I A Gossip on a Sutherland Hill-side 261 



miller could play upon them as certainly as every 

 Highland smith now thinks he can. Sir Robert 

 Gordon mentions the Earl of Sutherland's harper in 

 the seventeenth century, and oddly enough records 

 that he died from drinking whisky, ' a fainting 

 liquor in travel,' but gives no hint of the pipes. The 

 Jews' or jaws harp is but little appreciated by us 

 southerns, except by the youthful population, who 

 find it an excellent accompaniment to the whitey- 

 brown paper and small-tooth-comb ; but a few years 

 ago it was very popular in Sutherland as a means 

 of producing dance-music. It has rather gone out 

 of fashion lately ; but last summer I heard a succes- 

 sion of old Gaelic airs played upon it with an amount 

 of tenderness of feeling, clearness of tone, and per- 

 fection of time which electrified me. No instrument 

 could have rendered the rapid inflections and changes 

 of the wild old airs more perfectly, and, listening to 

 it, one was inclined to think that it must be older 

 than the pipes, and closely connected with the old 

 metallic stringed clairshoes, so perfectly was it 

 adapted to the spirit of the music. When I leant 

 back and closed my eyes, it required no very great 

 stretch of the imagination to make believe that I 

 was listening to some strange old-world fairy music, 

 distant yet clear, ringing up from far below some 

 green hillock. It is the oddest sound, soft but 

 metallic, coming and going, as if borne on the fitful 

 waves of the night wind, that ever I heard. 



So long did the recollection of the Danes linger 



