"That
teffle of a piper John!" he said with an involuntary stamp of his
foot. "What for will he be playing _Cha till mi tuilich?_"
"It is out of mischief, papa," said Sheila--"that is all."
"It will be more than mischief if I burn his pipes and drive him out
of Borva. Then there will be no more of mischief."
"It is very bad of John to do that," said Sheila to Lavender,
apparently in explanation of her father's anger, "for we have given
him shelter here when there will be no more pipes in all the Lewis.
It wass the Free Church ministers, they put down the pipes, for there
wass too much wildness at the marriages when the pipes would play."
"And what do the people dance to now?" asked the young gentleman, who
seemed to resent this piece of paternal government.
Sheila laughed in an embarrassed way.
"Miss Mackenzie would rather not tell you," said Ingram. "The fact is,
the noble mountaineers of these districts have had to fall back on the
Jew's harp. The ministers allow that instrument to be used--I suppose
because there is a look of piety in the name. But the dancing doesn't
get very mad when you have two or three young fellows playing a
strathspey on a bit of trembling wire."
"That teffle of a piper John!" growled Mackenzie under his breath;
and so the Maighdean-mhara lightly sped on her way, opening out the
various headlands of the islands, until at last she got into the
narrows by Eilean-Aird-Meinish, and ran up the long arm of the sea
to Mevaig.
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