Part 23

"We came on them first in a town called Corbie, with a church so grand and spacious a priest might bellow his head off and never be heard by the poor in the seats behind. 'Twas on a week-day, a Mass was making; that was the first and last time ever I played pipes in the House of God, and faith! that not by my own desiring. 'Twas some fancy of the priests, connived between them and the Cornal. Fifteen of us marched the flag-stones of yon kirk of Corbie playing 'Fingal's Weeping.'"

"A good brave tune!" remarked the bailie.

"A brave tune, and a bonny! I'll warrant yon one made the rafters shiver! The kirk was filled with a corps of the tribe I mention--the Brettanach--and they at their Papist worshipping; like ourselves, just country folk that would sooner be at the fishing or the croft than making warfare.

"My eye fell, in particular, on a fellow that was a sergeant, most desperate like my uncle Sandy--so like I could have cried across the kirk to him 'Oh uncle! what do ye do so far from Salen?' The French, for ordinary, are black as sloes, but he was red, red, a noble head on him like a bullock, an eagle nose, and a beard cut square and gallant.

"When the kirk spilled out its folk, they hung awhile about the burial-yard as we do ourselves in Trosdale, spelling the names on the head-stones, gossiping, and by-and-bye slipped out, I doubt not, to a change-house for a dram, and all the pipers with them except myself."

"God bless me!" cried Ronald Gorm.

"Believe it or not, but I hung back and sought my friend the red one. He was sitting all his lone on a slab in the strangers' portion of the graveyard, under yews, eating bread and onion and sipping wine from his flask of war. Now the droll thing is that though I knew he had not one word of Christian Gaelic in his cheek, 'twas the Gaelic I must speak to him.

"'Just man,' says I to him. 'Health to you and a hunter's hunger! I was looking at you yonder in the kirk, and a gentleman more like my clansman Sandy Ruadh of Salen is surely not within the four brown borders of the world nor on the deeps of ocean. Your father must have come from the Western Isles, or the mother of you been wandering.'

"Of all I said to him he knew but the one word that means the same thing, as they tell me, in all Celtdom--_eaglais_. To his feet got the Frenchman, stretched out to me his bread and wine, with a half-laugh on him most desperate like Uncle Sandy, and said _eaglais_ too, with a flourish of the heel of his loaf at the kirk behind him to show he understood that, anyway. We sat on the slab, the pair of us, my pipes stretched out between us, and there I assure, folk, was the hour of conversation!"

"But if you could not speak each other's tongue?" said a girl.

"_Tach!_ two men of the breed with a set of pipes between them can always follow one another. 'Tis my belief if I stood his words on end and could follow them backwards they would be good Gaelic of Erin. The better half of our speech was with our hands; he had not even got the English; and most of the time we talked pipe-music, as any man can do that's fit to pucker his lips and whistle. The Breton people _canntarach_ tunes too, like ourselves--soft-warbling them to fix them in the memory, and blyth that morning was our warbling; he could charm, my man, the very thrush from trees! But Herself--the _piob mhor_--was an instrument beyond his fingering; the pipes he used at home he called _biornieu_, fashioned differently from ours. Yet the same wind blows through reeds in France or Scotland, and everywhere they sing of old and simple things; you are deaf indeed if you cannot understand.

"He was from the seashore--John his name--a mariner to his trade--with a wife and seven children; himself the son of a cooper.

"I am a good hand at the talking myself, as little Margaret here will tell you, but his talk was like a stream in spate, and the arms of him went flourishing like drum-sticks. Keep mind of this--that the two of us, by now, were all alone in the kirk-yard, on a little hillock with the great big cliff of a kirk above us, and the town below all humming with the soldiers, like a byke of bees.

"He bade me play on the pipes at last and I put them in my oxter and gave him 'Lochiel's awa' to France.' A fine tune! but someway I felt I never reached him. I tried him then with bits of 'The Bugle Horn,' 'Take your gun to the Hill,' 'Bonnie Ann' and 'The Persevering Lover;' he beat time with a foot to them, and clapped my shoulder, but for all that they said to him I might as well be playing on a fiddle.

