Col Maclean, for the first time, there and then, gave his tale of The Oldest Air in the World.
"I was thinking to myself," said he, "as I was coming through the whins there, that even now, in creeks of the sea like this, beside their nets adrying, there must be crofter folk in France, and they at ceilidh like yourselves, telling of tales and putting to each other riddles."
"Ubh! ubh! It is certain there are no crofters in France, whatever," said William-the-Elder. "It is wine they drink in France, as I heard tell from the time I was the height of a Lorne shoe, and who ever heard of crofters drinking wine?"
"Wherever are country people and the sea beside them to snatch a meal from, you will find the croft," insisted Col the piper. "They have the croft in France, though they have a different name for it from ours, and I'll wager the bulk of the land they labour is as bare as a bore's snout, for that is what sheep and deer have left in Europe for the small spade-farmer."
"Did'st see the crofting lands out yonder?" asked Margaret's mother.
"No," said the piper; "but plenty I saw of the men they breed there; I ate with them, and marched with them, and battled at their side, for we were not always playing the pipes, we music-fellows.
"And that puts me in mind of a thing—there is a people yonder, over in France, that play the bagpipe—they call them Brettanach—the Bretons. They are the same folk as ourselves though kind of Frenchmen too, wine-drinking, dark and Papist. Race, as the old-word says, goes down to the rock, and you could tell at the first glance of a Brettanach that he was kin to us though a kilt was never on his loins, and not one word in his head of the Gaelic language. 'Tis history! Someway—some time—far back—they were sundered from us, the Brettanach, and now have their habitation far enough from Albyn of the mountains, glens and heroes. Followers of the sea, fishermen or farmers; God-fearing, good hard drinkers, in their fashion—many a time I looked at one and said to myself, 'There goes a man of Skye or Lewis!'"
"And the girls of them?" said Ranald Gorm, with a twinkle of the eyes.
"You have me there!" said Col. "I never saw woman-kind of the Brettanach; the war never went into their country, and the Bretons I saw were in regiments of the army, far enough from home like myself, in the champagne shires where they make the wine.