Even in the Highlands there seems to have been a tendency to joke at the expense of the pipes. A well-known proverb is said to have originated in this wise. The fox being hungry, found a bagpipe, and proceeded to eat the bag. There was still a remnant of breath in it, and when the fox bit it the drone gave a squeal. The fox was surprised, but not frightened, for he only said—“There’s meat and music here,” and went on with his meal. His remark has gone down to posterity as a proverb.
The bards, whom the pipes supplanted when they supplanted the harp, did not welcome the instrument, and satirised it in many of their poems. Duncan Ban Mac Intyre, the bard of Glenorchy, in the poem Aoir Uisdein Phiobair, abused it with sledge-hammer power; but his abuse was coarse, and contained little genuine humour. John Mac Codrum, the Hebridean bard, did better in Di-Moladh Piob Dhomh’uill Bhain, one of the most laughable things he wrote. The history of Donald Bain’s bagpipe he traced in an imaginative way through all its vicissitudes, from the days of Tubal Cain, through the disaster of the Deluge, and its damaging treatment by incompetent pipers. He compared the strains to some of the most discordant sounds in nature, spoke of it as a trump whose horrid music might rouse every Judas that ever lived, and used a multiplicity of illustrations to show its want of melody.
This spirit of cynicism was not confined altogether to the Gaelic bards. In The Family Legend, written by the distinguished poetess Joanna Baillie, there is introduced a short argument between the Duke of Argyll’s piper and “Dugald,” another of the characters. The piper has been playing in a small ante-room leading to the Duke’s apartment, when Dugald enters:—
Dugald.—Now pray thee, piper, cease! That stunning din,
Might do good service by the ears to set
Two angry clans; but for a morning’s rouse,
Here at an old man’s door, it does, good sooth,
Exceed all reasonable use. The Earl
Has passed a sleepless night; I pray thee now
Give o’er and spare thy pains.