"It was only when I tried an old _port-mor_--"The Spoil of the Lowlands now graze in the Glen" that his whiskers bristled, and at that said I to myself 'I have you Uncle Sandy!'

"Before the light that flickered was gone from him I blew it up to a height again with 'Come to me Kinsman!'

"He was like a fellow that would be under spells!

"'The Good Being be about me!' cried he, and his eyes like flambeaux, 'what tune is that?'

"You never, never, never saw a man so much uplifted!

"'They call it,' said I, 'Come to me Kinsman,' (_Thigibh a so a charaid!_), and it has the name, in the small Isles of the West, of the Oldest Air of the World. The very ravens know it; what is it but the cry of men in trouble? It's older than the cairns of Icolmkill, and cried the clans from out of the Isles to Harlaw. Listen you well!' and I played it to him again--not all the MacCrimmons that ever came from Skye could play it better! For grand was the day and white with sun, and to-morrow we were marching. And many a lad of ours was dead behind us.

"When I was done, he did a droll thing then, the red fellow--put his arms about my shoulders and kissed me on the face! And the beard of him like a flaming whin!

"What must he do but learn it? Over and over again I had to whistle it to him till he had it to the very finish, and all the time the guns were going in the east.

"'If ever you were in trouble,' I said to him--though of course he could not understand me, 'and you whistled but one blast of that air, it is Col Maclean would be at your side though the world were staving in below your feet like one of your father's barrels!'"

II

The day was done in Trosdale. Beyond the rim of the sea the sun had slid to make a Sabbath morning further round the world, and all the sky in the west was streaming fire. Over the flats of Heisker the light began to wink on the Monach islets. Ebbed tide left bare sand round Kirkibost, and the sea-birds settled on them, rising at times in flocks and eddying in the air as if they were leaves and a wind had blow them. Curlews were piping bitterly.

Behind the creek where the folk were gathered on the sea-pinks, talking, Trosdale clachan sent up the reek of evening fires, and the bairns were being cried in from the fields.

The Catechist, sombre fellow, already into his Sabbath, though 'twas only Saturday nine o' the clock, came through the whins and cast about him a glance for bagpipes. He had seen Maclean's arrival with misgiving. A worthy man, and a face on him like the underside of a two-year skate-fish.

Col Maclean turned on him a visage tanned as if it had been in the cauldron with the catechu of the barking nets.

"Take you a firken too, and rest you, Catechist," said he. "You see I have not my pipes to-night, but I'm at _sgeulachd_."

But the Catechist sat not; and leaning against a net-pole sighed.

"'Twas two years after that," said Col, again into the rapture of his story, "when my regiment went to the land of wine, where we battled beside the French. I assure you we did nobly! nobly! Nor, on the soul of me! were the Frenchmen slack!"

"The French," ventured Patrick Macneill, "are renowned in story for all manly parts. Oh King! 'tis they have suffered!"

"'Tis myself, just man, that is not denying it! We were yonder in a land like Keppoch desolate after the red cock's crowing. The stars themselves, that are acquaint with grief, and have seen great tribulation in the dark of Time would sicken at the sight of it! Nothing left of the towns but _larochs_--heaps of lime and rubble where the rat made habitation, and not one chimney reeking in a hundred miles. Little we ken of trees here in the Islands, but they were yonder planted thick as bracken and cut down to the stump the way you would be cutting winter kail. And the fields that the country folk had laboured!--were the Minch drained dry, the floor of it would seem no likelier place for cropping barley or for pasturing goats.

"There was a day of days, out yonder, that we mixed up with the French and cleared the breadth of a parish of _am boche_, who was ill to shift. But the mouth of the night brought him back on us most desperate altogether, and half we had gained by noon was lost by gloaming.

"Five score and ten of our men were missing at the roll-call.

