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RED HAND
THE smell of wet larch was in the air, and Glenaora was aburst to the coaxing of Spring. Paruig Dali the piper – son of the son of Iain Mor – filled his broad chest with two men’s wind, and flung the drones over his shoulder. They dangled a little till the bag swelled out, and the first blast rang in the ear of the morning. Rough and noisy, the reeds cried each other down till a master’s hand held them in check, and the long soft singing of the piobaireachd floated out among the tartan ribbons. The grey peak of Drimfern heard the music; the rock that wards the mouth of Carnus let it pass through the gap and over the hill and down to the isles below; Dun Corr-bhile and Dunchuach, proud Kilmune, the Paps of Salachary, and a hundred other braes around, leaned over to listen to the vaunting notes that filled the valley. “The Glen, the Glen is mine!” sang the blithe chanter; and, by Finne’s sword, Macruimen himself could not have fingered it better!
It was before Paruig Dali left for Halt Town; before the wars that scorched the glens; and Clan Campbell could cock its bonnet in the face of all Albainn. Paruig was old, and Paruig was blind, as the name of him tells, but he swung with a king’s port up and down on the short grass, his foot firm to every beat of the tune, his kilt tossing from side to side like a bard’s song, his sporran leaping gaily on his brown knees. Two score of lilting steps to the bumside, a slow wheel on a brogue-heel, and then back with the sun-glint on the buckles of his belt.
The men, tossing the caber and hurling the clachncart against the sun beyond the peat-bog, paused in their stride at the chanter’s boast, jerked the tartan tight on their loins, and came over to listen; the women, posting blankets for the coming sheiling, stopped their splashing in the little linn, and hummed in a dream; and men and women had mind of the days that were, when the Glen was soft with the blood of men, for the Stewarts were over the way from Appin.
“God’s splendour! but he can play too,” said the piper’s son, with his head areel to the fine tripling.
Then Paruig pushed the bag further into his oxter, and the tune changed. He laid the ground of “Bodaich nam Briogais,” and such as knew the story saw the “carles with the breeks” broken and flying before Glenurchy’s thirsty swords, far north of Morven, long days of weary march through spoiled glens.
“It’s fine playing, I’ll allow,” said the blind man’s son, standing below a saugh-tree with the bag of his bannered pipes in the crook of his arm. He wore the dull tartan of the Diarmaids, and he had a sprig of gall in his bonnet, for he was in Black Duncan’s tail. “Son of Paruig Dali,” said the Chief seven years ago come Martinmas, “if you’re to play like your father, there’s but Dunvegan for you, and the schooling of Patrick Macruimen.” So Tearlach went to Skye – cold isle of knives and caves – and in the college of Macruimen he learned the piob-mhor. Morning and evening, and all day between, he fingered the feadan or the full set – gathering and march, massacre and moaning, and the stately salute. Where the lusty breeze comes in salt from Vatemish across Loch Vegan, and the purple loom of Uist breaks the sunset’s golden bars, he stood on the braes over against Borearaig and charmed the grumbling tide. And there came a day that he played “The Lament of the Harp-Tree,” with the old years of sturdy fight and strong men all in the strain of it, and Patrick Macruimen said, “No more, lad; go home: Lochow never heard another like you.” As a cock with its comb uncut, came the stripling from Skye.
“Father,” he had said, “you play not ill for a blind man, but you miss the look on the men’s faces, and that’s half the music. Forbye, you are old, and your fingers are slow on the grace-notes. Here’s your own flesh and blood can show you fingering there was never the like of anywhere east the Isles.”
The stepmother heard the brag. “A pheasain!” she snapped, with hate in her peat-smoked face. “Your father’s a man, and you are but a boy with no heart for a long day. A place in Black Duncan’s tail, with a gillie to carry your pipes and knapsack, is not, mind ye, all that’s to the making of a piper.”
Tearlach laughed in her face. “Boy or man,” said he, “look at me! north, east, south, and west, where is the one to beat me? Macruimen has the name, but there were pipers before Macruimen, and pipers will come after him.”
