Although drummers were used in Highland regiments before 1745, the pipers outnumbered them very much, for whenever one was found who could play the pipes, the clans compelled him to follow them. Prince Charlie is said to have had thirty-two, who played before his tent at mealtime, and that their instrument was considered a weapon of war is proved by the fact that although a James Reid, one of the pipers who was taken on the suppression of the rebellion, pleaded that he had not carried arms, and was not, therefore, a soldier, the Courts decided that the pipe was a warlike instrument, and punished the performer just as if he had carried a claymore. When, after the battle of Prestonpans, the Prince entered Edinburgh, we read that—
“As he came marching up the street,
The pipes played loud and clear,
And a’ the folks came running out
To meet the Chevalier.”
At the time of the rebellion the pipers had come to be highly respected members of the clans. Almost as much so as the bards were in their day. In 1745 the Mac Leods marched into Aberdeenshire and were defeated at Inverurie. Mac Crimmon, the great piper from Dunvegan, and master of the celebrated Skye “college,” was taken prisoner after a stout resistance, and the following morning it was found that not one of the pipers of the victorious army played through the town as usual. When asked the reason of their extraordinary conduct, they answered that while the Mac Crimmon was in captivity their instruments would not sound, and it was only on the release of the prisoner that they resumed their duties. The Mac Crimmons were then, however, so well known all over the Highlands that the action of the other pipers can hardly be considered remarkable.
Many and many a time has the efficacy of pipe music in rallying men and leading them on to victory been proved. At Quebec in April, 1760, when Fraser’s regiment were retreating in great disorder the general complained to a field officer of the behaviour of his corps. “Sir,” the officer replied, warmly, “you did very wrong in forbidding the pipers to play this morning; nothing encourages the Highlanders so much in the day of battle, and even now they would be of some use.” “Then,” said the general, “let them blow like the devil if that will bring back the men.” The pipers played a favourite martial air, and the Highlanders, the moment they heard it, reformed, and there was no more disorder. When the regiment raised by Lord Mac Leod in 1778, called the 73rd or Mac Leod’s Highlanders, was in India, General Sir Eyre Coote thought at first that the bagpipe was a “useless relic of the barbarous ages and not in any manner calculated to discipline troops.” But the distinctness with which the shrill sounds made themselves heard through the noise of battle and the influence they seemed to exercise induced him to change his opinion. At Port Novo in 1781, he, with eight thousand men, of which the 73rd was the only British regiment, defeated Hyder Ali’s army of twenty-five battalions of infantry, four hundred Europeans, from forty thousand to fifty thousand horse, and over one hundred thousand matchlock men, with forty-seven cannon. The 73rd was on the right of the first line, leading all the attacks, and the general’s notice was particularly attracted by the pipers, who always blew up the most warlike strains when the fire was hottest. This so pleased Sir Eyre Coote that he called out—“Well done, my brave fellows, you shall have a set of silver pipes for this.” And he was as good as his word, for he gave the men £50, and the pipes which this bought had an inscription testifying to the high opinion the general had of the pipers. At the battle of Assaye, again, the musicians were ordered to lay aside their instruments and attend to the wounded. One of the pipers who obeyed this order was afterwards reproached by his comrades. Flutes or hautbois, they told him, they could well spare, but for the piper, who should always be in the heat of the battle, to go to the rear with the whistles was a thing unheard of. The unfortunate piper was quite humbled, but he soon had an opportunity of playing off the stigma, for in the advance at Argaun shortly after, he played with such animation that the men could hardly be restrained from breaking the line and rushing to the charge before the time.
Of a different nature is a story told of the Seaforth Highlanders. On the 12th of August, 1793, as the grenadiers of Captain Gordon’s company at Pondicherry were on duty in the trenches, exposed to a burning sun and a severe cannonade from a fortress near by, Colonel Campbell, field officer of the trenches, ordered the piper to play some pibrochs. This was considered a strange order to be made at such a time, but it was immediately complied with, and, says the writer of the chronicles of the regiment, “we were a good deal surprised to perceive that the moment the piper began, the fire from the enemy slackened, and soon almost entirely ceased. The French all got upon the works, and seemed more astonished at hearing the bagpipes than we with Colonel Campbell’s request.” It was a new kind of warfare, and again justifies the use of the appellation “weapon” instead of “instrument” used by the court which tried the Jacobite piper in 1746.
We all know the story of Lucknow, and though we know that, as a matter of history, it is entirely discredited, we cannot deny its extreme probability, and the intense effect the sound of the pipes in the distance would have had on the fainting men and women in the Residency. Something like the Lucknow story is that of Prince Charlie, who, when the clans were slow in gathering to his standard at Glenfinnan, retired to a hut and rested, disheartened and anxious. When at noon on the 19th of August no appearance was made he became hopeless, but in the afternoon the sound of the pipes made themselves heard, and shortly after the clans appeared. This is the moment which the authoress of the well-known song, “The March of the Cameron Men,” has described:—
“Oh proudly they walk, but each Cameron knows