A.D. 1548.—Among the eight musical instruments mentioned in The Complaynt of Scotland, written in 1548, there are included “ane drone bagpipe” and “ane pipe made of ane bleddir and of ane reid.”[[2]]
A.D. 1549.—A French officer describing warfare near Edinburgh in 1549, says “The wild Scots encouraged themselves to arms by the sounds of their bagpipes.”
A.D. 1556.—In 1556 the Queen Regent of Scotland headed a procession in honour of St. Giles, the patron saint of Edinburgh, and she was “accompanied by bagpipers and other musicians.”
A.D. 1570.—In 1570 three St. Andrews pipers were admonished not to play on Sundays or at nights.
A.D. 1579.—We next come across Spenser and Shakespeare. In the Shepherd’s Calendar, Spenser makes a shepherd ask a down-hearted comrade:—
“Or is thy bagpipe broke that sounds so sweet?”
And Shakespeare, whose genius touched on everything above the earth and under it, but who does not seem to have had a high opinion of the “sweetness” of the bagpipe, says of a character that he is as melancholy as a glib cat, or a lugged bear, or an old lion, or a lover’s lute, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe. In another place he speaks of men who “laugh, like parrots at a bagpiper,” and in yet another he infers that the instrument was more powerful than others then in use. “You would never,” he says, “dance again after a tabor or pipe; no, the bagpipe could not move you.” He seems, however, to have known the utility even of his English pipes for marching purposes, for he concludes Much ado about Nothing with “Strike up, Pipers.” This phrase, by the way, must surely have been taken from the play, for it is always held as referring more to the bagpipe than to any other instrument. Generally speaking, Shakespeare’s references are more in the way of sarcasm than of praise.
A.D. 1581.—In 1581 we find James VI. returning from church at Dalkeith one Sunday with two pipers playing before him; and, strangely enough, a little nearer the end of the century, we read, two pipers were prosecuted for playing on the Sunday. At various times between 1591 and 1596 pipers from the Water of Leith bound themselves strictly not to play on the Sundays. There was evidently one law for the king and another for the subject.
A.D. 1584.—A poetical historian describing a battle between the English and the Irish in 1584 says:—