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

FAERY MUSIC
illustrious pipers, and many composers of pipe-music
among them Padruig Mor MacCrimmon himself.
The famous piping-college of the MacCrimmons was
founded at Borreraig shortly after the Silver Chanter came
into their possession, it is said ; and to this college travelled
pupils from all parts of Scotland and Ireland. The piping
course was a long and strenuous one. " To the making of
a piper," wrote Neil Munro, " go seven years of his own
learning, and seven generations before." But it is said that
the training at Borreraig often extended over a period of
ten years.
When the faery endowed young MacCrimmon with the
Silver Chanter for his pipes, together with the art of the
pibroch, she cautioned him that, if ever he, or any piper of
his family in generations to come, should treat the Chanter
with anything but reverence, the hereditary gift of piping
would vanish from his kindred. Some centuries later,
when MacCrimmon's descendant, who accompanied the
Chief of the MacLeods, was returning home to Skye from
the adjoining Island of Raasay, a swell on the tide was
making piping irksome. In his capacity as hereditary piper,
MacCrimmon occupied the piper's seat at the prow of the
Chief's galley. As he continued to play, the swell continued
to increase, so that every now and then his fingers, deft
though they were, would slip from their wonted intervals on
the Silver Chanter. This annoyed MacCrimmon so
exceedingly that eventually he suspended his playing in
disgust. In laying down his pipes, he gave expression to
some unhappy remark about the Chanter, having forgotten
for the moment the hereditary obligation placed centuries
earlier upon his race by the faery donor. Thereupon the
Chanter, of its own accord, rose from the galley, and
slipped over the gunwale into the sea, where it lies to this
day.
It is said that, with the loss of the Silver Chanter, the
spell was broken. Thereafter the MacCrimmons' hereditary
supremacy quickly declined; and their school of piping,
overlooking the tide at Borreraig, fell into decay. To-day
at Borreraig there remains not a vestige of the piping-
college : nor does any MacCrimmon own a scrap of land
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