"And I haf heard Macpherson too. You iss a
player. None of the fal-de-rals of your modern players, but grand and
mighty."
"I agree with you entirely," replied Cameron, his heart warming at
the praise of his old friend of the Glen Cuagh Oir. "But," he added,
"Maclennan is a great player too."
"A great player? Yes and no. He has the fingers and the notes, but he
iss not the beeg man. It iss the soul that breathes through the chanter.
The soul!" Here he gripped Cameron by the arm. "Man! it iss like
praying. A beeg man will neffer show himself in small things, but when
he will be in communion with his Maker or when he will be pouring out
his soul in a pibroch then the beegness of the man will be manifest.
Aye," continued the piper, warming to his theme and encouraged by the
eager sympathy of his listener, "and not only the beegness but the
quality of the soul. A mean man can play the pipes, but he can neffer
be a piper. It iss only a beeg man and a fine man and, I will venture to
say, a good man, and there are not many men can be pipers."
"Aye, Mr. Sutherland," broke in the Reverend Alexander Munro, "what you
say is true, but it is true not only of piping. It is true surely of
anything great enough to express the deepest emotions of the soul. A
man is never at his best in anything till he is expressing his noblest
self.
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