CARVINGS IN MELROSE ABBEY
A.D. 1200.—Coming down to ages of which we have better historical records, we find a drawing of the thirteenth century which shows a girl dancing on the shoulders of a jester to the music of the instrument in its simplest form, the chanter only.
A.D. 1300.—About the end of the thirteenth century the bagpipe in France was consigned to the lower orders, and only used by the blind and the wandering or mendicant classes. Polite society, however, resumed it in the time of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.
A.D. 1307.—Several payments to performers of the fourteenth and subsequent centuries are recorded. In the reign of Edward II. there is a payment to Jauno Chevretter (the latter word meant bagpiper) for playing before the king.
A.D. 1314.—The Clan Menzies are alleged to have had their pipes with them at Bannockburn, and they are supposed to have been played by one of the Mac Intyres, their hereditary pipers. The Clan Menzies claim that these pipes are still in existence, at least three portions of them—the chanter, which has the same number of finger holes as the modern chanter, but two additional holes on each side; the blowpipe, which is square, but graduates to round at the top; and the drone, of which the top half only remains. These relics, which are now preserved with great care, are supposed to be the remains of a set which were played to the clan when they mustered at Castle Menzies, and marched to join the main body of the Scottish army at Torwood, and in front of them on the field of battle. There are said to be Mac Donald pipes in existence, which consist of a chanter and blowpipe only, and which, it is alleged, were played before the Mac Donalds at Bannockburn. This, most likely, also refers to the Menzies pipes, as the Mac Intyres, who are credited with having been owners of each, were at different times pipers to the Menzies and to the Clan Ranald branch of the Mac Donalds. Bruce’s son, says another tradition, had pipes at Bannockburn. Sir Walter Scott represents the men of the Isles as charging to the sound of the bagpipe; and David Mac Donald, a Clan Mac Donald bard, who wrote about 1838, in a poem on the battle, says that when the bards began to encourage the clans, the pipers began to blow their pipes. There is, however, no historical proof that the instrument was used at the battle. Though horns and trumpets are mentioned by reliable historians, it is not till about two hundred years later that the bagpipe is referred to as having superseded the trumpet as an instrument of war.
A.D. 1327.—In the reign of Edward III. two pipers received permission to visit schools for minstrels beyond the seas, and from about that time till the sixteenth century the bagpipe was the favourite instrument of the Irish kerns.
A.D. 1362.—There is an entry in the Exchequer rolls of 1362 of forty shillings “paid to the King’s pipers,” which indicates the use of the pipes at that date.
A.D. 1370.—The arms of Winchester School, founded in 1370, show an angel playing a bagpipe, and a silver-mounted crosier, presented by the founder to the New College, Oxford, has among other figures that of an angel playing the bagpipe. Some enthusiast might surely have adduced the frequent connections of the instrument with angels as proof of its sacred origin.
A.D. 1377.—One “claryoner,” two trumpeters, and four pipers were attached to the fleet of Richard, Earl of Arundel (Richard II). The bagpipe often appears in the English sculpture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and, of course, very frequently later.
A.D. 1380.—There are no English literary references to the pipes till the time of Chaucer, when the poet makes the miller in the Canterbury Tales play on the instrument:—