“‘Yesterday,’ said my friend the officer, ‘we’d a little match between men who had some skill at embroidering the airs of the old ballads with trills of those grace-notes that they call warblers, but this contest was broken up by a rugged son of the hills who, after asking for the pipes, flung from them a few strong, clear notes which gained the attention of all who are born to a knowledge of the music that speaks. I am not one of those, but I called my soldier-servant up and asked him what was being played.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘that’s Mac Callum—a great museecian he is. And hark, sir; he has the right of it and boldly he is telling every one his thoughts. He says that every man kens that the gran’ general who’s dead was as cunning and skilfu’ in war as ony man above him, and ’tis late in the day—now that he’s laid away and dumb—to put blame on him as if he were an ignoramus and a butcher, like some others. And now, oh! brawly ye’re tellin’ it, Mac Callum—he says there may be scheming and plotting in high places but no skullduggery o’ ony sort, however it is gilded, will ever deceive ane single true chiel o’ the Highlands.’”
“‘And then,’ said my gossip, ‘the pipes passed to the hand of another man,’ and my servant—seeing me about to move away—touched my arm and bade me wait, as this new player was another adept with the pipes. ‘He’s grand at it,’ said he; ‘well done, Stewart.’ He’s saying, sir, that the reason none will heed those who blame our grand leader that’s gone is that there’s men of rank among us—and of proud blood—that’ll stand up to any man at home and swear that when our fallen chief came back with his orders for the battle he complained of them sorely, but he said, ‘No better could he get,’ and when he lay down in his blanket his head was full of the trouble that was coming on him—he not being able to learn what he needed to know against the morrow.
“There was more of this recital of what the pipes had spoken to the regiment, but it would only be irritating a sore to repeat it. The pipers spoke even more plainly as the bold outpourings of one incited bolder from another. At last there were suggestions, by pipes grown mutinous, of sentiments which, happily, have seldom been spread within the British Army. But what I have told suffices to illustrate my sole point, which is that the gift of eloquent speech in chords and trills is born with the master-pipers.
“I never saw my officer-friend again for more than a nod or a word in passing. But on one day the pipes next door rang jubilantly, and man after man applied himself to them with ginger in his touch. Each blew triumphant, thrilling, heart-stirring chords, and every piper swaggered at his work with such a will as to send his aproned kilt to and fro with what seemed a double swing to each beat of the time.
“I said to myself, ‘They have learned that Hector Mac Donald is coming to be their new brigadier, and the pipes are assuring them that every Highlander may be himself again, certain of victory and new glory under a leader second only to the one they have lost.’ I still believe my conjecture was right.
“And I know from living next door, as it were, that the cloud of gloom that had hung over the brigade was dispelled almost with the suddenness of its horrid appearance.
“After that the kilties began to make in this war a continuation of their glorious record in so many lesser wars in the time that was.”
All of which is very fine writing, but one cannot get rid of the idea that Mr. Ralph was the victim of an elaborate joke. The speaking theory was new to him and he accepted it in all its amplitude. There is no report of what his officer-friend said when he read Mr. Ralph’s article—if he ever did read it.
The simple truth about the “language” of the pipes seems to be that a Highland listener gets from the pipes what, in a more or less degree, anyone gets from the music he loves—a stimulant for his emotion and imagination, nothing more. He is an emotional being, and his imagination, aided and abetted by the sorrows and the joys of many generations—which affect his disposition though he knows it not—and by the many associations of particular tunes or styles of playing, runs riot when he hears the pipes, and to him they speak as no other instrument ever can speak. A primitive instrument working on the feelings of a primitive people has a much more direct and intense psychological effect than on a sophisticated people who have scores of different cunning instruments and myriads of airs, a fact which should always be remembered when the “language” of the pipes is discussed. After all it depends much more on the listener than on the instrument. In our appreciation of any music, and in the effect it has on us, there is involved all that we ourselves have been, seen, heard, thought, and—sometimes—forgot. A plaintive love air brings up the old days, the sunny weather, the sweethearts of our youth, all the store of associations that are buried in us, and—who knows?—all the loves and hates, the joys and sorrows of our dead fathers, modified or intensified by our own personal character. Therefore to us that plaintive air is the sweetest of music. To the Highlander the bagpipe conveys the fine rapture a high-class audience gets, or at least professes to get, from Sarasate’s violin and Paderewski’s piano. To him it has a direct message, but to the rest of the world it is what a violin is to him, probably less. But as for an impromptu tune conveying intelligence like spoken language—ah well, we must draw the line somewhere.