The Highland bagpipe

by W. L. Manson

With charming murmurs softly drawn.”

Have the pipes a language?—A wild, fanciful notion—How it got a hold—How much of it is true?—The reed actually speaking—A powerful influence—The power of association—Neil Munro—Descriptive Highland airs—A Cholla mo run—Military stories—In South Africa—An enthusiastic war correspondent.

In this chapter we would walk warily, knowing that we are on dangerous ground. The question is, Has the bagpipe a language more than any other instrument? Can it speak to the heart of the Highlander more than any other instrument can speak to hearts that know it, and the music which it discourses, and the associations of that music? Through the great bulk of what has been written about the bagpipe there runs this idea of its power, this wild, fanciful notion that it has an actual language and that those who understand that language can converse by its means. Some have even attempted to analyse the music, and to discover the alleged secret, while others have held that canntaireachd, fully dealt with in the next chapter, was in reality a language and not merely a very rude system of musical notation. And this notion of the speaking power of the pipes got such a hold on the imaginative people of the Highlands that, although personally each of them did not understand how the thing was possible, many of them accepted it as truth and believed the stories illustrating the subject, which ultimately became part of their traditional literature. It seems like sacrilege to disturb the ideas which have been accepted as absolute truth for centuries, but there is no doubt whatever that of the speaking power of the pipes about seventy-five per cent. exists in the vivid imaginations of the retailers of Highland tradition. It was indeed in the chanter-reed of the pipes that, after a long search, and after great difficulties, Baron von Kempelen, a distinguished Continental mechanic and musician, discovered the nearest approach to the human voice. He believed it was possible to get an approximation of language by some mechanical contrivance, and he was able to convert the reed to the elements of a speaking machine, and through its aid and with many appliances he obtained letters, syllables, words, and even entire sentences. But all the same, the bagpipe cannot speak any more than it can fly. If it has ever in all its history conveyed, by means of an extemporised tune, information to people at a distance definite enough to enable them to alter all their battle tactics, we require better historical proof of the incident than is to be got of any of the stories to be given here.

While, as a simple matter of fact, it is true that the bagpipe cannot speak, it is equally true that its music exercises a strangely powerful influence over the Celtic mind. The race are, or at any rate were, of a peculiarly imaginative temperament. This, taken along with the fact that their music always had strong associations, explains a great deal. Many of the pibrochs were composed without premeditation, under the influence of exuberant joy or the wildest sorrow or despair. Consequently, when, under favourable circumstances, they were again played by master hands, they roused up the old memories, and did really, though not literally, speak to the listeners. The construction of the pipe also helps. It is the only instrument since the days of the old Highland harp which represents the Gaelic scale in music, and it is this that makes the pipe appeal so naturally and so intensely to the Gael. To him, especially if from home, it speaks of the past of his own race, and of the days of his youth. In this lies its special charm:—

“When he hears the bagpipe sound

His heart will bound like steed for battle.”

Pipe music has many voices, and it expresses many of the emotions which are given vent to by language that can be printed. Neil Munro, as enthusiastic a Highlander as any man, does not believe in the “speaking” theory, but he believes in the descriptive character of the music. As witness—

“The tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous, that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it.”

The tune that, as Paruig Dall said, had “the tartan of the clan it.” And—

“Playing the tune of the ‘Fairy Harp,’ he can hear his forefolks, plaided in skins, towsy-headed and terrible, grunting at the oars, and snoring in the caves; he has his whittle and club in the ‘Desperate Battle’ (my own tune, my darling!), where the white-haired sea-rovers are on the shore, and a stain’s on the edge of the tide; or trying his art on Laments he can stand by the cairn of Kings, ken the colour of Fingal’s hair, and see the moon-glint on the hook of the Druids.”