The Lost Pibroch, and Other Sheiling Stories

In the remote glens of late Victorian Scotland, where the echoes of the Clearances still haunt abandoned townships, Neil Munro gathered the last whispers of a vanishing world. The title story follows two young pipers, Gilian and Rory, who journey through misty Half Town seeking Paruig Dali, a blind old man said to possess the legendary Lost Pibroch, a tune so haunting it can make stones weep and the living remember what they've forgotten. What they find is not merely a piece of music but a meditation on what it means to carry a culture in your memory when the land itself has been emptied of its people. These sheiling stories brim with Highland folklore, the art of piping, and the quiet tragedy of a people between old ways and modernity. Munro writes with tenderness about a world he knew was disappearing, and the result is both elegy and celebration.