LOCHABER NO MORE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11763, 29 July 1916, Page 8

LOCHABER NO MORE.

ALISTAIR THE PROPER. "To Lochaber no more, To Lochaber no more, We'll may bo return To Lochaber no more." Twenty years ago came a wandering piper '' tcc oor toun." It was a grey dusty gloaming, redolent with the smell of rotting shellfish from the bait heaps, the cobbles were hot underfoot, the sen like glass.

Alistair, the orphan, played amony the "pirns" while old weaver Angus his loom. "Click-clack," never "easing went the shuttle—" clickcbok " 1 As long as he could discern warp from woof Angus would weave, 'cr bread was dear and took some earning. And then came tho sound -sudden, shrill, strangely sweet, and foreign to that Lowland fishing village--the skirl of the pipes! Old man Angus left his loom, lifted h ; s broad blue bonnet, and hurried to the ever-open door. Down the street marched the piper—an old grey warrior. His tartan was threadbare, his ribbons faded, his hose shabby and darned, yet he was a good for all that. Could the dust but •speak, ho had not lacked tongue to praise him. " My good man," said old Angus to him, presently, in his soft, Highland voice, "could you play meLochaber \ T o More' P"

The piper's grey face quivered a moment, as if stung by some unseen whiplash. Gravely, he put 'the chanter to his lips. All his life young Alistair remembered the playing of that piper and the took in his clear blue eyes as he gazed out beyond the bay. "What did that wild melody bring v >ack to him, I wonder? The cold white faces of those who slept wrapped in their plaids in an alien soil, the muttered hasty midnight service on the battlefield, the unforgotten farewells of those he would see again never more! And Grandfather Angus I Did ho see once more the dark loch in the "Hie-, lands," tho mud walls of the now deserted ''shieling," the purple breast of his native hills?

the kolp'e mfde that tune, Alistair thought, as he looked up and saw a big tear come " happin' " slowly down the scarred face of the piper, and noted that his grandfather's head was bont. and the blue bonnet dangleo from his shaking old hand. " I thank you, my friend," said the weaver, as the strain ended; thank you," and turned slowly to his cottage doorThe piper never spolco, but drew a hard hand across his eyes, and passed down the next street, and. so out of their lives and ken.

But that is what made of young Alistair a piper. It takes seven generations to make a piper, they say. Alistair had all that behind him, and, what was far more, he loved his pipes as no one of all his piping ancestors had ever loved them, nay, not even that notable, the '* laird's ain piper." Tho pipes were Alistair's first, his only friend. His first love* —his last. ' And how the boy practised I He played to the fairies in the moonlit glen, he paced the frozen furrows of the ploughed field when the roads were thick with snow and scarce a robin was abroad, he sent wild skirling echoes up an avenue green with spring finery, and the peeping rabbits black and grey scurried across his feet.

A dour " Hieland " laddie - in a worn red tartan kilt, a stranger with no friend s.ivo his pipes. " Puir laddio," said tho " auld wife " at the post office, with misplaced sympathy, " I'm rale wae for ye. I'm thinkin' ye maun be awfu' cauld wi' that kilt on."

" An 1 I'm thinkin', mistress," said Alistair (who wasted few words)., " that I would be a hantle caulder wantin't."

Then camo the Great Adventure! Brown faces, sticking out the railway carriage window—as many as the space would hold—laughing young brown faces saying " 'Good-bye " ■ to kent sights and sounds, and somewhere within an unsean Alistair and his beloved pipes, skirling away like one possessed.

Someone said they saw him in the great' attack, standing on the parapet of a trench, the while shells were bursting around him. He was beating time with his right foot as calmly as if on parade. His ribbon,fluttered out on the b-eezo. and high above the din rose the skirl of the pipes in the wild slogan of his clan. And then they saw him no more! When the official letter came to Grandfather Angus ho neither wept nor sighed; but he read it through twice and then crept away up to his .garret. At dusk that nislit a fishwife toiling up tht brae bent beneath a heavy creel paused, and eased back the broad leather band on hiu- brow. " Surely that's the pipes Fm hearing," she said. "I'm thinkm' Alistair maun be hame." Feeble at first, and faint, hut eradnallv swelling to real pathos and beauty —it was a coronach played for Alistair on Alist air's own old chanter—it was " I/ochaber No More." For Alistair had indeed gone "Hame." —Mary P. Hoy in the " Scotsman."