“There, indeed, you are right; he was the man that had a kind heart. But this new man that has come in his place has a heart of remarkable hardness, and cares not a straw for the pipes or anything that belongs to the Highlands. He is a perfect fanatic in his passion for big sheep. It brings more enjoyment to him to look at a wether parading on green braes than to listen to all the pibrochs that ever were played. If I were to compose a pibroch for him, I would call it ‘Lament for the Big Wether,’ the wether that fell over the rock the other day, the loss of which almost drove him mad. It’s not I that would be caring to say this to everybody; but as you happen to be with me on the spot there can be no harm in telling you how he treated the poor people here. There is not now smoke coming out of single chimney or sheiling in the whole glen, where you used to see scores of decent people working at honest work. This man would as soon give lodgment to a fox as to a poor crofter or a widow woman. You never heard in your life what a mangling and maiming he has made of the population of this glen. Not even a shepherd would he have from the people of the country; he brought them all in from the south. Even his shepherd’s dog does not understand a word of Gaelic. Mactalla of the Crag has not sent back a single echo since good Donald went away. Everything must make way for the sheep. There is not a single brake now in which a bramble would grow; no tuft of brushwood on the slope where one could gather a nut; he has shaved the country as bare as the gable wall of a house, and as for sloes, where sloes used to be you may as well go and look for grapes. The birds, too, have left us; they have gone to the wood on the other side of the Sound; even the gay cuckoo cannot find a single stunted bush where it might hide. He has burnt all the wild wood that ran so prettily up the slope from end to end of this property. You won’t gather as many sticks from the brushwood as would serve to boil a pot of potatoes, or as many twigs as would make a fishing basket. But no more of this; it makes my heart sick to think of it. Better to be talking of something else.”
The new era dawned, however. The dawn came so slowly that it was hardly noticed. The rabid anti-Highland feeling died away, the powers that were took a sensible view of the situation, and in the reaction that followed the music of the pipes quickly regained its old position of pre-eminence. With this difference, however—it returned to popularity as a social instead of a military force, destined in the Highlands to be the pursuit of the enthusiast and the beloved of the common people, and in the British army only, the inspiration that leads men on to slay one another. In this respect the suppression of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 marks a turning point in Scottish history, the importance of which has never been recognised. With Culloden ended the influence of old beliefs, and when, in 1782, the ban of the Disarming Act was removed, the people were ready for new ideas. A spirit of improvement and an enthusiasm for things Highland appeared, first modestly, then boldly, and under the auspices of a renovated society, without the environments of war and romance, a new order asserted itself. Competitions stirred up the more clever of the piping fraternity, and further popularised the music, books on Highland piping, written or compiled by leading pipers, began to appear, and with the publication broadcast of histories of the many tunes, the people began to take an intelligent and patriotic interest in the music. The Highlands is not now a barbarous and unknown land. It is classic ground, having been made so by the pens of clever writers, but the old instrument is still the emblem of the homeland to Highlanders all over the world, and, whatever dies out, many generations will not see the last of the pibroch.
CHAPTER IV.
The Make of the Pipes.
There’s meat and music here, as the fox said when he ate the bagpipe.—Gaelic Proverb.
The “Encyclopædia” definition—The simple reed—Early forms—Simple bagpipes—The chorus—The volynka—Continental pipes—British pipes—The Northumbrian—The Irish—The Highland—Tuning—Modern pipes—Prize pipes.
“A wind instrument whose fixed characteristic has always been two or more reed pipes attached to and sounded by a wind chest or bag, which bag has in turn been supplied either by the lungs of the performer or by a bellows.”
This is the encyclopædia definition, and generally speaking it is correct. But the bag is certainly an addition to the simple reed or shepherd’s pipe. And if we wish to go further back we can go to the time when a schoolboy on his way to school pulled a green straw from the cornfield, and biting off a bit, trimmed the end and made for himself a pipe. “Many a pipe,” says J. F. Campbell, “did boys make of straws in the days of my youth, and much discord did we produce in trying to play on the slender oaten pipe in emulation of John Piper.” Boys being still boys, they still pull the green straws in the passing by, and no doubt if the pipes were not already in existence they would again grow out of this primitive pipe, slowly but surely. Without the bag the pipe is the most ancient of all instruments. It was quite natural that people should try to form sounds by blowing through a tube, and afterwards to vary the sounds either by varying the size or shape of the tube or by fitting into it some special mechanism. The pipe was well known to the Trojans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who had different kinds for different measures, and from contemporary writings we learn that the strain of blowing these early pipes was so great that the player had to bandage his lips and cheeks with a leathern muzzle. One ancient picture represents a player blowing a triple pipe, that is, three pipes joined at the mouth-piece, but separate further down, a performance which must have made the need for some improved method of supplying wind very obvious. The name of the genius who first thought of having a reserve supply in a bag attached to the pipes, which would keep an equable current for the purposes of the music, while at the same time it would relieve the player’s mouth of the continued strain of blowing, is lost to posterity, but in all probability the idea was originated at different places and at different times by different people. Mac Lean, in his History of the Celtic Language, considers the bagpipe as originally consisting of a bladder with drones and chanter of reeds and bulrushes, and affirms that he himself made and played on such an instrument. The first real bagpipe would, however, be a skin, most likely that of a goat or kid, and the invention of the valve in the mouth-piece would follow as a matter of course—that is, if the man who thought of the bag did not also think of having a bellows. There were, no drones in the early pipes. St. Jerome, who lived in the fifth century, says that at the synagogue, in ancient times there was a simple species of bagpipe, consisting of a skin or leather bag, with two pipes, through one of which the bag was inflated, the other emitting the sound. This was the first real bagpipe and it was also, it may be added, the germ of the organ, for the bagpipe is but the organ reduced to its simplest expression.
OLD GERMAN WIND INSTRUMENTS—A.D. 1619.
(1) Large Bagpipe. (2) Dudey or Hornpipe. (3) Shepherd’s Pipe. (4) Bagpipe
with Bellows.
There was an ancient instrument, called the chorus, which seems to have been closely related to the bagpipe. The chorus was composed of the skin of an animal, which was inflated by a pipe in the back of the neck, and had another pipe issuing from the mouth. That it was not exactly the same as the bagpipe is evident from the fact that it was called alterum genus cori to distinguish it from the instrument composed of a bag specially manufactured with mouth-piece and pipe, which was known as unum genus cori. Giraldus Cambrensis, one of the most authoritative writers of the twelfth century, assigns the chorus to Scotland, but says nothing of its construction, although he credits the country with superior musical skill. Some ancient writers class the chorus with stringed instruments, and assert that it has no connection whatever with the bagpipe. Living as we do at the beginning of the twentieth century, we cannot possibly decide such a delicate point. And it does not matter much that we cannot.