The Highland bagpipe

by W. L. Manson

Pipers with a leaning towards the uncanny dealt largely with fairies, and in West Highland mythology piping is said to have been heard in fairies’ hillocks. “I know two sisters,” says a boy in a story of Skye—“one of them is a little deaf—and they heard a sound in a hill, and they followed the sound, and did they not sit and listen to the piping till they were seven times tired? There is no question about that.” We do not believe in those things now. Our forefathers did, however, and there seems to have been an idea that pipers were special favourites of the little harmless green-coated ones. It is, indeed, their association with fairies that provides the most interesting of all the stories about pipers. There are ever so many stories of their adventures in the fairies’ mounds and caves, and, like other classes of Celtic tales, they all run in one groove though they are located as far distant as Scotland is long. Like the story of Faust, where a man sells his soul for a period of worldly pleasure, so the story of the piper who goes to the fairies for a while, and sometimes comes back again, permeates all the literature of its class. It turns up all over Scotland, it has been heard often in Ireland, and even in the Scilly Isles it is known. It does not require much ingenuity to show that those legends have all been derived from one original story. The same remark, however, applies to the legendary lore of the entire Celtic race—Scottish, Irish and Continental. Divested of “trimmings” added by the passing of ages and the difference in circumstances, Celtic stories are found to have so much in common as to create strong presumptive evidence that the race must some time or other have lived together, a united people, a mighty scattering taking place afterwards, during which the Celts spread themselves over the world, carrying their folk-lore with them. That is one theory regarding the race, and this singular fact about its traditions is one of the strongest arguments in its favour.

Perhaps the most concise version of the fairy story comes from Sutherlandshire. A man whose wife had just been delivered of her first-born set off with a friend to the village of Lairg to have the child’s birth entered in the session books, and to buy a cask of whisky for the christening. As they returned, weary with the day’s walk, they sat down to rest at the foot of the hill of Durcha, on the estate of Rosehall, near a large hole, from which they were ere long astonished to hear the sounds of piping and dancing. The father, feeling very curious, entered the cavern, went in a few steps, and disappeared. The other man waited for a while, but had to go home without his friend. After a week or two had passed, and the christening was over, and still there was no sign of the father’s return, the friend was accused of murder. He denied the charge again and again, and repeated the tale of how the child’s father had disappeared into the cavern. At last he asked for a year and a day in which to clear himself of the charge. He repaired often at dusk to the fatal spot and called for his friend, and prayed, but the time allowed him was all spent except one day, and nothing had happened. In the gloaming of that day, as he sat by the hillside, he saw what seemed to be his friend’s shadow pass into the opening. He followed it, and, passing inside, heard tunes on the pipes, and saw the missing man tripping merrily with the fairies. He caught him by the sleeve and pulled him out. “Bless me, Sandy!” cried the father, “why could you not let me finish my reel.” “Bless me!” replied Sandy, “have you not had enough of reeling this last twelvemonth?” “Last twelvemonth!” cried the other in amazement, nor would he believe the truth concerning himself till he found his wife sitting by the door with a year-old child in her arms. The time passed quickly in the company of the good people.

Here, again, is perhaps the best of the long stories of pipers and fairies. It is from the Celtic Magazine, so ably conducted by the late Alexander Mac Kenzie:—

“Jamie Gow, a celebrated piper of many, many years ago, lived at Niskisher, in Harris. He had a croft, but neglected it for the pipes, which brought him his livelihood. His home was five miles from a famous fairy knoll, in which thousands of fairies were. Till Jamie’s time no one ever found the entrance. It was said that if a piper played a certain tune three times round the base of the knoll, going against the sun, he would discover the door, but this no hero of the chanter had previously attempted.

