The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories

It was ho-rol and spill the bicker in yon town, for all that the best of its men were away and afar at the killing. The smoke was black from the fires in the Cooper’s Pool, the good healthy smell of the gut-pots sought up to the Castle door. Little doubt his Grace (beannachd leis!) would come out to the door-step and curse because it made him bock his breakfast, dainty man!

Throng though the town was, round about the little house on the left of the Lowlands Road crept a queer quietness. The cow had dried, and the dull weather kept the spout fish too deep down in the sand for the ready fingers to reach them. So the household of Rob Donn starved to the bone.

“To-morrow – they will be home tomorrow,” said Jean to herself every day to keep up her heart; but the days went by, and though it was something to know that Rob was not among the killed at Culloden, it was not something to stay the stomach. A stone-throw off were the best and kindest hearts in the world: the woman’s cousin, the rich merchant, would give all he had on his board if he knew her trouble, and friends without number would share the last bite with her. But to ask it would be to say she was at the lowest, and to tell that Rob had left her nothing, and she would sooner die in her pride.

Such people as passed her way – and some of them old gossips – would have gone in, but the withie was aye across the door, and that’s the sign that business is doing within no one dare disturb. The withie was ever there except at night, when Jean was scouring the countryside for something to eat.

The bairn dwined so fast that even the mother (and blind indeed’s the mother at that bit) saw a little of it. There was no longer the creepie-stool at the back of the house, in the sun, and the bairn on it, watching the birds; her shanks grew thin like spirtles; her eyes sank far ben in her face, and she would not go the length of the door. She sat at the fireside and laughed her poor cold laugh less every day, till one long thought came to her that kept her busy at the thinking from morning till night with a face like a cailleach of eighty.

“White love, white love,” Jean would be saying, “your father is on the road with stots and a pouch of cockades.”

At that the bairn would come back from her roaming; but soon she was off again into the deeps of mind, her wide eyes like the windows of an empty house for all that could be seen through them.

“Oh! but it will be the fine cockade,” poor Jean would press – “what am I saying? – the pack of your father will be full of them. Not the white ones of silk only, but the red and the grassy green, my little calf. You’ll be wearing them when you will.”

No heeding in the bairn’s face.

Then Jean would go out and pull the tansy at the door, and give it to the little one to get the fine scent. The curious shells from the shore, too, would she gather, and lay in rings about the chair, and call her the Queen in her castle. For ever would there be a song at her lips, even if the drops would be in her eyes – old daft songs from fairs and weddings, and fairy rhyming and cheery stories about the Good People up on Sithean Sluaidhe. Her fingers were for ever soft about the bairn, her flesh and blood, stroking in the hair, softening the cushion, petting her in every hand’s-turn. She made a treat to herself by asking her, now and then, something that had to be answered “Yes” or “No,” and “Mother” was so sweet in her ears that she would be content to hear no more in all her lifetime.

All the day the bairn crouched up in a hoop-chair with her neck slack and her chin on her breast. Jean was loth to leave her in her bed in the mornings, for she had a notion that to get her out of the blankets and to put her in the clothes of the busy world would be to keep her in the trim for living on.

Still there was no sign of the men returning. Often was Jean’s foot at the door and her hand over her eyes to see if there was no stir at Stron or Kilachatrine, and but for good stuff, her heart failed five-score times a-day.

At last, on a day of days, the bairn could not be stirred to notice anything. The tansy fell out of her fingers, and she picked at the wool of the plaid that wrapped her; the shells had no charm for her eye.

Jean made the pack of the coming father as routh as a magic cave. “That father of yours, darling, what a many wonderful things he will bring! I see him on the road. Stots, and cows with milk brimming from the udders, and a pet sheep for his caileag bheag; pretty gold and silver things, and brooches and shining stuff. That father of yours! Hurry, father, hurry! Jingling things, and wee fairy-men, and bells to ring for you, m’ eudail; pretty glasses and dishes to play with, and – O my darling! my darling!”

The bairn’s face lost the deep red spots; her little mouth slacked and fell; her eyes shut on the sight of the fine things her poor mother made for her out of a rich and willing mind.

Jean lifted her and put her on the bed, and ran with a gutting-knife to where Mally the dappled one lay at the back.

