The Highland bagpipe

by W. L. Manson

“I hin-do, ho-dro, hin-do, ho-dro, hin-do, ho-dro,

hin-da, ho-dra, hin-do, ho-dro, hin-da, chin-drine,

hin-do, ho-dro, hin-do, ho-dra, hin-do, ho-dro, hin-do,

ho-dro, hin-do, ho-dro, hin-da, chin-drine, hin-do, ho-dro,

hin-do, ho-dro, hin-da, hin-da, hin-do, chin-drine.”

Ancient music lost—Transmission by tradition—Druidical remains—Systems of teaching—No books—“Unintelligible jargon”—Canntaireachd—The Mac Crimmon System—The Gesto Book—A scientific system—A tune in Canntaireachd—Pipers unable to explain—Earliest printed pipe music—Mac Donald’s books—More recent books—Something to be done.

For long, the music of the pipes was so much a part of the life of the people that no records of tunes were necessary. But there came a time when interest in these things waned somewhat, and it was then that the want of printed or written records were felt. By reason of that want, we now know little or nothing of truly ancient Scottish music. Perhaps we have not lost much, but in any case it would have been interesting to know the musical tastes of our forefathers away back in the early centuries. We are quite willing to believe that some of the exquisite melodies still existing were handed down to us by Gaelic progenitors, and are as old as the race itself, but the fact remains that we cannot trace any of them for more than two or three centuries, nor tell whether or not they are older than the first mention of them we have in authentic history. That many of the tunes were composed on incidents or battles four and five hundred years back does not prove that the tunes themselves are as old as the events they commemorate. Composers then, as now, chose their subjects irrespective of dates. The pipes were in fairly common use about the middle of the seventeenth century, probably for centuries earlier, and when they were in use, there must have been music for them. But we have not that music now, thanks to the blank which occurred between the decay of the system whereby music was taught orally and the introduction of the educational system of later centuries. Clanship isolated the people into small communities and prevented a general knowledge of music from being spread abroad, and it could not very well be committed to paper when the people knew of no system of signs which would represent it. So the only method of preserving the tunes was their transmission from one generation of pipers to another, a method which rendered it very easy for the unscrupulous to re-baptise or paraphrase old tunes, and pass them off as their own, and also left the tunes to change gradually as they passed from performer to performer. Then, again, the decay of the Gaelic made it necessary to give English names to Gaelic tunes, and a number of the finest Highland airs have been wedded to the songs of such poetical giants as Burns, Hogg, Tannahill, and Cunningham, and their identity completely lost. Gaelic itself has been kept pure enough through traditional generations, but the conditions which applied to the music did not apply to the language. The language was the heritage of an entire people, their daily bread, as it were; the music was cultivated only by a class of the people, and was far more subject to change than the language.

It is alleged that the chanting of Druidical precepts in Pagan times was imitated by the early Christians, and some remains of Druidical songs, with music attached, were said to have been in existence so late as 1830, but there is now nothing to show what were the qualities of Highland music prior to the dates of tunes which are well authenticated. The music of the pipes is ancient, without a doubt; it passed through a long evolution process, and it has changed but little since we have known it committed to paper. That is about all that can safely be said on the point.

Before people learned to express their thoughts by marks on paper, they carried the music in their heads. The music teacher nowadays gathers his books and his scales and his instruments around him; then he gathers his pupils; then he expounds the theories on which the system of music is based; then he shows how these theories work out in actual practice, and then he proceeds to learn his pupils how to practice them. All of which makes the learning of music a “special subject,” and goes to instil into the heads of the non-musical the idea that they, too, by reason of having passed through all the courses, must needs understand music. Whereas all the time it is only the theory of music, as taught in the text-books, they understand. This in itself is not a bad thing, if people incapable of anything higher would be content with it, and not pose as authorities. But the tendency of our educational system is, or at least was very recently, towards the production of a race of pedants, and the creation of a dead level of mediocrity in which the common person thinks he is as clever as the genius, and the genius is too modest to hold his head higher than that of the common person. In the old days, when the difficulties were insurmountable to the common person, genius shone forth all the brighter. There was little of the literature of the pipes in these days, and a piper’s ear was his best teacher. Consequently the great pipers stood head and shoulders above the common crowd—giants because of their genius and lifelong study. It is quite likely that the raising of the level of the mass, even at the expense of genius, may be a good thing, but that is another matter.

Two hundred years ago there were few, if any, books bearing on the subject, and were it not for the powerful memories of the hereditary pipers of the different clans, and their devotion to their art, but little even of the music of that time could have been preserved. The hereditary pipers were walking storehouses of Highland musical knowledge. They taught their pupils by ear and off the fingers. Taking them out to the hillside, they first learned them to chant words with the tunes in a sort of “unintelligible jargon,” then to finger the chanter silently from memory, then to play the chanter, and afterwards to play the pipes themselves. This system, if such it could be called, required as its very groundwork the possession on the part of the pupil of an ear for music, a natural aptitude for pipe music, a devotion to the music peculiar to the Highlands, and an intimate knowledge of and reverence for all the circumstances which entwined themselves into the histories of the various tunes. Without these qualifications no man could be a great piper, and the hereditary pipers were very chary about beginning to train anyone who did not promise to come up to their expectations.