Glenshira folk.” And he sent his targe in the air in a bravado, catching it by the prong in its navel, smart and clean, when it whirled back.
Hawks yelped as they passed; far up on Tullich there was barking of eagles; the brogues met the road as light as the stagslot; laughing, singing, roaring; sword-heads and pikes dunting on wooden targets—and