“I must be doing it!” said the woman, and she bled the brute as they do in the poor years in Lorn, and took the cogie of blood into the house to make a pudding of. The last handful of meal in the girael went into the pot with the warm blood, and she was stirring it with a spoon over the fire when the child cluttered at the throat.

Jean turned about with a cry, and at the minute a bagpipe’s lilting came over the glassy bay from Stron Point.

It was Clan Campbell back from the wars, the heroes! clouted about the heads and with stains on their red waistcoats that were thicker than wine makes. Dol’ Dubh played the old port, sweet and jaunty, at the head of them; the Cornal and the Major snuffed the herrings and said, “Here’s our own place, sure enough! See the smoke from our own peats! And the fine cock of the cap on Dunchuach!”

On the Lowlands road the town emptied itself, and the folks ran fast and furious – the boys first, the young women next, and the old folks peching behind. But if the town was up on the warriors soon, the Duke himself was before it. He saw the first of the Company from the Castle, and he was in the saddle for all his threescore, like a boy, and down like the wind to Boshang Gate.

“Halt!” cried the Cornal to his men, and Dol’ Dubh’s bag emptied itself with a grant.

“Tha sibh an sol! You are here, cousin,” said the Duke. “Proud am I to see you and our good lads. They did the old trick well!”

“They did that, MacCailein. The stuff’s aye to the fore.”

“It’s in the blood, man. We have’t in us, high or low. I have but one thing to vex me.”

“Name it, cousin.”

“Well ye ken, Cornai. It’s that I had not been with you to see the last crushing Clan Campbell may need to give to an asp’s head.”

“It was a good ploy missed, I’ll not deny.”

“What about the Tearlach one? Well plucked, they are telling me?”

“As foolish a lad as ever put tartan on hip, my lord! Frenchy, Frenchy, MacCailein! all outside and no cognisance. Yourself or any of your forebears at the head of his clans could have scoured all Albainn of Geordie’s Low-Country red-coats, and yet there were only six thousand true Gaels in all the fellow’s corps.”

“To read my letters, you would think the whole North was on fire!”

“A bantam’s crow, cousin. Clan Campbell itself could have thrawed the neck of it at any time up to Dunedin.”

“They made a fair stand, did they not?

“Uch! Poor eno’ – indeed it was not what you would call a coward’s tulzie either.”

“Well, well, that’s over, lads I I am proud of my clan and town. Slochd a Chubair gu bragh! Stack your guns in the arm-room, see your wives and bairns, and come up-by to the Castle for the heroes’ bite and sup. Who’s that with the white cockade in his bonnet? Is’t Rob Donn?”

“It is Rob Donn, cousin, with a bit of the ribbon contrivance for the diversion of his bairn. He tore it from the bonnet of the seventh man he put an end to.”

“There’s luck in the number, any way, though it was a dear plaything. March!” Down the road, with their friends hanging about them, and the boys carrying guns and knapsacks, went the men for the town, and Rob Donn left the company as it passed near his own door.

“Faith! ‘tis a poor enough home-coming, without wife or bairn to meet one,” said he, as he pushed in the door.

“Wife! wife!” he cried ben among the peat-reek, “there’s never a stot, but here’s the cockade for the little one!”

A FINE PAIR OF SHOES

THE beginnings of things are to be well considered – we have all a little of that art; but to end well and wisely is the gift of few. Hunters and herds on the corri and the hill – they are at the simple end of life, and ken the need for the task complete. The stag must be gralloched ere ye brag of him, the drove must be at the market ere ye say anything of the honesty of the glens ye pass through.

And what I like best about our own Gaels is their habit of bringing the work of a day or the work of a lifetime to what (in their own notions) is an end round and polished.

When our women die, they do it with something of a daintiness. Their dead-clothes are in the awmrie; I have seen them with the cakes toasted and the board set for their funerals. Travelling wide on unfriendly foreign roads, living by sword or wit, you know that our men, the poorest among them, with an empty sporran, kept the buttons of their duds of good silver, to pay, if need be, for something more than a gangrel’s burial. I like to think of him in story who, at his end in bed, made the folk trick him out in gallant style with tartan, targe, brogue, and bonnet, and the sword in his hand.

“A Gaelic gentleman,” said he, “should come to his journey’s end somewhat snod and well-put-on.” And his son played “Cha till mi tuilidh” (“I return no more”) on the bag-pipe by his firm command.