“It’s maybe as you say,” said Paruig. “The stuff’s in you, and what is in must out; but give me cothrom na Feinne, and old as I am, with Finne’s chance, and that’s fair play, I can maybe make you crow less crouse. Are ye for trying?”
“I am at the training of a new chanter-reed,” said Tearlach; “but let it be when you will.”
They fixed a day, and went out to play against each other for glory, and so it befell that on this day Paruig Dali was playing “The Glen is Mine” and “Bodaich nam Briogais” in a way to make stounding hearts.
Giorsal snapped her fingers in her stepson’s face when her husband closed the crunluadh of his piobaireachd.
“Can you better it, bastard?” snarled she.
“Here goes for it, whatever!” said Tear-lach, and over his back went the banner with its boar’s head sewn on gold. A pretty lad, by the cross! clean-cut of limb and light of foot, supple of loin, with the toss of the shoulder that never a decent piper lacked. The women who had been at the linn leaned on each other all in the soft larch-scented day, and looked at him out of deep eyes; the men on the heather arose and stood nigher.
A little tuning, and then
“Is comadh leam’s comadh leam, cogadh na sithe,
Marbhar ‘sa chogadh na crochar’s an t-sith mi.”
“Peace or war!” cried Giorsal, choking in anger, to her man – “peace or war! the black braggart! it’s an asp ye have for a son, goodman!”
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 only once they looked back at their women high on the brae-face.
The nuts were thick on the roadside, hanging heavy from swinging branches, and some of the men pulled them off as they passed, stayed for more, straggled, and sang bits of rough songs they ken over many of on Lochowside to this day. So Niall Mor glunched at his corps from under his bonnet and showed his teeth.
“Gather in, gather in,” said he; “ye march like a drove of low-country cattle. Alasdair, put ‘Baile Inneraora’ on her!”
Alasdair changed his tune, and the good march of Clan Diarmaid went swinging down the glen.
The time passed; the sun stood high and hot; clucking from the fir-plantings came woodcock and cailzie; the two rivers were crossed, and the Diarmaids slockened their thirst at the water of Altan Aluinn, whose birth is somewhere in the bogs beside tall Bhuidhe Ben.
Where the clans met was at the Foal’s Gap, past Maam. A score of the MacKellars ran out in a line from the bushes, and stotted back from the solid weight of Diarmaid moving in a lump and close-shouldered in the style Niall Mor got from the Italian soldier. Some fell, hacked on the head by the heavy slash of the dry sword; some gripped too late at the pikes that kittled them cruelly; and one – Iver-of-the-Oars – tripped on a root of heather, and fell with his breast on the point of a Diarmaid’s dirk.
To the hills went a fast summons, and soon at the mouth of the gap came twoscore of the MacKellars. They took a new plan, and close together faced the green tartan, keeping it back at the point of steel, though the pick of Glenaora wore it, and the brogues slipped on the brae-face. It was fast cut and drive, quick flash of the dirk, with the palm up and the hand low to find the groin, and a long reach with the short black knife. The choked breath hissed at teeth and nose, the salt smell of new blood brought a shiver to birch-leaf and gall. But ever the green tartan had the best of it.
“Bas, bas, Dhiarmaid!” cried Calum Dubh, coming up on the back of his breaking two-score with fresh lads from Elerigmor, bed-naked to the hide, and a new fury fell on the two clans tearing at it in the narrow hollow in between the rocky hills. So close they were, there was small room for the whirl of the basket-hilt, and “Mind Tom-a-Phubaill and the shortened steel!” cried Niall Mor, smashing a pretty man’s face with a blow from the iron guard of his Ferrara sword. The halberts, snapped at the haft to make whittles, hammered on the target-hides like stones on a coffin, or rang on the bosses; the tartan ripped when the stuck one rolled on his side before the steel could be twisted out; below the foot the grass felt warm and greasy, and the reason was not ill to seek.
