“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.”