MARQUISE OF LOSSIE'S ADVENTURES: Malcolm & The Marquis's Secret. George MacDonald
Then he had such tales to tell her—of mountain, stream, and lake; of love and revenge; of beings less and more than natural —brownie and Boneless, kelpie and fairy; such wild legends also, haunting the dim emergent peaks of mist swathed Celtic history; such songs—come down, he said, from Ossian himself—that sometimes she would sit and listen to him for hours together.
It was no wonder then that she should win the heart of the simple old man speedily and utterly; for what can bard desire beyond a true listener—a mind into which his own may, in verse or tale or rhapsody, in pibroch or coronach, overflow? But when, one evening, in girlish merriment, she took up his pipes, blew the bag full, and began to let a highland air burst fitfully from the chanter, the jubilation of the old man broke all the bounds of reason. He jumped from his seat and capered about the room, calling her all the tenderest and most poetic names his English vocabulary would afford him; then abandoning the speech of the Sassenach, as if in despair of ever uttering himself through its narrow and rugged channels, overwhelmed her with a cataract of soft flowing Gaelic, returning to English only as his excitement passed over into exhaustion—but in neither case aware of the transition.
Her visits were the greater comfort to Duncan, that Malcolm was now absent almost every night, and most days a good many hours asleep; had it been otherwise, Florimel, invisible for very width as was the gulf between them, could hardly have made them so frequent. Before the fishing season was over, the piper had been twenty times on the verge of disclosing every secret in his life to the high born maiden.
"It's a pity you haven't a wife to take care of you, Mr MacPhail," she said one evening. "You must be so lonely without a woman to look after you!"
A dark cloud came over Duncan's face, out of which his sightless eyes gleamed.
"She'll haf her poy, and she'll pe wanting no wife," he said sullenly. "Wifes is paad."
"Ah!" said Florimel, the teasing spirit of her father uppermost for the moment, "that accounts for your swearing so shockingly the other day?"
"Swearing was she? Tat will pe wrong. And who was she'll pe swearing at?"
"That's what I want you to tell me, Mr MacPhail."
"Tid you'll hear me, my laty?" he asked in a tone of reflection, as if trying to recall the circumstance.
"Indeed I did. You frightened me so that I didn't dare come in."
"Ten she'll pe punished enough. Put it wass no harm to curse ta wicket Cawmill."
"It was not Glenlyon—it wasn't a man at all; it was a woman you were in such a rage with."
"Was it ta rascal's wife, ten, my laty?" he asked, as if he were willing to be guided to the truth that he might satisfy her, but so much in the habit of swearing, that he could not well recollect the particular object at a given time.
"Is his wife as bad as himself then?"
"Wifes is aalways worser."
"But what is it makes you hate him so dreadfully? Is he a bad man?"
"A fery pad man, my tear laty! He is tead more than a hundert years."
"Then why do you hate him so?"
"Och hone! Ton't you'll never hear why?"
"He can't have done you any harm."
"Not done old Tuncan any harm! Tidn't you'll know what ta tog would pe toing to her aancestors of Glenco? Och hone! Och hone! Gif her ta tog's heart of him in her teeth, and she'll pe tearing it—tearing it—tearing it!" cried the piper in a growl of hate, and with the look of a maddened tiger, the skin of his face drawn so tight over the bones that they seemed to show their whiteness through it.
"You quite terrify me," said Florimel, really shocked. "If you talk like that, I must go away. Such words are not fit for a lady to hear."
The old man heard her rise: he fell on his knees, and held out his arms in entreaty.
"She's pegging your pardons, my laty. Sit town once more, anchel from hefen, and she'll not say it no more. Put she'll pe telling you ta story, and then you'll pe knowing tat what 'll not pe fit for laties to hear, as coot laties had to pear!"
He caught up the Lossie pipes, threw them down again, searched in a frenzy till he found his own, blew up the bag with short thick pants, forced from them a low wail, which ended in a scream—then broke into a kind of chant, the words of which were something like what follows: he had sense enough to remember that for his listener they must be English. Doubtless he was translating as he went on. His chanter all the time kept up a low pitiful accompaniment, his voice only giving expression to the hate and execration of the song.
Black rise the hills round the vale of Glenco; Hard rise its rocks up the sides of the sky; Cold fall the streams from the snow on their summits; Bitter are the winds that search for the wanderer; False are the vapours that trail o'er the correi Blacker than caverns that hollow the mountain, Harder than crystals in the rock's bosom Colder than ice borne down in the torrents, More bitter than hail windswept o'er the correi, Falser than vapours that hide the dark precipice, Is the heart of the Campbell, the hell hound Glenlyon.
Is it blood that is streaming down into the valley? Ha! 'tis the red coated blood hounds of Orange.
To hunt the red deer, is this a fit season? Glenlyon, said Ian, the son of the chieftain: What seek ye with guns and with gillies so many?
Friends, a warm fire, good cheer, and a drink, Said the liar of hell, with the death in his heart.
Come home to my house—it is poor, but your own.
Cheese of the goat, and flesh of black cattle, And dew of the mountain to make their hearts joyful, They gave them in plenty, they gave them with welcome; And they slept on the heather, and skins of the red deer.
Och hone for the chief! God's curse on the traitors! Och hone for the chief—the father of his people! He is struck through the brain, and not in the battle!
Och hone for his lady! the teeth of the badgers Have torn the bright rings from her slender fingers! They have stripped her and shamed her in sight of her clansmen! They have sent out her ghost to cry after her husband.
Nine men did Glenlyon slay, nine of the true hearts! His own host he slew, the laird of Inverriggen.
Fifty they slew—the rest fled to the mountains. In the deep snow the women and children Fell down and slept, nor awoke in the morning.
The bard of the glen, alone among strangers, Allister, bard of the glen and the mountain, Sings peace to the ghost of his father's father, Slain by the curse of Glenco, Glenlyon.
Curse on Glenlyon! His wife's fair bosom Dry up with weeping the fates of her children! Curse on Glenlyon! Each drop of his heart's blood Turn to red fire and hum through his arteries! The pale murdered faces haunt him to madness! The shrieks of the ghosts from the mists of Glenco Ring in his ears through the caves of perdition! Man, woman, and child, to the last born Campbell, Rush howling to hell, and fall cursing Glenlyon—The liar who drank with his host and then slew him!
While he chanted, the whole being of the bard seemed to pour itself out in the feeble and quavering tones that issued from his withered throat. His voice grew in energy for a while as he proceeded, but at last gave way utterly under the fervour of imprecation, and ceased. Then, as if in an agony of foiled hate, he sent from chanter and drone a perfect screech of execration, with which the instrument dropped from his hands, and he fell back in his chair, speechless.
Lady Florimel started to her feet, and stood trembling for a moment, hesitating whether to run from the cottage and call for help, or do what she might for the old man herself. But the next moment he came to himself, saying, in a tone of assumed composure:
"You'll pe knowing now, my laty, why she'll pe hating ta very name of Clenlyon."
"But it was not your grandfather that Glenlyon killed, Mr MacPhail—was it?"
"And whose grandfather would it pe then, my lady?" returned Duncan, drawing himself