Bagpiper

“ The Highland bagpipe is a powerful instrument, and calls for great exertion of the lungs in order that the air may be supplied in sufficient quantity. There are several other species of bagpipes, as the soft and melodious Irish bagpipe, supplied with wind by a bellows, and having several keyed drones and a keyed chanter; the old English bagpipe (now no longer used) ; the Italian bagpipe, a very rude instrument, &c. The Irish bagpipe is, musically speaking, the most perfect of all.—Bibliography: Sir J. G. Dalyell, Musical Memoirs of Scotland ”

“ The indescribable thrill which the bagpipe is capable of imparting is produced by a sudden movement of the fingers on certain notes, which gives an expression peculiar to the pipes, and distinguishes the pibroch from all other music. The drones, as has been said, are tuned by means of “sliders” or movable joints, and this tuning, or preparation for playing, which generally occupies a few minutes of the piper’s time before he begins the tune proper, is heard with impatience by those not accustomed to the instrument. ”

“ Donald MacDonald, in his treatise on the bag-pipe [4] states that “the piper is to pay no attention to the flats and sharps marked on the clef, as they are not used in pipe music; yet the pipe imitates several different keys which are real, but ideal on the bag-pipe, as the music cannot be transposed for it into any other key than that in which it is first played or marked.” Mr Glen, the great dealer in bag-pipes, gave it as his opinion “that if the chaunter were to be made perfect in any one scale, it would not go well with the drones. ”

“ In the Highlands the piper is always in the open air; and when people wish to dance to his music, it is on the green, if the weather permits; nothing but necessity makes them attempt a pipe-dance in the house. The bagpipe was a field instrument intended to call the clans to arms, and animate them in battle, and was no more intended for a house than a round of six-pounders. A broadside from a first-rate, or a round from a battery, has a sublime and impressive effect at a proper distance. ”

“ In times of peace many people single out the brass band as the apple of their eye in the garden of music, so to speak, but let us Highlanders mark time and see what the great Highland bagpipe has done in war.
Many pipers have gone over the parapet playing the bagpipes and have won laurels which can never be forgotten. Hundreds of pipers have fallen in the great war to sleep their last sleep in the graves of heroes, after sounding the triumphant charge. The bagpipe has lived in war in its majestic power and splendour, and in peace it should not be allowed to die. ”

“ It might cause him annoyance as well as the rest of us. Be content to know that he is a man of good sense and good judgment. It is he whom you saw in the underbrush of the forest of Saint-Chartier, playing a bagpipe like this one; for though he is not a piper by trade, he understands it thoroughly, and has played me airs that are much more beautiful than ours. ”

“ A.D. 1513.—It is on record that John Hastie, the celebrated hereditary piper of Jedburgh, played at the battle of Flodden. There is a painting of this date by the German artist, Albrecht Durer, which represents a shepherd boy playing to his sheep on the bagpipe, and another which shows a piper leaning against a tree with a naked dirk at the left side and a purse exactly like a sporran suspended in front. Olaus Magnus, a Swedish prelate of the same century, affirms that a double pipe, probably the bagpipe, was carried by the shepherds to the pastures that their flocks might feed better. ”

“ James’s Church, Norwich, there used to be a window on which a piper was shown with a bagpipe with one drone; under a stall in Ripon Cathedral there is carved in oak a representation of two hogs dancing to a third playing on a bagpipe; in Beverley Minster, a group of pigs is carved in wood, all dancing round a trough to the music of one of their number, who plays a bagpipe having two drones and one chanter; among the numerous carvings in Westminster Abbey, there is a woodland scene representing a group of monkeys along with a bear, the latter playing the bagpipe ”

“ Well, my lad, keep the music that is so sweet and dear in your secret heart, but don't try to make yourself a piper by profession; for if you do, one of two things will happen. Either you will never make your bagpipes say what the wind and the brook whisper in your ear, or you will become such a fine and delicate musician that all the petty pipers in the countryside will pick a quarrel with you and prevent you from getting custom. ”

