The Piper Taught By the Fairies (Hebrides)

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In an island in Loch Roag there is a conical hillock said to have been the favourite resort of Fairies. The people of the island began building a turf fence for the purpose of keeping the cattle from coming in on the arable land. The line of the fence passing near the base of the hillock, they cut a quantity of turf off the side of the knoll. On the day following that on which the sods were cut a young lad-an amateur bagpipe-player-was employed in boring a piece of wood in order to make a chanter of it, when a strange woman came to him, and saluting him, told him that she would put him in the way of getting a much better chanter than he could ever make, provided he would place the sods which were cut in yonder hill yesterday in their original places. He had scarcely come back from replacing the sods when the strange woman made her appearance, and after expressing her approbation of the manner in which he had executed the work, she told him to get Maide nan Cuaran a stick stuck in the wall on which brogues were hung-and work it down to the shape of a chanter, and bore it, and after he had finished to put in the mouthpiece a reed which she handed him. He finished the chanter to the best of his ability and inserted the Fairy’s reed. The music played on the bagpipes with that chanter excelled all other pipe music. The chanter was kept for many generations by the descendants of the lad in Uig till they emigrated to America, when they took the chanter with them. Anon ‘Fairy Tales’, The Celtic Review 5 (1908), 155-171 at 158-159

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