"It must be the magic tune, sure enough," said Gilian.
"Magic indeed, _laochain!_ It is the tune that puts men on the open road, that makes restless lads and seeking women. Here's a Half Town of dreamers and men fattening for want of men's work. They forget the world is wide and round about their fir-trees, and I can make them crave for something they cannot name."
"Good or bad, out with it," said Rory, "if you know it at all."
"Maybe no', maybe no'. I am old and done. Perhaps I have lost the right skill of the tune, for it's long since I put it on the great pipe. There's in me the strong notion to try it whatever may come of it, and here's for it."
He put his pipe up again, filled the bag at a breath, brought the booming to the drones, and then the chanter-reed cried sharp and high.
The groundwork of the tune was a drumming on the deep notes where the sorrows lie--"Come, come, come, my children, rain on the brae and the wind blowing."
"It's the strange tune anyway," said Gilian; "listen to the time of yon!"
The tune searched through Half Town and into the gloomy pine-wood; it put an end to the whoop of the night-hag and rang to Ben Bhreac. Boatmen deep and far on the loch could hear it, and Half Town folks sat up to listen.
It's story was the story that's ill to tell--something of the heart's longing and the curious chances of life. It bound up all the tales of all the clans, and made one tale of the Gaels' past. Dirk nor sword against the tartan, but the tartan against all else, and the Gaels' target fending the hill-land and the juicy straths from the pock-pitted little black men. The winters and the summers passing fast and furious, day and night roaring in the ears, and then again the clans at variance, and warders on every pass and on every parish.
"Folks," said the reeds, coaxing. "Wide's the world and merry the road. Here's but the old story and the women we kissed before. Come, come to the flat-lands rich and full, where the wonderful new things happen and the women's lips are still to try!"
"To-morrow," said Gilian in his friend's ear--"to-morrow I will go jaunting to the North. It has been in my mind since Beltane."
"One might be doing worse," said Rory, "and I have the notion to try a trip with my cousin to the foreign wars."