John Grant

“ On Christmas night the pipers came into the mess. They had piped the regiment across many a hot place in France and escorted bombing parties down many a German trench. In one action four out of the eight were hit and two killed. They touch a chord deep down somewhere which no doubt has its proper scientific name. The eye of the piper which conceals his gladness, denying all rapture, is a key to the undemonstrative temper of the men who would rather die than throw up their bonnets and shout. ”

“ Regimental tunes appeal enormously to the men who hear and know them; it was probably as much the sound of "Blue Bonnets over the Border" as the sight of Piper Laidlaw piping along the parapet that made the men, shaken with shell fire and gas, go straight forward; and red hackles have followed "Highland Laddie" in circumstances when another tune might have failed to exert the same extraordinary influence. But, having played his regulation onset, the piper has an opportunity of suiting his own taste and selecting a tune appropriate musically and emotionally, as well as in name, to the occasion. ”

“ For though an Englishman cannot, as a rule, distinguish one tune from another—does not indeed believe that the pipes play any tune—there is something in the rhythm, in the long drawn notes, in the soul singing out of those "wind-bags," so he calls them, which in some queer magic way, stirs the blood of a man, whoever he may be, and stiffens the slackening fibre of his heart, and takes him out of the rut of his earth to some higher plane of thought, and gives him courage. ”

“ Wherever Scottish troops have fought the sound of the pipes has been heard, speaking to us of our beloved native land, bringing back to our memories the proud traditions of our race, and stimulating our spirits to fresh efforts in the cause of freedom. The cry of "The Lament" over our fallen heroes has reminded us of the undying spirit of the Scottish race, and of the sacredness of our cause.
The Pipers of Scotland may well be proud of the part they have played in this war. ”

“ Beat on drums; let the pipes play and the banners be unfurled for every triumphal march that shall be. But when the marches are played let us never forget that every march has grown more glorious by the war and the blood of the men who fell; that every march has woven around it a thousand memories of life and death, of hardship, of danger, and of victory. ”

“ Many a soldier sadly misses his pipe, which of course may not be lit on a night march; but to me a greater loss is the silence of those other pipes, for the sound of the bagpipes will stir up a thousand memories in a Highland regiment, and nothing helps a column of weary foot soldiers so well as pipe music, backed by the beat of a drum. ”

“ But strong men who have lived, if only just lived, for three long ghastly months, without letters or parcels, on a diet of turnip-soup and small lumps of black bread, till the skin was stretched tight over their protruding cheek-bones like yellow parchment, their filthy, ragged clothes hanging like mildewed sacks on their emaciated bodies, and their hollow eyes gleaming like the eyes of famished beasts—they understand how easy it was to fall a prey to "barbed-wire madness."
Gordon Niall got it, and got it badly. It was inevitable. ”

“ In war there is, to our Highland regiments, no music like that of the great Highland bagpipe. Its notes inspire the men to victory, and the glory of the results of the music of the Piob Mhor with its fluttering pennons has left a landmark in the history of the world's war. ”

“ The pipes of Scotland sounded in many villages of France and Flanders, where for all time the wail of them will come down the wind to the ears of men who hear with the spirit. They were played not only in the roads and fields, but often at night in farmhouses where Highland officers had their messes, or in cottages where some battalion headquarters were established or in old houses within city walls where there was a feast or a guest night. ”

“ She sat silent, and gazed dreamily at the undulating countryside, radiant in bloom and light and colour, with old Pilatus in the distance, sentinel of ages. The shimmering sunshine quivered all over it, and the scattered chalets, and orchards pink and white with foam, seemed lulled to sleep in the security of God. Once a priest passed, trudging down the white dusty road beneath; once a peasant, the smoke of his long black cigar hanging in a blue filmy wreath about his round felt hat. Far down in the valley tinkled the music of cow bells. ”

“ Before every big battle the skirl of the pipes went with the traffic of war and guns surging forward to the fighting-lines. For in every big battle there were Scottish troops and their pipers played them on to the fields of honour, and played them out again when their ranks had been thinned by heroic sacrifice. ”

“ For four years and a half the pipes of war played their part in the greatest war in history; in the front, under conditions in which they could never have been expected to exist at all, they have led men to victory, have rallied them when victory eluded their grasp, and have marched them back undismayed by the tortures of battle; behind the lines they have headed the long columns of Scottish troops on their way up to the furnace in which the fate of nations was cast. ”

“ On the contrary, France and Scotland, linked together by racial, psychological, and historical similarities and identities of interest, had long been the best of friends, and it must have puzzled the average Highlander why he should be asked to fight against her. So strong is this community of spirit that it might very well be argued that the Highland Regiments have never fought better in their long history than they have done in the Great War, because they were fighting for France, as well as for their native country. ”

“ The pipers screamed out the Charge, the most awful music to be heard by men who have the Highlanders against them, and with fixed bayonets and hand grenades they stormed the German trenches, where there were many machine-gun emplacements, and dug-outs so strong that no shell could smash them. There was long and bloody fighting, and in Longueval village, across which the Highlanders dug a trench, the enemy put down a barrage, yard by yard, so that it was churned up by heavy shells. ”

“ The Breton people canntarach tunes too, like ourselves—soft-warbling them to fix them in the memory, and blyth that morning was our warbling; he could charm, my man, the very thrush from trees! But Herself—the piob mhor—was an instrument beyond his fingering; the pipes he used at home he called biornieu, fashioned differently from ours. Yet the same wind blows through reeds in France or Scotland, and everywhere they sing of old and simple things; you are deaf indeed if you cannot understand. ”

