In the keeping alive of this national sentiment in Scottish units, their distinctive dress and, still more, the retention of the national instrument, have played an important part; and this applies with equal force to units composed of Scotsmen who have left their native land permanently or temporarily.
Throughout the war these units have more than maintained the great traditions of their past history, carrying on the records of Scottish gallantry which have been excelled by no troops in the world and equalled by few.
And so with the pipers.
How important a contributory cause they have been to the success of their battalions is recognized by all alike, men and officers—and not least by the Field Marshal Commanding in Chief. In spite of modern conditions they have, in cases too numerous to record, played the part which was normally theirs in the olden days of set battles.
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.
Inherited sympathy of this kind is no doubt inexplicable—but it exists. It certainly cannot be ascribed to the Celtic strain in individuals, for we know that the bagpipe was in general use for centuries all over the Lowlands—perhaps even before it displaced the bard and the harper and became the war instrument of the Highlands. We cannot analyse what Neil Munro describes as "the tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous, that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it"; we only know that it works on some individuals and some races as no other instrument does, and we need not try to satisfy ourselves whether this is due to the flat seventh in the scale, or the ever-sounding drones, or the inherited memory it arouses.
The idea that the piper would be too conspicuous an object to be employed in his proper capacity has proved to be partly true, as indicated by the casualties among them when playing; but the same argument might be applied to any other soldier in the ranks. Shells show no discrimination in their objective.
To a certain extent this objection is a sound one; but it is all a matter of relative values. Many commanding officers have expressed the opinion that at times when, on account of the all-pervading noise of the battlefield, not a note of his music could be heard by the men nearest to him, it was the actual presence of the piper that supplied the stimulus to the men; in fact, it was the piper, not his instrument, that was followed.
For obvious reasons pipers are harder to replace than the ordinary soldier, and, in trench warfare especially, most regiments have tried to keep them in relative security; but in the records of units which follow it will be seen that, when the trouble comes, the piper has always been to the fore, and "the tune with the tartan of the clan in it" has been heard again as it has for centuries past.