It is not even in this unco undertaking of Death that the polish must be put on the task (though poor’s the creature who dies clumsily); it should be the same with every task of a day.

And so Baldi Crom, making a fine pair of shoes on a day in Carnus, put the best skill of his fingers to every stitch. He had been working at them since the command came in the morning, and now it was the mouth of night, and on one of them the finest of the fine sewing was still to do. About the place there was nobody but the old man, for he was the last, in a way, of the old stock of Carnus (now a larach of low lintels, and the nettle over all); and he was without woman to put caschrom to his soil or hip to a creel of peats. And so he lived on the brae of Camus – that same far up and lonely in the long glen.

“They’ll be the best I ever put brog in,” said he, looking fondly at the fine work, the yellow thread standing out on the toes, patterned like a leaf of the whortleberry, set about with the serpent-work of the old crosses. Bite nor sap, kail nor crowdie, did he taste all day. Working in the light of his open door, he could see, if he had the notion, the whole glen rolled out before him, brimming with sun, crossed in the heat of the day by deer from Dalavich seeking for the woods of Loch Finne; the blue reek of the townships at the far end might have cheered him with the thought that life was in sight though his house was lonely. But crouped over the lap-stone, he made love to his work, heeding nothing else but the sewing of the fine pair of shoes.

It was the night before the town market. Droves of bellowing cattle – heifers, stots, and stirks – were going down the glen from Port Sonachan, cropping hurried mouthfuls by the way as they went and as the dogs would let them. And three Benderloch drovers came off the road and into Baldi Crom’s house, after the night was down on the glen and he had the cruisie lighted. They sat them down round the fire in the middle of the floor and ate bannocks and cheese.

“How’s thy family, ‘Illeasbuig?” said a drover, stirring up the peat as if he were at his own door-end. Down on the roadside the cattle, black and yellow, crushed the sappy grass and mourned in bellows for their lost fields.

“Splendid! splendid!” said the old man, double over his shoes, fondling them with the fingers of a mother on a first baby. The light was low in the cruisie, for the oil was well down, and the fire and the cruisie made a ring of light that could scarcely slip over the backs of the men sitting round the peats. A goat scratched his head but-and-ben against the wattles; in corners the darkness was brown and thick.

“I hear Cailen’s in the Low-country, but what has come of Tormaid?” said one, with knee-breeches, and hose of coarse worsted.

The old man gave a quick start, and the lapstone fell from his knees, the shoe he was at with it. He bent over and felt like a blind man for them on the floor before he made answer.

“Tormaid, my gallant son! Ye have not heard of him lately, then?”

“Never a word, ‘Illeasbuig. People on the going foot, like drovers, hear all the world’s gossip but the sgeuls of their own sgireachd. We have been far North since Martinmas: for us there must be many a story to tell ‘twixt here and Inneraora. A stout lad and pretty, Tormaid too, as ever went to the beginning of fortune! Where might he be enow?”

“Here and there, friend, here and there! A restless scamp, a wanderer, but with parts. Had he not the smart style at the game of camanachi? He was namely for it in many places.”

“As neat a player as ever took shinty in hand, master! I have the name of a fair player myself, but that much I’ll allow your lad. Is he to the West side, or farther off?”

“Farther off, friend. The pipes now – have you heard him as a player on the chanter?”

“As a piper, ‘Illeasbuig! His like was not in three shires. I have heard him at reel and march, but these were not his fancy: for him the piobaireachds that scholarly ones play!”

“My gallant boy!” said Baldi Crom, rubbing soft on the shoe with the palm of a hand.

“Once upon a time,” said the drover, “we were on our way to a Lowland Tryst. Down Glen Falloch a Soccach man and I heard him fill the nightfall with the ‘Bhoilich’ of Morar, with the brag of a whole clan in his warbling. He knew piping, the fellow with me, and the tear came to his cheek, thinking of the old days and the old ploys among the dirks and sgians.”

“There was never the beat of him,” said the shoemaker.

“Throughither a bit – ”

“But good, good at heart, man! With a better chance of fortune he might be holding his head to-day as high as the best of them.” The drovers looked at each other with a meaning that was not for the eyes of the old man; but he had small chance of seeing it, for he was throng at his fine pair of shoes.

“He had a name for many arts,” said the man with coarse hose, “but they were not the arts that give a lad settlement and put money in his purse.”