"The Cornal grunted. 'Every man of them out of Lewis!' says he; 'they're either dead or wandered. Go you out Col Maclean with your beautiful, lovely, splendid pipes, and gather at least the living.'

"Not one morsel of meat had I eaten for twenty hours, and the inside of me just one hole full of hunger, but out went Col and his pipes to herding!

"Oh King of the Elements! but that was the night most foul, with the kingdom of France a rag for wetness, and mire to the hose-tops. Rain lashed; a scourging wind whipped over the country, and it was stinking like a brock from tatters that had been men. The German guns were pelting it, the sound of them a bellow no more broken than the roar on skerries at Martinmas, the flash of them in the sky like Merry Dancers.

"I got in a while to the length of a steading with a gable standing; tuned up _piob mhor_ and played the gathering. They heard me, the lads--the living of them; two-over-twenty of them came up to me by the gable, with no more kenning of what airt they were in than if a fog had found them midway on the Long Ford of Uist. I led them back to King George's furrows where our folk were, and then, _mo chreach!_ when we counted them, one was missing!

"'It is not a good herd you are, Maclean,' said the Cornal, 'you will just go back and find Duncan Ban; he's the only man in the regiment I can trust to clean my boots.'

"So back went Col in search of Duncan."

"Oh lad! weren't you the gallant fellow!" cried Margaret's mother, adoring.

"I was that, I assure you! If it were not the pipes were in my arm-pit like a girl, my feet would not keep up on me the way I would be pelting any other road than the way I had to go. But my grief! I never got my man, nor no man after ever found him. I went to the very ditches where _am boche_ was lying, and 't was there that a light went up that made the country round about as white-bright as the day, and I in the midst of it with my pipes in hand. They threw at me grey lead as if it had been gravel, and I fell."

"_Och, a mheudail bhochd!_--Oh treasure!" said the women of Trosdale all together.

"I got to my knees in a bit and crawled, as it might be for a lifetime, one ache from head to heel, till I came to a hole as deep's a quarry where had been the crossing of roads, and there my soul went out of me. When I came to myself I was playing pipes and the day was on the land. The Good Being knows what I played, but who should come out across the plain to me but a Frenchman!

"He moved as spindrift from spindrift, As a furious winter wind-- So swiftly, sprucely, cheerily, Oh! proudly, Through glens and high-tops, And no stop made he Until he came To the city and court of Maclean, Maclean of the torments, Playing his pipes."

The Catechist writhed; the people of Trosdale shivered; Patrick Macneill wept softly, for Col Maclean, the cunning one, by the rhyming trick of the ancient sennachies, had flung them, unexpected, into the giddiness of his own swound, and all of them, wounded, dazed, saw the Frenchman come like a shadow into the world of shades.

"He flung himself in the hole beside me, did the Frenchman, gave me a sup of spirits and put soft linen to my sores, and all the time grey lead was snarling over us.

"'Make use of thy good hale feet, lad,' said I to him, 'and get out of this dirty weather! Heed not the remnants of Col Maclean. What fetched thee hither?'

"He put his hand on my pipes and whistled a stave of the old tune.

"'How learned ye that?' I asked him.

"Although he was Brettanach he had a little of the English. 'Red John our sergeant, peace be with him! heard you playing it all last night,' said he, 'took a craze at the tune of you and went out to find you, but never came back. Then another man, peace be with him! a cousin of John, heard your playing and went seeking you, but he came back not either. I heard you first, myself, no more than an hour ago, and had no sooner got your tune into my head than it quickened me like drink, and here am I, kinsman!'

"'Good lad!' I cried, 'all the waters in the world will not wash out kinship, nor the Gael be forsaken while there is love and song.'"

"Vain tales! Vain tales!" groaned the Catechist, and his face like a skate.

THE PIPES: ONSET

(Somme, September, 1916)

By JOSEPH LEE, Lieut.

