A story curiously like that of Tam o’ Shanter, but of a much more pleasant nature, at least for the human participator, comes from the Hebrides—the particular isle is not stated. A gentleman innkeeper, who was taught by Angus Mac Kay, the late Queen’s piper, and could play the pipes as well as the violin, was sadly addicted to the drinking habit, and had frequent fits of _delirium tremens_, in which he had extraordinary experiences. Once when he had been indulging with his usual prodigality, the result found him in a large hall, laid out for dancing, and with a band of performers dressed in blue. The chief of the blue imps stood as if in front of the orchestra, grinning, capering, and gesticulating in the most fantastic manner. In the course of time, however, he became more amiable, and, drawing up his tail over his shoulder, he fingered it as if it were the chanter of the pipes, and there poured out a most inspiriting jig, the force of which neither demon nor man could resist, and the performance rivalled that in Alloway’s “auld haunted kirk.” But, and this is where Tam o’ Shanter failed and the innkeeper succeeded, “mine host” remembered the tune after his recovery, and played it, and the last teller of the story says he “heard it played by another party who had learned it from him.” But, unfortunately, he was too lazy to make a copy, so the “Lost Jig” went the way of the “Lost Pibroch,” and is now unknown to the World. [Illustration: THE DANCE OF DEATH _From a Woodcut of the Time of Henry VIII._ ] That the idea of a demoniac piper is not peculiar to Scotland is shown by the sculpture executed by the celebrated German artist, Durer, which represents the Devil playing on the pipes; by an engraving of a pageant at Antwerp in the sixteenth century, where a similar figure occurs, and by various Continental stories and pictures. The pipes were, it should be added, far more often associated with religious matters than with demoniacal. The figure on the “apprentice pillar” in Rosslyn Chapel is that of a cherub playing on a Highland bagpipe, and, as has been shown in a previous article, there are many indications in ecclesiastical architecture and in ecclesiastical history that the pipes were not altogether banned from associating with the good. After the Reformation, it is true, they were held to be the Devil’s instruments, and between 1570 and 1624 pipers were severely persecuted; but the zeal of the reformers, while always praiseworthy, often outran their discretion, and in their condemnation of instrumental music they included all minstrels. They vested supernatural powers in things which we now look upon as ordinary. The miseries of the Civil War were foretold by the appearance of a monster in the River Don, the disappearance of gulls from the lakes near Aberdeen, the loud tucking of drums in Mar, and in a seaman’s house at Peterhead, where trumpets and bagpipes and tolling of bells gave additional horror to the sound.