This identifies the story as just a variation of the others, though how it comes to be located in so many different places it is difficult to explain. In connection with the Mac Kinnon exploring adventure, it may be added, the tradition further tells of how a dog accompanied the party, and emerged from the cave at some other place, but bereft of his hair. He had been in a death struggle with some monster inside and had escaped.
The dog, the same dog presumably, went into an Argyllshire cave with a piper. There are many large caves on the Kintyre coast, one of the biggest being at Keill. This cave was long the resort of smugglers, and was said to possess a subterranean passage extending six miles from the mouth of the cave to the hill of Kilellan. It was haunted, and whosoever would penetrate beyond a certain distance would never again be heard of (a very convenient tradition for smugglers). A piper, however, made up his mind to explore its inmost recesses, and, accompanied by his dog, a little terrier, he set out on the expedition, while his friends watched and listened at the cavern’s mouth. The piper went in boldly, blowing his pipes till the cave resounded. His friends heard his music becoming gradually fainter and fainter until all at once, when, as they supposed, he had passed the fatal boundary, his pipes were heard to give an unearthly and tremendous skirl, while an eildrich laugh re-echoed through the cave. The terrier shortly after came running out, but without his skin. In process of time he obtained a fresh skin, but he never tried to bark after that adventure. As for the piper, his fate was purely a matter of conjecture, but he is supposed to have stumbled in the subterranean passage, for about five miles from the cavern’s mouth there was a farm house, and underneath its hearthstone the piper was, in after years, often heard playing his favourite tune, and occasionally stopping to ejaculate—
“I doubt, I doubt
I’ll ne’er get out.”
Then there is the tale of the ghostly piper of Dunderave. At certain times his music was heard issuing from a cavern which faced the sea, and into the recesses of which the waves swept. On winter nights the sounds that came from that cavern were wild and unaccountable, and often the fishermen in the vicinity were startled by fierce, bloodcurdling yells, especially in the early morning. When the tide went out the children of the village, unaware of its terrible mystery, strayed near the yawning cavern, and occasionally sad hearts were made by the disappearance of the little ones who wandered too far in. The legend of Dunderave was that the seventh son of the seventh son of a Mac Gregor, who would play the gathering of his clan in the cavern, would scatter for ever the evil spirits who frequented it. A piper, who thought he had the necessary qualifications, was got, and he had the courage to play in the cavern of Dunderave. Whether he played the gathering of his clan satisfactorily or not could never be known, but certainly he never came out of the cave, the mouth of which fell in after him, blocking up the cavern for ever. No more children were lost, but ever after there could be heard by anyone standing over the cavern, the faint music of Mac Gregor’s pipes.
Wandering Willie’s tale in Redgauntlet is much too long to quote entire. In it Steenie the Piper, who has paid his rent to the dead Sir Robert Redgauntlet, is threatened with eviction by the next laird because he has not a receipt, and when riding home through the darkness in great perplexity of mind, is accosted by a stranger, who guides him to an unearthly place, where he finds Sir Robert and many people whom he knew were dead gathered round the festal board. He demands his receipt from Sir Robert, but the laird, or rather “the something that was like him,” asks him to play up “Weel Hoddled, Luckie,” a tune he had learned from a warlock, that heard it when they were worshipping Satan at their meetings, and which he never played willingly. Now he grew cauld at the name of it, and said, for excuse, he hadna his pipes wi’ him:—
“‘Mac Callum, ye limb of Beelzebub,’ said the fearfu’ Sir Robert, ‘bring Steenie pipes that I am keeping for him.’
“Mac Callum brought a pair of pipes that might have served the piper of Donald of the Isles. But he gave my gudesire a nudge as he offered them; and, looking secretly and closely, Steenie saw that the chanter was of steel, and heated to a white heat, so he had fair warning not to trust his fingers with it. So he excused himself again, and said he was faint and frightened and had not wind aneugh to fill the bag.
“‘Then ye maun eat and drink, Steenie,’ said the figure, ‘for we do little else here, and its ill speaking between a fu’ man and a fasting.’
“But Steenie was not to be cajoled or threatened into any more transactions with the ghostly crew than he could help, so he spoke up like a man, and said he came neither to eat or drink or make minstrelsy, but simply for his receipt, which in a rage ‘the appearance’ gave him. Then, when Sir Robert stipulated that the piper should return after a twelvemonth to pay homage, Steenie’s tongue loosened yet more, and he exclaimed:—