“Lord save’s, ohon!
Have mercy on my soul, my breath is gone.”
This had the inevitable result. The lights went out with a fiery hissing sound, the party vanished, as well as the gorgeous hall, and when Jock again came to himself he found that he was on the top of an elf-haunted knowe in the vicinity. He had been a year and a day away from home, his friends had given him up as dead, and his features were so changed that they did not recognise him when he returned. With the long spell of blowing his mouth was distended, which also helped to disguise him. But he made himself known, and was duly received by his friends and his sweetheart, and he married shortly after. But, as J. T. Calder, the historian of Caithness, who tells the legend in rhyme, says—
“Never after was he seen to enter
The enchanted cave in quest of fresh adventure.”
A slight variation of the cave stories are the stories of underground passages. There is, for instance, the passage that is supposed to exist between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace. The piper went in at the Castle end, intending to play all the way to Holyrood. His pipes were heard as far as the Tron Church, but then the music ceased. It did not start again, and the piper was never more heard of.
A similar legend is referred to by Hugh Mac Donald in his ramble, Rutherglen and Cathkin. It is to the effect that Glasgow Cathedral was built by the “wee pechs (Picts) who had their domicile in Rutherglen.” Instead, however, of making their journeys overland, they dug an underground passage, through which they came and went. Even in Mac Donald’s youth, those who doubted this story were silenced and awed by the solemn assurance that a Highland piper, to put down the sceptics, had volunteered to explore the dark road. He was accompanied by his dog, and he entered playing a cheery tune, as if confident of a successful result. But “he was never seen or heard tell o’ again.” Only the sound of his pipes was heard as he passed underneath Dalmarnock, playing in a mournful key, which suggested the words, “I doot, I doot, I’ll ne’er get oot.” Another version tells, however, that his poor dog returned, but without its skin. According to a Glasgow ballad, it was a dominie who ventured to explore the secret path. He encountered the Deil and other “friends,” who blew him up through the waters of the Clyde, and the point at which he emerged is known to this day as “The Dominie’s Hole.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Hereditary Pipers.
“’Tis wonderful,
That an invisible instinct should frame them,