The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
death it was designed to commemorate, was the only
casualty in a skirmish in the territory of MacLeod's enemies.
It is true, of course, that MacLeod's piper, MacCrimmon to
name, was the only casualty at the Rout of Moy.
According to the other, the piper is supposed to have entered
this cave, accompanied by his faithful dog, when gradually
—so the story goes—the skirl of his pipes became fainter
and fainter, until eventually it died away. The islanders,
it is said, watched the piper enter the cave ; and they were
greatly perturbed when he did not come back. And long,
indeed, did they keep vigil at
returned no more.
its mouth ; but MacCrimmon
Tradition has it, however, that some time afterwards his
poor, woebegone dog hirpled out of the cave in a semi-flayed
and exhausted condition. But no satisfactory account was
ever forthcoming as to the mysterious disappearance of his
master. So, the Skye folks came to the conclusion that
MacCrimmon had been ' spirited away ' by the faery queen,
whose ears he had delighted by the rich strains of his
pibrochs. This, at any rate, is the story as I received it a
few years ago from the lips of the folks at Dunvegan ; and,
except so far as the fate of the dog is concerned, it coincides
very closely with the Lewis version that I got from a lancecorporal
in the Seaforths, who, while we were billeted in a
tumble-down barn at Rubrouck, in Flanders, a few days
after most of our Gaelic comrades had been killed in a
foolish onslaught at Ypres, could only console his troubled
spirit by crooning to himself the old, Lewisian version of
MacCrimmon's Lament.
The cave of Borreraig is not the only one in the Isle of
Skye, into which a piper is said to have gone. In the northwest
of the parish of Kilmuir, and not far from the
promontory known as Bornaskitaig Point, there are three
caves. Local legend has it that in one of these— probably
in Uamh nan Oir, the Cave of Gold—a piper was lost.
This legend must date back at least as far as the seventeenth
century, since Martin Martin, who supposed the cave to be
a mile in length, records that the natives around this place
told him of an over-anxious piper who, having resolved to
explore its dark passages and to ascertain its correct
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