The Highland bagpipe

by W. L. Manson

REPRODUCED FROM A CONTORNIATE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

A.D. 54.—The cruel Emperor Nero was an accomplished musician, and a contorniate of his time has given rise to many assertions connecting him with the pipes. It is generally referred to as a coin, but it is in reality a contorniate or medal, which was given away at public sports. The sketch here reproduced (full-size) is from a specimen in the British Museum, and very little study will show that it proves almost nothing relating to the bagpipe. The obverse bears the head of Nero and the usual inscription. On the reverse there seems to be the form of a wind organ with nine irregular pipes, all blown by a bellows and having underneath what is probably a bag. It is more closely related to the organ than to the bagpipe, and, as has been said, it proves nothing. Some writers call the instrument on which Nero played a flute with a bladder under the performer’s arm, a description which does more to identify it as the bagpipe. It cannot have been considered a very honourable thing in Nero’s day to play the pipes, for the emperor on hearing of the last revolt, that which cost him his throne and his life, vowed solemnly that if the gods would but extricate him from his troubles he would play in public on the bagpipe, as a sort of penance or thank offering probably. Perhaps history has made a mistake, and it may have been the pipes and not the fiddle Nero played on while Rome was burning. The medal, it may be added, is believed by the authorities at the British Museum to date from about A.D. 330, although it bears the impress of Nero.

That the instrument was in use among the Romans is indisputable. A historian, who wrote a history of the wars of the Persians, the Vandals, and the Goths, states that the Roman infantry used it for marching purposes, and he describes it as having both skin and wood extremely fine. The name it went by was pythaula, a word of Greek origin, which bears a striking resemblance to the Celtic piob-mhala, pronounced piovala. There is in Rome a fine Greek sculpture in basso relievo representing a piper playing on an instrument closely resembling the Highland bagpipe, the performer himself being dressed not unlike a modern Highlander. It is shown besides on several coins, but from the rudeness of the drawings or their decay the exact form cannot be ascertained. A small bronze figure found under Richborough Castle, Kent, represents a Roman soldier playing on the bagpipe, but his whole equipment is curious. The precise form of the instrument itself is questionable, and the manner of holding it, the helmet, the ancient purse on one side and the short Roman sword and dagger on the other, all furnish matter for debate. About 1870 a stone was dug from the ground near Bo’ness, on which was sculptured a party of Roman soldiers on the march. They were dressed in short kilts, and one was playing the bagpipe. The instrument was very similar to those of the present day except that the drones were shorter.

A.D. 100.—Aristides Quintilianus, who lived about this time, writes to the effect that the bagpipe was known in the Scottish Highlands in his day. This, however, may be set aside as a reference of no value seeing that the Highlands was then an unknown world to the Greeks. The Greeks of the same age knew the instrument as Tibia utricularis, and from the pipes, we are told, the Athenian shepherds drew the sweetest sounds. Other books again tell us that the Athenians rejected the pipes because they disturbed conversation and made hearing difficult. Still others—English be it noted—contain the sentence, “Arcadia in Greece: the bagpipe was first invented here,” but the statement is not substantiated in any way.

A.D. 500.—In the sixth century the bagpipe is mentioned by Procopius, a Greek historian, as the instrument of the Roman infantry, the trumpet being that of the cavalry.

A.D. 800.—There is a picture of a primitive instrument copied from a manuscript of the ninth century. It consists of a blow pipe on one side of a small bag, with a sort of chanter having three or four holes and a beast’s head instead of the usual bell-shaped end. The instrument was held extended from the mouth, and the bag, if any pressure was necessary, must have been elastic, as it could not be pressed in any way.

A.D. 1118.—Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian, mentions the pipes about this date as Welsh and Irish, but not as Scottish. But The Complaynt of Scotland, written in 1548, states that the instrument was a favourite with the Scottish peasantry “from the earliest periods.” Another trustworthy record says it was in use in Scotland and Wales about the end of the twelfth century. Besides, Pennant in his Tour was told that it was mentioned in the oldest northern songs as the “soeck-pipe.” There is little doubt it was cultivated to some extent in Scotland in the twelfth century.

A.D. 1136.—There are, or at least were, in Melrose Abbey, built in 1136, two carvings representing bagpipes, but they are not supposed to be of a date so early as the abbey itself. The first, that of an aged musician, is given in Sir John Graham Dalziel’s Musical Memoirs of Scotland, published in 1849, but it cannot now be found in the abbey. If it existed when the book was written, it has succumbed since then to the action of the elements or the vandalism of the ignorant. The second, sketched on the spot, is one of those grotesque carvings which artists of early days, in what must have been a sarcastic humour, delighted in affixing to sacred buildings. It is a gargoyle in the form of a pig carrying a rude bagpipe under its head with the drone, the only pipe now remaining, on its left shoulder, and its fore feet, what is left of them, clasped around the bag. The mouth is open and the rain water off the roof runs through it. There is a tradition that as James IV. was not agreeing very well with the Highlanders the pig playing their favourite instrument was placed in the abbey as a satire. The chapel, however, on the outside of the nave of which the carving is, was built before the time of James IV. It is curious that all, or nearly all, the carvings on the outside of the abbey are ugly, some of them gruesome, while the figures on the inside are beautiful. This, it is supposed, was meant to convey the idea of Heaven inside and earth outside. In the architecture of the middle ages the gargoyle, or waterspout, assumed a vast variety of forms, often frightful, fantastic or grotesque. So the carving in Melrose Abbey may be simply the product of the artist’s imagination. Besides, a French architect had a good deal to do with the abbey, so the designs may not all be emblematic of Scottish life of the date when they were made. In Musical Memoirs of Scotland it is stated that the instrument had two drones, one on each side of the animal’s head, and a chanter which hung beneath its feet, these latter being placed on the apertures. The figure seems to have been very much worn away since this book was written.