Those who hold that the instrument was originally imported into Scotland believe that the parent of the Scottish bagpipe was an instrument known as the volynka, found in some provinces of the Russian Empire and ascribed more particularly to the Finns, who called it pilai. It was a rude instrument, consisting of two tubes and a mouth-piece, all apart, inserted in a raw, hairy goatskin. It was not held in high esteem, for when the Czar degraded the Archbishop of Novogorod in 1569 he alleged that the worthy father was “fitter for a bagpiper leading dancing bears than for a prelate.” But no less than five different kinds of bagpipes were known on the Continent in the seventeenth century, some of them with very high qualities as musical instruments. They were:—
I. The cornemuse, a simple instrument inflated by the mouth, with a chanter having eight apertures for notes, but without any drones.
II. The chalemie, or shepherd’s pipe, used by peasants at festivals, and also in country churches. It was inflated by the mouth, had a chanter with ten holes, and had also two drones.
III. The mussette, which was inflated by a bellows. It had a chanter with twelve notes, besides other apertures and valves opened by keys, and with four reeds for drones, enclosed in a barrel. It was a complicated instrument, and elaborately made. In one instance, we read, the bag of the mussette was made of velvet embroidered with fleurs de lis. It was, however, the “class” variety of the bagpipe, and was played before Royalty. The mussette was said to sound most sweetly, “especially in the hands of Destouches, the Royal Piper.” So they had a royal piper in those days and the pipes were honoured.
IV. The surdelina of Naples, an instrument with two drones, two chanters, and numerous keys.
V. The Italian peasant’s bagpipe, having two chanters, each with a single key, and one drone.
In Germany the instrument was known as the sackpfeife, in Italy as the cornamusa, in Rome as tibia utricularis, in Lower Brittany as bignou, and other Continental names for it were tiva, ciarmella, samponia or samphoneja and zampugna.
There was besides the simple combination of reed and bladder, so simple that it could be made by the shepherd boy himself, without the aid of tools and without any special aptitude for mechanics. From it spring all the others which demand the skill of the finished artisan and the help of turning laths and latter-day implements. The Italian bagpipe, which was made familiar in Britain through the wandering pifferari, was a very rude instrument, consisting of a goat’s skin, with an enormous drone, on which the player performed by means of a mouth tube, another player making the melody on a separate chanter. A visitor to Naples in 1824 describes a musician in a sheepskin coat, with the wool outwards, playing a bagpipe, of which the bag consisted of “the undressed skin of a goat inflated by one of the legs in its original shape.” How anything could be inflated by the leg of a goat he does not stop to inform us, but as the bagpipe now used in Italy is very agreeable and also presentable, though limited in power, it must have been improved considerably since 1824. That it did exist in a more finished condition is evident from the statement of another traveller, made in 1850, that he had heard the national music of Hungary played at Pesth on the dudelsack, “a genuine bagpipe, with a fine drone, adorned in front with a goat’s head, and covered with a goat’s skin.” It is not clear whether he means that the bag or the drone was adorned in front with the goat’s head, but most likely it was the bag, and the head would be in its original relation to the skin of the goat. The sackpfeife (bagpipe) and chalemie (shepherd’s pipe) seem to have been intimately associated with the wandering minstrels of Germany from time immemorial, and under the name of dudey or dudelsack, is still well known to the German peasant.
There are three recognised kinds of bagpipes in the British Islands:—
I. The Northumbrian bagpipe.