The Bagpipe is, as Mr. Henri Lavoix has justly said in his La Musique au Siècle de Saint Louis, the organ reduced to its most simple expression. It is of great antiquity, and in the Middle Ages was generally popular in Europe. It was as well known in England as in Scotland, in France as in Italy and Germany. Shakspeare makes out Falstaff in Part I. of Henry IV. to be as melancholy as a lover's lute or the drone of a Lincolnshire Bagpipe. If we may judge by the peculiar scale of the Scotch Bagpipe, it would appear almost certain that the instrument, in its modern forms, has come from the East, and was most likely brought by the Crusaders. This would not of course apply to the ancient principle of a pipe and air reservoir, which is traced back to the Romans, but to the boring of the finger-holes of the chanter, the reed pipe by which the melody is played. By their position and size the intervals are so regulated that the thirds are neither major nor minor, but give a neutral or mean interval that is neither the one nor the other. This mean third, of a tone and three-quarters, has not been elsewhere observed in Europe, but in the East, in Syria and Egypt, and in other parts, it is of common occurrence, and gives a peculiar character to the music, not to be explained, but felt. An historical origin of the mean third is to be found in Mr. A.J. Ellis's paper "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations" (p. 498), published in the Journal of the Society of Arts, London, March, 1885. Modern Bagpipes that have keys are, of course, different.
As to the antiquity of existing Bagpipes, Messrs. Glen of Edinburgh own one, carved with the initials R. Mc.D., and the Hebridean galley, that bears the date of 1409. But this is not considered to be the oldest existing, as the M'Intyre pipe, belonging to N. Robertson M'Donald, Esq., of Kinlochmoidart, is reputed to have been played at Bannockburn. Possessing one drone only, it has the peculiarity of two vent-holes, instead of one, on each side of the chanter to accommodate a right or left handed player; in either case one hole is temporarily stopped. Messrs. Glen's pipe has two drones set in one stock. The name M'Intyre, by which Mr. Robertson M'Donald's pipe is distinguished, is derived from the hereditary pipers of the Chiefs of Menzies and Clanranald. Both these ancient Bagpipes are figured in Mr. M'Intyre North's Book of the Club of True Highlanders. The Bagpipes here drawn are from specimens belonging to Messrs. J. & R. Glen, Edinburgh.
PLATE VI.
CLAVICYTHERIUM OR
UPRIGHT SPINET.
THIS singularly interesting and rare key-board instrument, now the property of Mr. Donaldson, belonged to the collection of Count Correr of Venice. There is no maker's name or any date upon the instrument, which is of the kind named Clavicytherium by the earliest writer on musical instruments, Virdung (Musica getutscht und auszgezogen, Basle, 1511), who gives a drawing of one. It is in fact a spinet, set upright. The internal decoration, as old as the instrument itself, may be North Italian or South German, authorities differ, but a piece of paper pasted over a split in the inside of the wooden back, possibly by the maker, proves to be a fragment of a lease or agreement contracted at Ulm, which is in favour of the Swabian origin. The instrument can hardly be of later date than the first years of the sixteenth century, and is probably the oldest spinet or key-board stringed instrument existing. The earliest date that can be given for the introduction of the Spinet must be within the second half of the fifteenth century.
The key-board is of narrow compass—three octaves and a minor third—from the second E below, to the second G above, middle C, this note being the ledger-line C between the bass and treble clefs [[audio/mpeg]] —an extent about the compass of the human voice, which long ruled that of key-board instruments. In Virdung's time their compass was being extended. It is, however, more than likely that the lowest E key was here tuned down to the still lower C, according to the so-called "short octave" arrangement, which altered the lowest E, F♯, and G♯, to make fourths below F, G, and A, instead of semitones, and thus get deep dominant basses for cadences. Examination of the plectra or "jacks" of this instrument shows they were furnished with little tongues of wire, and not quills or leather, as in later spinet instruments. It is in a painted pine case, the inside being also painted. An unusual feature of the interior is the Calvary below the narrow sound-board, in which the sound holes, judging by the ornament that remains in one, have been Flamboyant windows. There must also have originally been figures, perhaps the Transfiguration or the Crucifixion, but there is no trace of them left. The treatment of the landscape, without other evidence, nearly determines the epoch when the instrument was made.