“ Moreover, instead of doling out exact measure like an ordinary piper, and stopping short when he had earned his two sous for every couple, he went on bagpiping a full quarter of an hour, changing his tunes you couldn't tell how, for they ran into one another without showing the join; in short, it was the best reel music ever heard, and quite unknown in our parts, but so enlivening and danceable that we all seemed to be flying in the air instead of jigging about on the grass. ”

“ The Bagpipe in its varying forms may be described as a portable organ, whether blown by the mouth of the performer or by a pair of bellows. The instrument is very ancient.
A curious old gem has been preserved, bearing the device of Apollo carrying a lyre in his arms and a bagpipe slung across his back, which takes that instrument right back to the days of ancient Greece.
Powerful bagpipes are used amongst the mountain tribes of Hindustan, and travellers meet with them both in China and Persia. The ancient Romans patronised this instrument largely, and the Emperor Nero was a skilled performer. ”

“ A peculiar bagpipe is used in Sardinia, called the 'Lanedda,' in which the unfortunate player is obliged to make use of three mouthpieces at the same time. It is not surprising to hear that the performance is exhausting, and that the players often die early deaths.
The 'Musette' was a softer form of bagpipes, and many of the great musicians have included in their 'Suites,' or collections of dances, special music for the instrument bearing this name. Such music had a lulling, dreamy tone, and greatly depended for effect on a clever use of the drone-pipes. ”

“ Pipers do not often get molested, except by tipsy men, who always want to dance; but Sandy then turns on the dreary-sounding drone and plays a doleful tune in extra slow time, so the drunken toper has to do an English instead of a Scotch reel.
Italian bagpipes.
The Italian tribe of street musicians may be dealt with as a group. There are the bag-pipers, the children with the accordion and triangle, the organ-man and the monkey, and the hurdy-gurdy grinder, all of whom hail from the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, where there is an Italian colony. ”

“ The compass of the instrument is two octaves. Like the Lowland, the Irish bagpipe is fast dying out, but there is in Glasgow at least one player, an old man, bent with years, but devoted to his 68pipes, who takes his stand near the top of the classic High Street, and can always depend on a small but select audience, to appreciate his rendering of Scotch and Irish airs on the bagpipe of Erin. Both the Irish and the Northumbrian pipes have, it may be added, been elaborated until they have almost ceased to be bagpipes. ”

“ The modern Lowland bag-pipe differs from the Highland bag-pipe mainly in that it is blown by bellows instead of by the mouth.
The Northumbrian or Border bag-pipe, also blown by means of bellows, is chiefly distinguished by having a chaunter stopped at the lower end so that when all the holes are closed, the pipe is silent. There are seven finger-holes, one for the thumb, and a varying number of keys. The four drones are fixed in one stock and are tuned by means of stoppers, so that, as in the musette, any one of them may be silenced. ”

“ From it spring all the others which demand the skill of the finished artisan and the help of turning laths and latter-day implements. The Italian bagpipe, which was made familiar in Britain through the wandering pifferari, was a very rude instrument, consisting of a goat’s skin, with an enormous drone, on which the player performed by means of a mouth tube, another player making the melody on a separate chanter. ”

“ It is of boxwood, with three drones placed in one stock. The two shorter drones sound in unison, the long one an octave lower, the same as in the Highland Bagpipe. They are mounted with carved horn. The chanter has seven finger-holes and a vent-hole, also the same as in the Highland Bagpipe, with which the Lowland agrees in fingering and other particulars, except that it is inflated by bellows attached to the bag by a short blow-pipe, a peculiarity that it has in common with the other Bagpipes in this Plate. The bellows of the modern Northumbrian Bagpipe are also drawn. ”

“ The following are the prize winners at the Argyllshire Gathering, as kindly supplied by the secretary, Mr. Alexander Sharp, Oban:—
From 1880 till 1886 no Medal was given.
V.—DIRECTORY OF BAGPIPE MAKERS. The making of bagpipes is almost, if not quite confined to Scotland. One or two firms in London profess to be makers, but they either make very little or get the instruments from Scotland. There are no makers abroad, but a large trade is done by Scottish makers with colonial customers. ”

