We need not look for Pyping mair,
Fen Habbie’s dead.”
Besides those mentioned, there were other notable performers, who might, by a slight stretch of language, be called burgh pipers. There was for instance the Piper of Bridgeton, William Gunn, who published a book of pipe music. He died in 1876 at the age of seventy-eight years. He was well known in the east-end of Glasgow, and was engaged by the inhabitants of Bridgeton to play through their streets in the early morning, and thus usher in the new day. This was, of course, before Bridgeton was absorbed by the big city, and when it had some social existence of its own. Gunn was piper to the Glasgow Gaelic Club for a time, and kept a school for pipers. The register of this school, which was kept with great care, would be an interesting document if it could be got, for among his pupils were many who became well-known pipers. Then there was also Neil Blane, the worthy town piper of Lanark, so well described by Scott in Old Mortality. Neil, when introduced to the reader, is “mounted on his white Galloway, armed with his dirk and broadsword, and bearing a chanter, streaming with as many ribbons as would deck out six country belles for a fair or preaching.” He could not very well have ribbons streaming from his “chanter,” but let that pass. It is one of these liberties that Scott sometimes takes in matters of detail. Neil was town-piper of——(why is the town not named directly?), and had all the emoluments of his office—the Piper’s Croft, a field of an acre in extent, five merks and a new livery coat of the town’s colours yearly, some hopes of a dollar upon the day of the election of magistrates, and the privilege of paying at all the respectable houses in the neighbourhood a visit at spring-time to rejoice their hearts with his music, and to beg from each a modicum of seed corn. Besides, he kept the principal change-house in the burgh, was a good-humoured, shrewd, selfish sort of fellow, indifferent alike to the disputes about Church and State, and anxious only to secure the goodwill of customers. His advice to “Jenny” as to how the change-house should be conducted makes amusing reading, and illustrates the character very forcibly.
Neil, however, must have been a creature of the novelist’s imagination, for there is no trace of him in the burgh records or in local traditions.
“The Piper of Northumberland” was hardly a Scotsman, but he was so closely associated with the Borderland that a reference to his exploits may not be out of place. His name was James Allan, and there is an old booklet which tells at considerable length of “his parentage, education, extraordinary adventures, and exploits, his numerous enlistings, and wonderful escapes: with a brief narrative of his last confinement and death in Durham Jail, which happened in 1810.” Jemmy Allan, “the celebrated Northumberland Piper,” was a true-born gipsy, born of gipsy parents in the west of Northumberland in 1734. His father was a piper, and he also developed an inclination for the pipes. Besides, he was a first-class athlete, as hardy as the ordinary gipsy, handsome, daring, cunning, resourceful, untruthful, dishonest, and everything that could be called derogatory to the moral character of a man. He attained to great fame as a piper, being installed among the privileged class of minstrels, and allowed to join the “Faa” gang, over which “Will Faa” held sovereignty for many years. At length his fame reached the Duchess of Northumberland, into whose good graces, by a rather mean subterfuge, Jemmy ingratiated himself, and afterwards ranked as one of her musicians. But his habits of dissipation were too much for polite society, and he was dismissed. During his after wanderings he married several times, had “amours” many, enlisted and deserted immediately afterwards times without number, always taking care to secure the bounty money, swindled at cards and billiards wherever he went, charmed village society with his music until the people were off their guard, and finished up by cheating one and all, “borrowed” horses for getting across the country conveniently, had as many marvellous escapes as could be crammed into the lifetime of one man, tried most of the English towns, and made them too hot to live in, took a turn of the Scottish Border towns, with the same result, and finally got imprisoned for life for horse-stealing. He died in the House of Correction in Durham in 1810, just before the arrival of a pardon, which had been obtained by the exercise of some strong influence. The following verses, which, somehow, have the ring of Habbie Simson’s Epitaph, conclude the book:—
“All ye whom Music’s charms inspire
Who skilful minstrels do admire,
All ye whom bagpipe lilts can fire
‘Tween Wear and Tweed,
Come, strike with me, the mournful lyre,