A satirical writer of 1659, when he wished to be specially cynical, proposed that two illustrious persons should be married, and that “the banquetting house should be prepared forthwith, with a pair of bagpipes and a North Country jig to entertain the nobles that shall attend the nuptials.” There was apparently nothing to be said after that.
In a political satire of the same year, Sir Archibald Johnstone, a prominent person of that time, is thus addressed:—“Pure Sir Archibald Johnstone, wea is me for thee, for thou hadst thought to be a muckle laddy, but now the peeper of Kilbarchan will laugh thee to scorne.” He could get no lower than to be laughed at by the piper.
A sneering biographer of Archbishop Sharpe, speaking of the prelate’s grandfather’s pipes, says:—“If the pipe and bags be yet in the prelate’s possession, it is like he may have use for them, to gift them to some landwart church, to save the expense of a pair of organs, which may be well enough for our rude people, who can sing to the one as well as to the other; and if instrumental music be juris divini, as the prelates assert, it cannot be thought that any people should be so phanatick as to admit the organs in divine service and refuse the pipes.”
The Earl of Northampton, a contemporary of Shakespeare, concludes a treatise against alleged prophecy with the remark that “oracles are most like baggepypes and showmen, that sound no longer than they are puffed up with winde and played upon with cunning.”
Thackeray, in The Irish Sketch Book, says, “Anything more lugubrious than the drone of the pipe, or the jig danced to it, or the countenances of the dancers and musicians, I never saw. Round each set of dancers the people formed a ring, in which the figurantes and coryphees went through their operations.”
Thomas Kirke, the Englishman who wrote A Modern Account of Scotland, in 1679, said—“Musick they (the Highlanders) have, but not the harmony of the sphears, but loud terrene noises, like the bellowing of beasts; the loud bagpipe is their delight; stringed instruments are too soft to penetrate the organs of their ears, that are only pleased with sounds of substance.”
Dr. Mac Culloch, already quoted,[[13]] who travelled Scotland in 1824, calls the bagpipe as vile a contrivance as can be imagined, and describes in graphic language all its alleged defects, and the sad result of listening to its music:—
“It is harsh, imperfect, and untunable. It is not wonderful if the responsive vibrations of the piper’s tympanum are not very accurate, nor the musical organ of his brain peculiarly sensitive to sweet sounds after the daily induration which they must have undergone from such outrageous and unceasing inroads on their sensibility. The auricular wave is probably hardened as effectually as if it had been immersed in a tan pit. So much the better for them, but it is not easy to describe the subsidence of feeling the general deliquium, as physicians have it, which such worthless auditors as we are experience when an act of this music closes. It cannot be much unlike what the Mickmak or Dog-ribbed Indian feels, when his teeth have all been drawn.... As a vocal accompaniment this instrument is plainly inappropriate, unless it were to accompany a concert of tigers and cats. Nevertheless it is used for reels, and with bad enough success, if the ears are to be consulted. As a moving force, however, it answers its purpose very effectively. There are very few dancing airs that lie within its compass.... Six inches of Neil Gow’s horse hair would have beaten all the bagpipes that ever were blown.... The variations were considerably more abominable than the ground, musically speaking, but they are the best tests of the artist’s merit, as all that merit lies in difficult and rapid execution. Any man can blow the charge, but when it comes to action it is he who has the strongest fingers and the worst taste who will carry the day. Yet there are rules for all this cutting of notes as it is called. The term is not ill-chosen, as the ground is literally cut into tatters by a re-iteration of the most clumsy, commonplace and tasteless flourishes, offensive in themselves, but still more so by their excess, since every note is so encumbered that whatever air might have existed is totally swallowed up in the general confusion.”
Mac Culloch, however, admits in another place, the merits of the bagpipe as an outdoor instrument, and an instrument of war especially.