“Among a number of drouthy neighbours one day a debate got up as to the nature of the inside of the knoll. Jamie Gow declared that he would for a gallon of brandy play round the knoll in the proper way, and if he found the door he would enter and play the fairies a tune better than anything they had ever danced to. A score of voices cried “done,” and the bargain was made. About noon on the following day Jamie, after partaking of something to keep his courage up, proceeded to Tom-na-Sithichean, the Fairy Knoll. He was accompanied by scores of people, some cheering, some discouraging him. On reaching the knoll he emptied other two “coggies,” took up his position, and began to play. As soon as the first skirl of his pipes was heard all the people fled to the top of an adjoining hill to wait the result. With a slow but steady step Jamie marched round the Tom. Twice he completed his journey without mishap, and he had almost finished the third round. But when within two or three paces of the end he was seen to stand for a moment and then disappear. There was an opening in the side of the hill, which admitted him to a long dark passage, so rugged and uneven as to make it most inconvenient for a piper to keep marching and playing a particular tune, as Jamie was. The air, too, was chilly and disagreeable, drops of water continually trickling down the cold damp sides of the passage. Jamie, however, marched on fearlessly, and strange to say the farther he went the lighter grew his step and the livelier his tune. By and by the long passage became illuminated with a faint light, by which he saw that the roof and sides were very thickly covered with short and starry pendants, which shone white and radiant, like marble. Forward still, till he reached a door which opened of its own accord and led into a chamber of indescribable splendour. The floor seemed of solid silver, the walls of pure gold, and the furniture most costly. Around the table sat hundreds of lovely women and smiling men, all perfect in form and clothed in spotless green, brilliant and rich beyond description. They had apparently finished a sumptuous dinner, and were now quaffing the purple juice of the grape out of diamond-mounted cups of exquisite beauty.

“At the sight of such splendour, the piper for a moment was amazed, the drones fell powerless on his arm, for he stood with open mouth, ceasing to blow his bag. Noticing this, one of the green gentlemen rose from his seat, and, smiling coyly, handed him a cup of wine to drink, which Jamie loved too dearly to refuse. So, taking the proffered cup, with thanks, he said—‘I am a piper to my trade. I have travelled and played from one end of the island to the other, but such a pretty place and such lovely people I never saw.’ And he quaffed the cup at one draught.

“The gentleman in green then asked if he would favour the company with a tune called ‘The Fairy Dance,’ at which they knew he excelled all other performers. Nothing pleased Jamie better than a little puffing—this, probably, the inhabitants of the knoll knew—and he replied lustily, ‘And, by my faith, I will, and I will play it as true as ever any piper played a tune.’ In a moment the vast assembly was on its feet, swinging from side to side in a long country dance. Nothing that Jamie had ever seen compared to the graceful manner in which both ladies and gentlemen performed their evolutions, and this encouraged him to blow with might and main and stamp hastily with both feet, as if inspired, like the other performers.

“Meanwhile the people who had accompanied Jamie surrounded the knoll in search of him. They saw the spot where he disappeared, and some asserted that they saw the door itself, but when they came near the place there was no door. They continued the search for weeks, looking and listening in the hope of hearing the well-known notes of his chanter, but without success. Years passed, and Jamie did not return. The story of his disappearance at the knoll had spread far and wide, and his fate was the subject of conversation at many gatherings throughout the Western Isles. But though he was sadly missed at the balls and weddings, no one missed or pined for Jamie like his widowed mother and his sweetheart, Mairi Nighean Gilleam, to whom he was to have been married shortly after he left on his rash journey round the knoll.

“For several years Jamie continued to play ‘The Fairy Dance,’ and the dancers seemed as fresh as when he began. At long last the piper, wearied almost out of breath, cried ‘May God bless you, friends! my breath is almost gone.’ The mention of the Great Name produced a revolution. In a moment all lights were out, the beautifully clad assemblage and the gorgeous hall immediately disappeared, and Jamie found himself standing on the top of Tomnahurich, at Inverness. Until he inquired at a cottage in the vicinity he was entirely ignorant of his surroundings, but as soon as he found out where he was he made direct for Harris, reaching there after a journey of six weeks.

“Jamie was seven years with the fairies. When he got back to Harris he found his cottage deserted, for his mother had died a year before. No one in the place recognised him, he was so changed. His beard reached to his girdle, his cheeks were bulged out to a prodigious size by the continual blowing of his pipes, and his mouth was twice its original proportions. Mairi Nighean Uilleam knew him by his voice, and a few weeks after they became man and wife. Jamie never again visited Tom-na-Sithichean.”