The Highland bagpipe

by W. L. Manson

THE DANCE OF DEATH
From a Woodcut of the Time of Henry VIII.

That the idea of a demoniac piper is not peculiar to Scotland is shown by the sculpture executed by the celebrated German artist, Durer, which represents the Devil playing on the pipes; by an engraving of a pageant at Antwerp in the sixteenth century, where a similar figure occurs, and by various Continental stories and pictures. The pipes were, it should be added, far more often associated with religious matters than with demoniacal. The figure on the “apprentice pillar” in Rosslyn Chapel is that of a cherub playing on a Highland bagpipe, and, as has been shown in a previous article, there are many indications in ecclesiastical architecture and in ecclesiastical history that the pipes were not altogether banned from associating with the good. After the Reformation, it is true, they were held to be the Devil’s instruments, and between 1570 and 1624 pipers were severely persecuted; but the zeal of the reformers, while always praiseworthy, often outran their discretion, and in their condemnation of instrumental music they included all minstrels. They vested supernatural powers in things which we now look upon as ordinary. The miseries of the Civil War were foretold by the appearance of a monster in the River Don, the disappearance of gulls from the lakes near Aberdeen, the loud tucking of drums in Mar, and in a seaman’s house at Peterhead, where trumpets and bagpipes and tolling of bells gave additional horror to the sound.

The ghostly piper of Highland mythology was often seen mounted on a big black horse, while multitudes of voices sang round him, sometimes in light clothing and with long white staffs in their hands. In one instance—it comes from Dairy, in Ayrshire—“the sound of voices was terrible, and all struck in at the chorus. The tunes seemed to part and make way for the rider to get out, but, no, they closed again.” One such piper frequented the wild passes of Drumouchter, about the highest and most dreary part of the hills now crossed by the Highland Railway. At the hour of gloaming passers-by could hear the melancholy wailing of the pipes, but they never could tell from whence it came. Prince Charles Edward Stuart is alleged to have fought there a band of English cavalry, when on his retreat from Derby in 1745, and though his men won, the piper, if he was Prince Charlie’s piper, seems to have considered the incident a matter of perpetual mourning. Other sights and spectres, as of people engaged in mortal combat, are said to have been seen near the place.

In a North Highland story, a “changeling” plays the pipes. A tailor went to a farmhouse to work, and just as he was going in, somebody put into his hands a child of a month old, which a little lady dressed in green seemed to be waiting to receive. The tailor ran home and gave the child to his wife. When he got back to the farmhouse, he found the farmer’s child crying and disturbing everybody. It was a fairy changeling which the nurse had taken in, meaning to give the farmer’s own child to the fairy in exchange, but nobody knew this but the tailor. When they were all gone out, he began to talk to the child. “Hae ye your pipes?” said the tailor. “They’re below my head,” said the changeling. “Play me a spring,” said the tailor. Out sprang the little man and played the bagpipe round the room. Then there was a noise outside, and the elf said, “It’s my folk wanting me,” and away he went up the chimney, and then they fetched back the farmer’s own child from the tailor’s house.

Apart from their connection with supernatural beings or supernatural agencies, the pipes have at various times in the history of Scotland been credited with supernatural power. The “Lost Pibroch” itself is an echo, but a magnificently worded echo, of the old connection between the pipes and the supernatural. In it we have something like a modern literary curiosity, a Highland story written in the true Highland ring and spirit, and yet as splendid an intellectual treat to a non-Highland reader as he can get anywhere in the King’s English. It exaggerates the power of the pipes, but it is an exaggeration that is fully in unison with the nature of the people, and it is the gem of all the stories of pipers and the supernatural. “Then here’s another for fortune,” said Paruig Dall, and he went through the woods with his pipes under his oxter, to follow those whom his notes had already set awandering.

The Chisholm preserves, or at least did at one time preserve a relic believed to be of great antiquity. It is a chanter which is supposed to have a peculiar faculty of indicating the death of the chief by spontaneously bursting, and after each fracture it is carefully repaired by a silver fillet, which is an improvement on the original method of mending with a leathern throng. The family piper, when from home at a wedding, heard his chanter crack, and at once started up, saying he must return, for The Chisholm was dead. And he was.

But the most famous of all such articles is “The Black Chanter of Clan Chattan.” This is a relic of the fight between the Clan Quhele and the Clan Yha on the North Inch of Perth in 1396. It is made of lignum vitæ, and, according to tradition is endued, with magical powers. About the end of the battle, so the tradition goes, an aerial minstrel was seen hovering over the heads of the Clan Chattan, who, after playing a few wild notes on his pipes, let them drop to the ground. Being made of glass, they all broke except the chanter, which was made of wood. The Clan Chattan piper secured the chanter, and, though mortally wounded, he continued playing the pibroch of his clan until death silenced him. Some traditions say the original chanter was made of crystal, and, being broken by the fall, that now existing was made in exact fac-simile, others that the cracks now seen were those the chanter received on falling to the ground. In any case, the possession of this particular chanter was ever after looked on as ensuring success, not only to the Mac Phersons, but to any one to whom it happened to be lent. The Grants of Strathspey once received an insult, through the cowardice of some unworthy members of their clan, and in their dejection they borrowed the Black Chanter, the war notes of which roused their drooping energies and stimulated them to such vigour that it became a proverb from that time, “No one ever saw the back of a Grant.” The Grants of Glenmoriston afterwards received it, and they restored it to the Mac Phersons about 1855. It is still carefully preserved at Cluny Castle, and some entertain the belief that on its preservation depends the property of the house of Cluny.

The Black Chanter seems to have kept its magic power, for, during all the troubles of the ’45, Cluny Mac Pherson accompanied Prince Charlie in his victories and helped him much by his own and his followers’ bravery. But when the final blow was given to the fortunes of Charles Edward at Drummossie Moor, the Mac Phersons were not there, and it is said that before the battle an old witch told the Duke of Cumberland that if he waited until the green banner and the Black Chanter came up he would he defeated. The battle was over before Cluny arrived, for he was met by the fugitives when on his way from Badenoch to join the Prince. The Mac Intoshes, who claim that their chief is the chief of the Clan Mac Pherson, were at Culloden and in the thickest of the fight, but they had not the Black Chanter, and so they, too, shared in the defeat. It is certainly curious that no battle at which the Mac Phersons were present with the green banner of the clan, the Black Chanter, and the chief at their head, was lost. We do not, of course, believe in this phase of the supernatural nowadays, and it has been irreverently asserted that this particular chanterwill not play, that a piper of Cluny’s who was in the service of the chief for seven years testified to this, and that it is nothing more nor less than a chanter that has been spoiled in the making. We do not contend that it really had supernatural powers—the probability is all the other way—but when the clan believed it had, that, by inspiring them with confidence, perhaps served the same purpose. Many clans and peoples find inspiration in that which to the sceptical and hypercritical is but a fetish, and though we may smile at old-time stories of the supernatural, we should remember that those things were not smiling matter to the people of those days, and that the people who live as long after us as we live after those who believed in fairies and other uncanny things are almost sure to find much more to laugh at in our practice and beliefs than we find in the practice and beliefs of our ancestors. Meantime, let us close with a piece as grand as ever was written in any language, dedicated to Culloden and the Black Chanter of Chattan by Mrs. Ogilvie—remembering that the past deserves our respect, not only for the brave people it produced, but also for the legacy of enjoyable song and poetry and tradition it has handed down to us—

“Black Chanter of Chattan now hushed and exhausted,