Once it looked like the last of Calum Dubh. He was facing Niall Mor, sword and targe, and Niall Mor changed the sword to the other hand, pulled the sgian-dubh from his garter, and with snapping teeth pushed like a lightning fork below MacKellar’s target. An Elerigmor man ran in between; the little black knife sunk into his belly with a moist plunge, and the blood spouted on the deer-horn haft.
“Mallachd ort! I meant yon for a better man,” cried Niall Mor; “but it’s well as it is, for the secret’s to the fore,” and he stood up dour and tall against a new front of Mac-Kellar’s men.
Then the sky changed, and a thin smirr of warm rains fell on the glen like smoke; some black-cattle bellowed at the ford in a wonder at where their herds could be, and the herds – stuck, slashed, and cudgelled – lay stiffening on the torn grass between the gap and Mac-Kellar’s house. From end to end of the glen there was no man left but was at the fighting. The hook was tossed among the corn; the man hot-foot behind the roe, turned when he had his knife at its throat, to go to war; a lover left his lass among the heather; and all, with tightened belts, were at the old game with Clan Diarmaid, while their women, far up on the sappy levels between the hill-tops and beside the moor-lochs, span at the wheel or carded wool, singing songs with light hearts and thinking no danger.
Back went MacKellar’s men before Niall
Mor and his sturdy lads from Camus, the breeder of soldiers – back through the gap and down on the brae to the walls of Calum Dubh.
“‘Illean, ‘illean!” cried Calum; “lads, lads! they have us, sure enough. Oh! pigs and thieves! squint mouths and sons of liars!”
The cry gathered up the strength of all that was left of his clan, Art and Uileam, the Maam lads, the brothers from Drimlea and two from over Stron hill, and they stood up together against the Carnus men – a gallant madness! They died fast and hard, and soon but Calum and his two sons were left fencing, till a rush of Diarmaids sent them through the door of the house and tossed among the peats.
“Give in and your lives are your own,” said Niall Mor, wiping his sword on his shirtsleeve, and with all that were left of his Diarmaids behind his back.
To their feet stood the three MacKellars.
Calum looked at the folk in front of him, and had mind of other ends to battles. “To die in a house like a rat were no great credit,” said he, and he threw his sword on the floor, where the blades of Art and Uileam soon joined it.
With tied arms the father and his sons were taken outside, where the air was full of the scents of birch and gall new-washed. The glen, clearing fast of mist, lay green and sweet for mile and mile, and far at its mouth the fat Blaranbuie woods chuckled in the sun.
“I have you now,” said Niall Mor. “Ye ken what we seek. It’s the old ploy – the secret of the ale.”
Calum laughed in his face, and the two sons said things that cut like knives.
“Man! I’m feared ye’ll rue this,” said Niall Mor, calm enough. “Ye may laugh, but – what would ye call a gentleman’s death?”
“With the sword or the dagger in the hand, and a Diarmaid or two before me,” cried Calum.
“Well, there might be worse ways of travelling yont – indeed there could ill be better; but if the secret of the ale is not to be ours for the asking, ye’ll die a less well-bred death.”
“Name it, man, name it,” said Calum. “Might it be tow at the throat and a fir-branch.”
“Troth,” said Niall Mor, “and that were too gentle a travelling. The Scaurnoch’s on our way, and the crows at the foot of it might relish a Glen Shira carcass.”
Uileam whitened at the notion of so ugly an end, but Calum only said, “Die we must any way,” and Art whistled a bit of a pipe-tune, grinding his heel on the moss.
Niall Mor made to strike the father on the face, but stayed his hand and ordered the three in-by, with a few of his corps to guard them. Up and down Glen Shira went the Diarmaids, seeking the brewing-cave, giving hut and home to the flame, and making black hearths and low lintels for the women away in the sheilings. They buried their dead at Kilblaan, and, with no secret the better, set out for Scaurnoch with Calum and his sons.
The MacKellars were before, like a spreidh of stolen cattle, and the lot of the driven herd was theirs. They were laughed at and spat on, and dirk-hilts and cromags hammered on their shoulders, and through Blaranbuie wood they went to the bosky elbow of Dun Corr-bhile and round to the Dun beyond.
