And so on for a few more stanzas, till Argyll himself appears and puts an end to the discussion. But, after all, it is mostly non-Scotsmen who sneer at the pipes. They often understand as little of Scottish sentiment or Scottish music as did the Frenchman, who, after hearing “Tam o’ Shanter” recited, said it was “a story of how the devil came out of an old church and stole the tail from the horse of a farmer called Tam because he had played the pipes in the churchyard. I have heard,” he added, “play your pipes Scottish, and I would like well that some person would steal away all the pipes in Scotland.” Even our own William Black, the most inoffensive and delightful of latter-day writers, cannot resist the temptation to joke at the expense of the bagpipes. “Sermons,” he says, “are like Scottish bagpipes. They sound very well when one doesn’t hear them.” William Black, however, rarely if ever sneers, and this is very mild indeed, compared with what some other writers have thrown at the instrument.
The subject of Scottish national music is one against which ignorance is always breaking its shins. In a recent English novel, for instance, a Highlander is represented as sitting by the roadside singing a Jacobite song and accompanying himself on the bagpipe, while one of the most reputable of London afternoon papers gravely remarked when referring to the letting of Inveraray Castle, after the death of the eighth Duke of Argyll—“Ichabod is the watchword for the Highlands and Islands, and the pibroch may skirl the lament with better cause than if half the clan had fallen before the claymores of an alien tartan.” These are extreme cases, no doubt, but they are only two out of many. It is, of course, vain to expect Scottish feelings from non-Scottish people, and the over-running of our land by imported sportsmen does not improve matters a bit—
“Cockneys, Frenchmen, swells, and tourists,
Motley-garbed and garish crew;
Belted pouches, knickerbockers,
Silken hose and patent shoe.”
Although these people may cease their scoffing and make themselves as Highland as anyone can be whom nature has not made Highland, their affection for the music and their professions of goodwill are not likely to help to preserve it. It is for real Highlanders to keep alive their own music and show scorners that it is not going to die the death, but live while there are Highlands and a Highland people. If, on the other hand, they are playing the lament for a perishing race and a dying language, it is not much wonder if neighbours chime in with an emphatic Amen. Better far is the spirit of Alexander Fisher, a Glasgow poet, who wrote for Whistlebinkie:—
“You’ll may spoke o’ ta fittle, you’ll may prag o’ ta flute,
An’ ta clafer o’ pynas, pass trums, clairnet an’ lute.
Put ta far pestest music you’ll may heard, or will fan,