They were quieter too, or quiet enough anyway not to be heard by drunken patrols deafened by artillery, scared to stick their heads under a deadfall. The pipers would sit in the kitchens, the shutters drawn, the fires banked, and play the old tunes, the rolls, the aires. You could smoke a pipe and drink a shot of the whisk and play a tune all at the same time. But none o' th' Boyne Water. There's blood in the music.
Flames flicker around the edges of the Irish tunes, it's well and true enough, famously.
But there are other melodies that will bring the green sprout to the blackthorn. We were doing this little festival in western North Carolina, way out there in that little narrow place where Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina all come together. A lot of people don't even realize part of the southern NC border is Georgia. South Carolina tails off, disappears. The promoter was getting worried.