“ So he gave up the idea of having a piper attached to his household, as the use of the bagpipe was attended with the prospect of such danger to the performer.
Soldiers are not nervous men as a rule, but a pipe-major of the Gordons was. While the regiment was being inspected, he noticed while standing behind the band that the colonel’s helmet was reversed. ”

“ The bagpipes belong to the open air as naturally as heather belongs to the hills and salmon to the sea-lochs. Men do not mend pens with Lochaber axes, or employ scene painters to decorate the lids of snuff-boxes. ”

“ The old pipers could indeed so regulate their instruments as to make the music almost as sweet as that of the violin, but sweetness is not the outstanding feature of the bagpipe, and it is not fitted for private houses or any but the biggest of public halls. The hills themselves are its appropriate concert room, and among them it pervades the whole atmosphere, and becomes part of the air until one can hardly tell whence it comes. It makes rhythm with the breeze and chimes in with the rush of the torrent, and becomes part of the world in which it is produced. ”

“ As to the man who practises the ordinary pipes in an ordinary city apartment, with but the thickness of a brick dividing him from neighbours on either side, he is the worst enemy of his craft and worthy of all execration. The wise enthusiast will get a smaller set made for home use, having the lower part of each drone and the top of the chanter turned large enough to fit the stocks of the full-size pipes, so that one bag and the stocks in it does for both sets. These will not sound so loud as to disturb neighbours, and the performer can enjoy himself as well as with pipes of full size. ”

“ The noise of bagpipes must be very terrifying to those who hear it for the first time, and it seems on one occasion to have been instrumental in winning for some men of another Scotch regiment a bloodless battle. ”

“ But it is because the song harks back to the time when one good piper was a man to be revered, and a hundred in one place a gathering to be dreaded—if they were all there of one accord—that it continues to hold its own. It expresses something of the grandeur that was attached to the national music, when the clan piper was second only to the chief in importance, and the pibroch as much a part of the clan life as the fiery cross, so it is accepted as the one outstanding bit of song that helps to keep alive the traditional glory of the Great Highland Bagpipe. ”

“ The bag is generally held slightly in front, so that the short drones rest on the shoulder. When on full-dress parade a banner flies from the big drone, with the arms of the regiment or chief as a motto. The drones are generally placed on the left shoulder, but many players place them on the right. The whole instrument is kept in position by the tension of the bag. The instruments used by present-day pipers are the full set, the halfset or reel pipes, and the practising chanter. ”

“ Even if you have your baggage in a wagon, it is best to wear one, or some sort of a small bag furnished with shoulder straps, so that you can carry a lunch, writing materials, guide-book, and such other small articles as you constantly need. You can buy a haversack at the stores where sportsmen's outfits are sold; or you can make one of enamel-cloth or rubber drilling, say eleven inches deep by nine wide, with a strap of the same material neatly doubled and sewed together, forty to forty-five inches long, and one and three-quarters inches wide. ”

“ Nothing is so well adapted for the bagpipe as tunes consisting of few notes, and all set on the same key ; for its compass is really very limited, and by no means of that extent of which most performers endeavor to persuade themselves. From the limited compass of the instrument, and its imperfections, we find but little music written for it ; to which may be added another reason - that those in general who can play cannot write. The favorite and peculiar music is the Highland pibrach, which we confess has always appeared to us utterly unintelligible. ”

“ Whilst refinement is rapidly spreading over Scotland, it is to be lamented that anyone should prevent the barbarous music of the country from yielding to instruments more agreeable to the ear. The bagpipe is among the few remaining barbarisms in Scotland.... It is a sorry instrument, capable of little more than making an intolerable noise. Every person of taste and feeling must regret the decline of the harp and be shocked at its having been succeeded by the bagpipe.... I shall never forget a playing competition 198in Edinburgh at which I was present. ”