“The hot young head, man! He would have cured,” said the old man, sewing hard. “Think of it,” said he: “was ever a more humoursome fellow to walk a glen with? His songs, his stories, his fast jump at one’s meaning, and his trick of leaving all about him in a good key with themselves and him. Did ever one ask a Saxon shilling from his purse that it was not a cheery gift if the purse held it?”

“True, indeed!” said the drovers, eating bannocks and cheese.

“‘Twixt heaven and hell,” said the fellow with the coarse hose, “is but a spang. It’s so easy for some folk to deserve the one gate – so many their gifts – that the cock-sureness leaves them careless, and they wander into the wrong place.”

“You were speaking?” said Baldi, a little angry, though he heard but half.

“I said thy son was a fellow of many gifts,” answered the drover, in a confusion.

“He had no unfriends that I ken of,” said the old man, busy at the shoes; “young or old, man or woman.”

“Especially woman,” put in another drover, wrinkling at the eyes.

“I’ve had five sons: three in the King’s service, and one in the Low-country; here’s my young wanderer, and he was – he is – the jewel of them all!”

“You hear of him sometimes?”

“I heard of him and from him this very day,” said Baldi, busy at the brogues, white and drawn at the face and shaking at the lips. “I have worked at these shoes since morning, and little time is there to put bye on them, for at Inneraora town must they be before breakfast. Solomon Carrier, passing at three, gives me a cry and takes them.”

“They’re a fine pair of shoes.”

“Fine indeed; the finest of the fine! They’re for a particular one.”

“Duke John himself, perhaps?”

“No, man; a particular one, and were they not his in time a sorry man was I. They’re the best Baldi Crom ever put leather on.”

Till the turn of the night the drovers slept in their plaids, their cattle steaming out-by in the dark, munching the coarse grass selvedge, breathing heavy. And when the men and their beasts went in the darkness of the morning, Baldi Crom was still throng at his fine pair of shoes.

“I’m late, I’m surely late,” said he, toiling hard, but with no sloven-work, at his task.

The rain had come with the morning, and was threshing out-by on peat and thatch. Inside, the fire died, and the cruisie gave warnings that its oil was low, but Baldi Crom was too throng on the end of his task to notice. And at last his house dropped into darkness.

“Tormaid! Tormaid! my little hero – I’m sore feared you’ll die without shoes after all,” cried the old man, staggering to the door for daylight. He had the door but opened when he fell, a helpless lump, on the clay floor. The rain slanted on his grey hairs and spat on a fine shoe.

Far down the good long glen the drovers were tramping after their cattle, and the dun morning was just before them when they got to the gate of Inneraora. Here there was a great to-do, for the kind gallows stood stark before the Arches. Round about it were the townspeople waiting for a hanging.

“Who is’t, and what is’t for?” asked the drover with the knee-breeches and the coarse hose, pushing into the crowd.

“Tormaid, the son of the Carnus cobbler,” said a woman with a plaid over her head. “He killed a man in a brawl at Braleckan and raped his purse. Little enough to put tow to a pretty lad’s neck for, sure enough!” “Stand clear there!” cried a sharp voice, and the hangman and his friend came to the scaffold’s foot with a lad in front of them, his hands shackled behind his back. He was a strong straight lad, if anything overly dour in the look, and he wore a good coat and tiews, but neither boot nor bonnet. Under the beam he put back his shoulders with a jerk and looked at the folk below, then over at Dunchuach with the mist above the fort like smoke.

“They might have given him a pair of old baucbels, if no better, to die in,” said the drover in the woman’s ear.

“Ochanoch! and they might!” she said. “The darling! He lost his shoes in swimming Duglas Water to get clear, and they say he sent yesterday to his father for a pair, but they’re not come. Queer, indeed, is that, for ‘twas the brag of the folks he came of that they aye died with a good pair of shoon on their feet!”

CASTLE DARK

YOU know Castle Dark, women?

“Well, we know the same, just man and blind!”

And you, my lads?

“None better, Paruig Dali; morning and night, in the moon and in the full white day!”

Then of Castle Dark is my story. Is the cruisie alight on the rafter? More peats, little one, on the fire.

