CHAPTER III.
The Tale of the Years.
“No stroke of art their texture bears,
No cadence wrought with learned skill,
And though long worn by rolling years,
Yet unimpaired they please us still;
While thousand strains of mystic lore
Have perished and are heard no more.”
The time of the Flood—Pipes in Scripture—In Persia—In Arabia—In Tarsus—Tradition of the Nativity—In Rome—In Greece—In Wales, Ireland, and Scotland—Melrose Abbey—In France—In England—At Bannockburn—Chaucer—In war—First authentic Scottish reference—Oldest authentic specimen—Became general—Rosslyn Chapel—Second drone added—At Flodden—“A maske of bagpypes”—Spenser—Shakespeare—James VI.—A poetical historian—Big drone added—The ’45—Native to Scotland—The evolution of the Highlands.
Gillidh Callum was (so goes the story) Noah’s piper, and (still according to the story) Noah danced to his music over two crossed vine plants when he had discovered and enjoyed the inspiring effects of his first distillation from the fruits of his newly planted vineyard. So the tune was named after the piper. This “yarn,” to give it the only appropriate name, can easily be spoiled by anyone who tries, but the dance alluded to does seem to have been originally practised over vine plants. Swords, however, came to be more numerous in Scotland than vines, and they were substituted. Some historians assert that the Celts are descended from Gomer, the eldest son of Japheth, son of Noah, a theory which would go far to support the Gillidh Callum story, for if there were Celts in the days of the ark, why should there not have been a piper? There is, however, just about as much to prove either story as there is to prove that