The Piper's Cave is one of the legends attached to the King's Caves, a line of great sea-caves in the cliffs north of Blackwaterfoot on the west coast of the Isle of Arran — the largest of which is famous as one of the places where Robert the Bruce is said to have sheltered. Beyond its mouth, tradition held, the cave ran on and on underground, a passage of unknown and uncanny length, and the legend tells of a piper who set out to discover where it led.
The story
The piper went into the cave playing his pipes, so that those above ground could follow his progress by the sound, with only his faithful dog for company. The listeners traced the music as it moved away beneath their feet, deeper and deeper into the hill — but the playing grew steadily fainter, and then took on a note of terror. The last that was heard of him was a despairing cry rising through the rock: 'Woe is me, woe is me, without three hands — two for the pipe and one for the sword!' — for he had met something underground he could not fight while still he played. After that the pipes fell silent. The piper was never seen again; only his dog came struggling back out of the cave, half-dead with fright and with every hair burned or stripped from its body.
The tale is one of the most widespread of Scottish migratory legends, told of caves the length of the country, the underground passage imagined to run for miles and to be the haunt of a witch, a fairy, or the Devil himself. At Arran it is fixed to the King's Caves and their long dark interior, and the piper's cry — lacking the third hand for his sword — has become its unforgettable refrain, a vivid image of the brave man lost to the powers beneath the hill.