Once upon a time Castle Dark was a place of gentility and stirring days. You have heard it, – you know it; now it is like a deer’s skull in Wood Mamore, empty, eyeless, sounding to the whistling wind, but blackened instead of bleached in the threshing rains. When the day shines and the sun coaxes the drowsy mists from the levels by the river, that noble house that was brisks up and grey-whitens, minding maybe of merry times; the softest smirr of rain – and the scowl comes to corbie-stone and gable; black, black grow the stones of old ancient Castle Dark! Little one, m’ eudail, put the door to, and the sneck down.

“True for you, Paruig Dali; you know the place as if you had seen it.”

With eyes Paruig Dali has never seen it. But my friends tell me what they know, and beyond I have learned of myself. Up the river-side, many a time I pass to the place and over its low dykes, dry-stone, broken and crumbling to the heel. The moss is soft on the little roads, so narrow and so without end, winding round the land; the nettle cocks him right braggardly over the old home of bush and flower, poisoning the air. Where the lady dozed in her shady seat below the alder-tree, looking out between half-shut eyes at the proud Highlands – loch, glen, and mountain – is but a root rotten, and hacked by the woodman’s whittle. A tangle of wild wood, bracken, and weed smothers the rich gardens of Castle Dark.

“It is so, it is so, Paruig Dali, blind man, prince among splendid pipers and storied men!”

And to stand on the broad clanging steps that lifted from the hunting-road to the great door – that is a thinking man’s trial. To me, then, will be coming graveyard airs, yellow and vexatious, searching eager through my bones for this old man’s last weakness. “Thou sturdy dog!” will they be saying, “some day, some day! Look at this strong tower!” With an ear to the gap on the side of the empty ditch, I can hear the hollowness of the house rumbling with pains, racked at cabar and corner-stone, the thought and the song gone clean away. There is no window, then, that has not a complaint of its own; no loop-hole, no vent, no grassy chimney that the blind fellow cannot hear the pipe of. Straight into the heart’s core of Castle Dark looks the sun; the deep tolbooth of the old reivers and the bed-chamber of the maid are open wide to the night and to the star!

“Ochan! ochan!”

You that only ken the castle in common day or night and plain man’s weather have but little notion of its wonders. It was there, and black and hollow, ere ever you were born, or Paruig Dali. To see Castle Dark one must take the Blue Barge and venture on two trips.

“The Blue Barge, just man?”

That same. The birlinn ghorm, the galley of fairy Lorn. It lies in the sunlight on the bay, or the moonlight in certain weathers, and twelve of the handsomest sit on the seats with the oars in their hands, the red shirt bulging over the kilt-belt. At the stem of the barge is the chair of the visitor. Gentle or semple, ‘tis the same boat and crew, and the same cushioned chair, for all that make the jaunt to Castle Dark. My story is of two trips a man made by Barge Blue up the river to the white stairs.

He roved round the Lowlands road on a fine summer day, and out on the sands among the running salt threads of ebb tide. Among the shells, his eyes (as it might be) fell on the castle, and he had a notion to make the trip to it by a new road. Loudly he piped to sea. If loudly he piped, keen was the hearing, for yonder came the galley of fairy Lorn, the twelve red-shirts swinging merry at the oars and chanting a Skye iorram.

“Here’s an exploit!” said the man of my story. “There’s dignity in yon craft, or less than red-shirts was the wearing of the scamps who row her.”

The loch curled like a feather before her and frothed far behind, and soon her nose ran high on the sand. No word was said, but the first pair of rowers let out a carved plank, and the fellow of my story went over it and behind to the chair with the cushioned seat.

“To the castle?” asked the captain (as it might be), in the way of one who speaks a master, and Adventurer said, “Castle be it.” The barge was pushed off the sand, the oars fell on the water, and she curved into the river-mouth.

When Adventurer reached the bridge, it was before the time of war, and the country from end to end sat quiet, free, and honest. Our folks lived the clean out-by life of shepherds and early risers. Round these hills, the woods – the big green woods – were trembling with bird and beast, and the two glens were crowded with warm homes – every door open, and the cattle untethered on the hill. Summer found the folks like ourselves here, far up on sappy levels among the hills, but their sheilings more their own than ours are, with never a reiver nor a broken clan in all the land. Good stout roads and dry went down the passes to Castle Dark from all airts of Albainn – roads for knight and horse, but free and safe for the gentlest girl ever so lonely. By sea came gabberts of far France with wine and drink; by land the carriers brought rich cloths, spices, and Italian swords such as never were before or since. I made a small piobaireachd once on such a blade; if you put me over my pipes, I —