_Dedicated to Major Angus MacGillivray._

_The cry is in my ear, The sight is in my eye, This is the dawning of the day That shall see me die:_

What is the piper playing That battles in my blood?-- Winds in it, Waves in it, Waters at the flood; Sadness in it, Madness in it, Weeping mists and rain-- What is the piper playing That beats within my brain?

Sobbing and throbbing Like a soul's unrest; I drink his madd'ning music in As milk at my mother's breast: Flame in it, Fame in it, Love and all desire; The clean hills, The clear rills, The smouldering peat fire; Glances sweet, Dancing feet, Beating on the floor; Maidens fair, Comrades rare I shall meet no more.

_The cry is in my ear, The sight is in my eye, This is the morning of the day That shall see me die:_

What is the piper playing That surges in my blood? The soft breeze In pine trees, The hawthorn i' the bud; The lone tarn, The golden barn, Fields of waving grain-- What is the piper playing That beats within my brain?

Red war screams from his reeds And in the thrumming drones There lurks the lapping of men's blood, And sobs, and dying groans: Night in it, Fight in it, Wraiths of stricken men, Ghosts of ancient clansmen Sweeping down the glen; Life in it, Strife in it, Whisp'rings--it is well, If you bear a foeman down Right to reddest hell!

* * * * *

_What is the piper playing? For now I may not hear ... The glamour comes across my soul, And the cry is in my ear._

FLESH TO THE EAGLES

By BOYD CABLE

It was during the retreat of 1914 that a Highland regiment was quartered for a night in one of the French villages, and billetted in houses, barns, anywhere the hospitable villagers could give them room. The officers established their Mess and quarters in "The Chateau," a big house on the outskirts of the village. Many of the villagers had already cleared out, but in the Chateau the officers found the mistress of the house, her daughter, and her servants, standing staunchly to their place; the master of the house being, as they were told, in the French Army.

Madame spoke English fairly well, the daughter very well--when she did speak, which was seldom. She was a young and pretty girl of perhaps fifteen to sixteen years of age, fresh come from a convent school, reserved, timid and shy, in the presence of the officers almost to a point of shrinking when they spoke to her. Yet, although they could see her shiver and blanch at the sound of the distant grumble of the guns, she supported her mother bravely and asserted stoutly that she was not afraid to stay, when the C.O. and some of the other officers questioned the wisdom of the household waiting for the Germans to advance.

"Perhaps, monsieur," said Madame, "your soldiers will possible arrest the advance before the Allemands arrive at us here. And if it is not so, it is, after all, soldiers of the Allemands that will come, and they will not harm women and old men and boys who make no provocation or resistance."

Unfortunately the practices of German soldiers were not then sufficiently known to the officers to make them press their argument beyond reasonable limits, and they gave in reluctantly to Madame's reasoning. "We cannot the children and the very old to march away," she said, "and one could not go and leave them here. Me, I stay to speak with the enemy officers and see my people do nothing foolish. I cannot run away and leave them."

So they left it at that.

Madame gave them dinner that night in the dining-room, and it was after dinner that one of the regimental pipers was heard parading round and playing tune after tune. Madame and Mademoiselle were greatly interested and asked many questions.

"But there," cried Madame at one tune, "there is the music most fierce. It sound--"

"It is battle music, Madame," explained the C.O. "Music of a war song of the Highlands--of the Écossais. Ask Monsieur l'Adjutant for the words of the song."

So the Adjutant recited "The Macgregors' Gathering," with all the fire and ardour of a fiery Scot, and a Macgregor at that. Madame sat with brows knit, plainly struggling to follow the English words; her daughter, as plainly understanding them clearly, held her breath and listened spellbound and wondering to the words. Her head lifted and her eye lit to some of the lines:

_While there's leaves in the forest and foam on the river, Macgregor, despite them, shall flourish for ever._

But at others, delivered with fierce emphasis and dramatic fervour, she shrank back with quivering lip and pain on her face:

_If they rob us of name and pursue us with beagles, Give their roofs to the flames, their flesh to the eagles._

When the Adjutant had finished and had sat down, looking a little shame-faced at having allowed his feelings to so carry him away, Madame and the girl spoke rapidly in French for a minute.

