CONTENTS
THE SEA-FAIRY OF FRENCH FORELAND.
TO the make of a piper go seven years of his own learning and sevengenerations before. If it is in, it will out, as the Gaelic old-word says;if not, let him take to the net or sword. At the end of his seven yearsone born to it will stand at the start of knowledge, and leaning a fondear to the drone, he may have parley with old folks of old affairs.Playing the tune of the “Fairy Harp,” he can hear his forefolks, plaidedin skins, towsy-headed and terrible, grunting at the oars and snoring inthe caves; he has his whittle and club in the “Desperate Battle” (my owntune, my darling!), where the white-haired sea-rovers are on the shore,and a stain's on the edge of the tide; or, trying his art on Laments, hecan stand by the cairn of kings, ken the colour of Fingal's hair, and seethe moon-glint on the hook of the Druids!
To-day there are but three pipers in the wide world, from the Sound ofSleat to the Wall of France. Who they are, and what their tartan, it isnot for one to tell who has no heed for a thousand dirks in his doublet,but they may be known by the lucky ones who hear them. Namely playerstickle the chanter and take out but the sound; the three give a tune thecharm that I mention—a long thought and a bard's thought, and theybring the notes from the deeps of time, and the tale from the heart of theman who made it.
But not of the three best in Albainn today is my story, for they have notthe Lost Pibroch. It is of the three best, who were not bad, in a place Iken—Half Town that stands in the wood.
You may rove for a thousand years on league-long brogues, or hurry onfairy wings from isle to isle and deep to deep, and find no equal to thatsame Half Town. It is not the splendour of it, nor the riches of its folk;it is not any great routh of field or sheep-fank, but the scented winds ofit, and the comfort of the pine-trees round and about it on every hand. Mymother used to be saying (when I had the notion of fairy tales), that onceon a time, when the woods were young and thin, there was a road throughthem, and the pick of children of a country-side wandered among them intothis place to play at sheilings. Up grew the trees, fast and tall, andshut the little folks in so that the way out they could not get if theyhad the mind for it. But never an out they wished for. T