The Shepherd’s Pipe is a folk-tale by Arthur Ransome. Probably written in 1916 according to Hugh Brogan (see his preface and introduction), it is set in the peasant world delightfully evoked in Old Peter's Russian Tales. But this world is no longer delightful, and we are shown the passion, dishonesty, cruelty and superstition of a world which would explode with the fall of the Tsar. The horrors of civil war and forced collectivisation will follow