Then Madame shook her head. "But no," she said, "I do not like it, this song. It is cru-el, cru-el. How says it--'The roof to the burning, and the bodies, the dead, the flesh, to the birds of prey.' But no, that is the war of savage."

The C.O. tried to explain to her, while the Adjutant did so even more eagerly to the girl, that it was war of the most savage and relentless kind that ran in those far back days in the Highlands of Scotland; but again Madame protested. "It is too cru-el. I do not like it that you make such song and such music now. War, it is no more so. What is it your song says of the burning of _la maison_?" She made the Adjutant repeat the lines and repeated after him, "Ah, m'sieu, 'Give their roof to the flames, their flesh to the eagles.' That is, burn the shelter of the women and children, and leave the dead unbury. You would not do that; even the Boche that we despise would not do this thing. It is cru-el, cru-el."

Mademoiselle said nothing, but they could all see the shrinking in her eyes as she looked at them, the wonder if, even now, the Écossais could be so savage as to make such war. The Adjutant set himself to remove such an idea of their barbarity from her mind, and with some success apparently, since there was little shrinking and no more than a faint blush of timid friendship when they said good-night and retired.

Next morning the orders came, sharp, urgent and imperative, to move at once, and there was little time for farewells. But Madame and the girl were both out to see them off and watch the battalion tramp by. The pipes at their head were screaming their vengeful music, "Give their roof to the flames, their flesh to the eagles," until the Adjutant, seeing the protesting motion of Madame's hands to her ears, hurried to the pipers and asked them to change the tune.

* * * * *

After the ebb of our retreat and the period of the Marne, came the full flood-tide of our advance, and the sweeping forward of the French and British over the ground the Germans had taken and held a space. As the luck had it, the same Highland battalion came back through the same village where they had billetted that night--or rather to the shell, the wreckage, the remains of the same village. The men by now were coming to know what sort of treatment had been served out to the conquered country by the Germans, and were angry enough at some of the sights they had seen, the tales they had heard. But the anger had been cold and impersonal until now, when they came swinging in to this friendly spot, through the shattered houses and streets littered with broken bottles and household goods, saw the gaping windows to the houses, the smoke-blackened shells here and there, the signs of pillage and wanton destruction everywhere. The cavalry and an advance guard regiment had been through before them, but it was plain that no fighting had taken place here, that no shell-fire had wrought this damage, that cold-blooded "frightfulness" alone had to answer for it. They were roused to fresh wrath by what they saw, but to a still greater pitch of fury by the tales they heard from the quaking villagers who were left, or who came creeping in from the fields and ditches to which they had fled on word of approaching soldiers. The sights were no more than the men had been seeing in any of a dozen villages passed, the tales no more than they had heard a score of times in the past few days; but in this village they had been made welcome, had been treated to the best, had made quick but happy friendships; and they felt a personal injury and pity for the brutally treated villagers.

The battalion halted there for an hour or so and ate their midday meal--or rather gave it to the hungry women and children and watched them eat--and heard fresh and more horrible tales and half-tales that were too bestial to be told in full.

The moment the battalion had fallen out and he was free, the Adjutant had asked the Colonel if he might go to the Chateau and make enquiries....

But when he and another officer came there they found none to make enquiries of. The house still stood, intact so far as the building itself went, but otherwise no more than a litter of rubbish and wreckage. Every stick of furniture that would break was broken, every crock and dish and bottle was scattered in splinters over the floors, every curtain, blanket and sheet, every item of bed and table linen, every piece of clothing was torn, dirtied, and defiled as completely as men and beasts could do it; every shelf and door and balustrade and fitting was hacked and broken and wrenched out of place; every room on the ground floor had been used as horses' stables and left as foul as a stable could be; every upper room was so befouled that, by comparison, the places of the animals below was the cleaner.