Crunluath

"Murdo stopped at the end of his pacing and broke into the crunluath. His toe tapped rapidly on the ground. His fingers bounded off the notes so nimbly that they seemed to describe short ripples along the chanter. The virile, slotted notes flew about, throwing a mesh of sound over the hearers, a contracting net that caught and drew the throats and breasts. And left them strangely numb and vibrant when, at last, the music  ceased."

The Albannach. Fionn Mac Colla.

I wonder what he meant by "slotted notes." This is the scene in which Murdo single-handedly resinstates the piping tradition among the men in the village, and thus revitalises the community. The strange thing is that this piobaireachd playing comes out of nowhere. Murdo isn't spoken of as a piper, apart from the playing of the feadan with the priest. It's as if the playing is innate, a core and hitherto undiscovered part of his Scottishness.

The mood of the passage I've quoted is immediately broken by Kenny's comment on Murdo's playing: "O, he'll learn!" Surely this is suposed to be taken as irony: a learner piper would hardly ensnare throats and breasts with his crunluath. Or perhaps it's sour grapes, for when the men first hear "the clear, lusty notes dropping out richly, forming a slow pattern against the wall of drones" someone suggests that the piper must be Kenny:

"'Thats's not Kenny,' says Murdo the Flea. 'Kenny never had that amount of skill in the fingers at him.'"