“ From first to last the spirit which animated the soldier of fortune—out to gratify his instinct for adventure, his desire to make a living, and his passion for individuality—has always inspired the Highland regiments to a remarkable extent. It is true that the war with France involved the most momentous issues for the State, but the methods adopted for warding off the danger were far more personal and local than national. ”

“ Brought in contact as Scottish troops have been with those of our Allies it is not surprising that military pipers have attracted the attention of observers and writers who, before the war, knew nothing of their existence. From the early days of the war the pipes, the tartan and the kilt aroused the liveliest interest in France; and perhaps the sincerest tribute to them is the fact that, in their caricatures of the nations, the Germans usually depicted the British soldier as a particularly unattractive Highlander. ”

“ PIPERS ON THE MARCH
Playing the pipes in action, though essentially the most important, is, for obvious reasons, only one of the duties of the soldier piper. Every unit of an army is not always in close touch with the enemy, and every battalion puts in a good many miles of marching in a year in conditions which are rarely ideal and very often acutely miserable. It is here that the pipes have rendered such conspicuous service as the marching instrument par excellence ”

“ No doubt the Union had placed Scotland in the same category as England so far as France was concerned, but the kilted regiments arose, not so much out of a political necessity as from a revival of the spirit which had made the Scot in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a soldier of fortune wherever he was wanted, fighting now for Rome, and now in the ranks of Gustavus Adolphus against her; fighting to a large extent without passion, but as an artist in arms ”

“ The colonel of the regiment—himself a V.C.—commenting on the casualties says: "I believe the purpose of war is to win victories, and if one can do this better by encouraging certain sentiments and traditions why shouldn't it be done? The heroic and dramatic effect of a piper stoically playing his way across the ghastly modern battlefield, altogether oblivious to danger, has an extraordinary effect on the spirit and enterprise of his comrades. ”

“ Affairs had not gone well with the battalion, or what was left of it, through the battle. They had been ordered to advance and take a certain position in what was supposed to be the flank, had forced their way forward over the open under a scourging shell-fire, had suffered heavy losses, and at last gained the point from which they were to make the final attacking rush. But now that they were here it seemed impossible for men to go further and live. A stretch of open still lay before them, and this was swept with a tornado of rifle and machine-gun fire. ”

“ When a man joins a regiment, voluntarily or compulsorily, he adopts for the whole period of his military service the customs, the prejudices, and the traditions of his unit, and is himself moulded by them in a manner which is as inexplicable as it is marked.
And if regimental esprit de corps and tradition are strong, national and territorial sentiment are stronger. In the old army, as a result of the system of recruitment, this factor was of less importance than in the, comparatively speaking, unmixed units of the new army of to-day. ”

“ When the regiment is on the march the one band leads the men as well as the other. In fact many prefer a pipe band to a brass band on a long route march. In a pipe band the pipe major has to train his pipers efficiently in the performance of their music just the same as the bandmaster of a brass band, and why should a pipe major not be raised to the rank of a warrant officer along with his brother bandmaster? True it is that in a brass band there are many instruments for the bandmaster to teach and bring in in their proper places, in order to have a perfect band. ”

“ In war everything has changed—everything but the elemental courage and passions of the men who are engaged in it; and, as piob mhor is essentially the instrument on which those elemental passions can be best expressed, it is not uninteresting to observe how individual pipers have resorted to particular tunes, to suit particular occasions. In many, perhaps in most, cases there were traditional or regimental reasons for playing one tune rather than another, and such tunes were often in the highest degree appropriate; but in other cases the individuality of the performer determined the choice. ”

“ To many of the men in the ranks the music of the pipes in peace time may have had no special association other than with dances and gatherings; but whenever the piper assumed his historic rôle—so long dormant—of fighting man, the inherited peculiarities of the Scottish soldier were aroused and the music made an overpowering appeal to his national sentiment. ”

“ Of a Seaforth battalion a similar story is told:
"The men simply raced into the storm of bullets ... at last it became too terrible for any human being to stand against it. The attacking lines melted away, the men seeking what cover could be found.... It was here that the pipers of the Seaforths had their chance. They took it. As the men advanced again to the attack they were cheered on by the strains of the pipes, which could just be heard. The men dashed through, clearing out the enemy as they went." ”

“ This gives three different renderings as regards time, and how could they become pleasing to the ear or ever attain regularity in time or fingering?
"Patience is a virtue," and an instructor of piping must be imbued with that qualification. Without patience there can be no climax, no perfection, and no goal to aim at. One may compel a person to do work even by punishment, but to compel a pupil to play the pipes would be hopeless. If a pupil has to be forced to play an instrument against his will, the music will be anything but pleasing to the listener's ear. ”

“ To any people who are inclined to be supercilious about pipe-music, the recollection of the unfeigned pleasure of a beautiful child on hearing the pipes for the first time has often seemed to me to supply an answer. ”

“ Another, in the Royal Scots, referring to the return of the battalion from Kemmel, says: "I shall never forget the effect on the men; as they struck up they fairly shouted themselves hoarse with delight."
[40]
"Wonderful pipes! The men get tired and would fall out, but the pipes make a unity of them. Invisible tendons and muscles seem to connect the legs of all files, and all move as one, mechanically, rhythmically, certainly. The strong are reduced to the step, the weak are braced up to it. All bear the strain and share the strain. So we go on, and the miracle is in the power of the music." ”

“ Above him, clinging frantically to the wire, Niall waited, his heart in his mouth. The man walked almost beneath him, seeing nothing; and in a few seconds the prisoner again began to toil along the wires. At length, almost fainting with fatigue and strain, he clutched his goal and drew himself across the cross-bars, and waited, panting, his heart throbbing as if it would burst, until the sentry should repass him. ”