Calum, for all his weariness, stepped like a man with a lifetime’s plans before his mind; Art looked about him in the fashion of one with an eye to woodcraft; Uileam slouched with a heavy foot, white at the jaw and wild of eye.
The wood opened, the hunting-road bent about the hill-face to give a level that the eye might catch the country spread below. Loch Finne stretched far, from Ardno to French Foreland, a glassy field, specked with one sail off Creaggans. When the company came to a stand, Calum Dubh tossed his head to send the hair from his eyes, and looked at what lay below. The Scaurnoch broke at his feet, the grey rock-face falling to a depth so deep that weary mists still hung upon the sides, jagged here and there by the top of a fir-tree. The sun, behind the Dun, gave the last of her glory to the Cowal Hills; Hell’s Glen filled with wheeling mists; Ben Ime, Ben Vane, and Ben Arthur crept together and held princely converse on the other side of the sea.
All in a daze of weariness and thinking the Diarmaids stood, and looked and listened, and the curlews were crying bitter on the shore.
“Oh, haste ye, lads, or it’s not Carnus for us to-night,” cried Niall Mor. “We have business before us, and long’s the march to follow. The secret, black fellow!”
Calum Dubh laughed, and spat in a bravado over the edge of the rock.
“Come, fool; if we have not the word from you before the sun’s off Sithean Sluaidhe, your sleep this night is yonder,” and he pointed at the pit below.
Calum laughed the more. “If it was hell itself,” said he, “I would not save my soul from it.”
“Look, man, look! the Sithean Sluaidhe’s getting black, and any one of ye can save the three yet. I swear it on the cross of my knife.”
Behind the brothers, one, John-Without-Asking, stood, with a gash on his face, eager to give them to the crows below.
A shiver came to Uileam’s lips; he looked at his father with a questioning face, and then stepped back a bit from the edge, making to speak to the tall man of Chamis.
Calum saw the meaning, and spoke fast and thick.
“Stop, stop,” said he; “it’s a trifle of a secret, after all, and to save life ye can have it.”
Art took but a little look at his father’s face, then turned round on Shira Glen and looked on the hills where the hunting had many a time been sweet. “Maam no more,” said he to himself; “but here’s death in the hero’s style!”
“I thought you would tell it,” laughed Niall Mor. “There was never one of your clan but had a tight grip of his little life.”
“Ay!” said Calum Dubh; “but it’s my secret. I had it from one who made me swear on the holy steel to keep it; but take me to Carnus, and I’ll make you the heather-ale.”
“So be’t, and – ”
“But there’s this in it, I can look no clansmen nor kin in the face after telling it, so Art and Uileam must be out of the way first.”
“Death, MacKellar?”
“That same.”
Uileam shook like a leaf, and Art laughed, with his face still to Shira, for he had guessed his father’s mind.
“Faith!” said Niall Mor, “and that’s an easy thing enough,” and he nodded to John-Without-Asking.
The man made stay nor tarry. He put a hand on each son’s back and pushed them over the edge to their death below. One cry came up to the listening Diarmaids, one cry and no more – the last gasp of a craven.
“Now we’ll take you to Camus, and you’ll make us the ale, the fine ale, the cream of rich heather-ale,” said Niall Mor, putting a knife to the thongs that tied MacKellar’s arms to his side.
With a laugh and a fast leap Calum Dubh stood back on the edge of the rock again.
“Crook-mouths, fools, pigs’ sons! did ye think it?” he cried. “Come with me and my sons and ye’ll get ale, ay, and death’s black wine, at the foot of Scaurnoch.” He caught fast and firm at John-Without-Asking, and threw himself over the rock-face. They fell as the scart dives, straight to the dim sea of mist and pine-tip, and the Diarmaids threw themselves on their breasts to look over. There was nothing to see of life but the crows swinging on black feathers; there was nothing to hear but the crows scolding.
Niall Mor put the bonnet on his head and said his first and last friendly thing of a foe.
“Yon,” said he, “had the heart of a man!”
