The Highland bagpipe

by W. L. Manson

The preservation of the Gaelic, the kilt, and the pipes is the most notable feature in Highland history. Without his tartan, his language, and his music, the Gael would be only “A naked Pict, meagre and pale, the ghost of what he was.” But he has kept these, his distinguishing characteristics, and the Scottish Highlands of to-day is one of the most extraordinary studies in Europe, retaining as it does a language the most ancient, and the customs and music which distinguished it in ages the most remote, in spite of circumstances which might have proved too much for any social system whatever. The nature of the country did much to perpetuate these things. It was hilly, and, in the old days, inaccessible; the wants of the people were supplied among themselves, their manners were simple and patriarchal, and they had little intercourse with strangers except through trading in cattle and an occasional foray into the low country. So a spirit of independence and jealous pride of ancestry was cultivated, and in tradition, song, and music, the exploits of their forbears were celebrated. All this went to make Celtic Scotland a nation by itself, and its people a peculiar people. There is nothing in the political history of any country so remarkable as the succession of the Highland chiefs and the long and uninterrupted sway they held over their followers.

Somewhere about 1066 Malcolm Canmore removed his court from Iona to Dunfermline and introduced the Saxon language, and about 1270 Gaelic was entirely superseded in the Lowlands. Latin was used in all publications, and there were not many who could read what few books there were. Gaelic was not printed till 1567, centuries after it had ceased to be the language of the court or of “society.” Then a book of John Knox’s was issued in Gaelic, but it was 1767 before the New Testament appeared in the Celtic tongue. When it did ten thousand copies were sold. There was, of course, a vast store of poetry and literature floating around in the minds of the people, passed down from generation to generation; but, with the exception of two small collections, one by Rev. John Farquharson of Strathglass in 1571, and the other by Alexander Mac Donald, Ardnamurchan, about eight years later, it had all to wait until 1759, when James Mac Pherson, the collector of Ossianic poetry, compiled or wrote (whether he compiled or wrote it is too delicate a matter to express a definite opinion about in this place) the classics of the Highlands. In spite of all these disadvantages, perhaps by reason of them, the Highlands remained the Highlands until the beginning of the present century. The many years of tribal warfare and of warfare with other peoples, did not destroy the individuality of the race, it was the slow civilising process of later ages that made the Highlands less a distinct nation than a province of the big British Empire.

Of the circumstances in the midst of which the pipes and pipe music first got a hold on the affections of the Highland people we know but little. There were harpers before there were pipers, and probably bards before there were harpers, but these did not record contemporary history or the traditions of their age with any degree of fulness or accuracy, if indeed they can be said to have recorded anything at all who only told the next generation what they had heard from the previous. Writing in 1603 a traveller says of the Highlanders:—

“They delight much in musicke, but chiefly in harps and clairschoes of their own fashion. The strings of the clairschoes are made of brass wire, and the strings of the harps of sinews, which strings they strike either with their nayles growing long, or else with an instrument appoynted for that use. They take great pleasure to deck their harps and clairschoes with silver and precious stones; the poore ones that cannot attayne hereunto decke them with christall. They sing verses prettily compound, containing (for the most part) prayses of valiant men. There is not almost any other argument whereof their rymes intreat. They speak the ancient French language, altered a little.”

As to the country itself, it was a mysterious, unknown land to all but the native. Ancient historians puzzled over its mystery, but could not fathom it. So they wrote under the shadow of the mysterious. Procopius, a Greek writer who flourished about A.D. 530, and wrote of the Roman Empire, speaking about the Highlands, says:—

“In the west, beyond the wall (Antoninus’ Wall), the air is infectious and mortal, the ground is covered with serpents, and this dreary solitude is the region of departed spirits, who are translated from the opposite shores in substantial boats, and by living rowers. Some families of fishermen are excused from tribute in consideration of the mysterious office which is performed by these Charons of the ocean. Each in his turn is summoned at the hour of midnight to hear the voices and even the names of the ghosts, he is sensible of their weight, and feels impelled by an unknown but irresistible power.”

Now we know how it was that the Romans could not conquer the Highlands. But we also know that the Highlanders were not, when the Romans came, the ignorant barbarians they are represented to have been, for Cæsar ascertained from them that the coast line of Britain was two thousand miles in length, an estimate not so very wide of the mark.

We are told by one fourteenth century historian that “In Scotland ye shall find no man lightly of honour or gentleness, they be like wyld and savage people;” and by another that “as to their faith and promise, they hold it with great constancie,” statements which are not at all contradictory. The once prevalent idea that a Highland chief was an ignorant and unprincipled tyrant who rewarded the abject submission of his followers with relentless cruelty and oppression was entirely erroneous. He might be naturally ferocious or naturally weak, but in either case the tribal system curbed excess, for the chief men of the clan were his advisers, and without their approval he seldom decided on extreme measures. But though the sway of the chiefs was thus mild in practice, it was arbitrary, and they themselves were proud of their lot, their lands, and their dependents. It is related of the lairds of Barra, who belonged to one of the oldest and least-mixed septs in the Highlands, that as soon as the family had dined it was customary for a herald to sound a horn from the battlements on the castle tower, proclaiming aloud in Gaelic, “Hear, oh! ye people! and listen, oh! ye nations! The great Mac Neill of Barra having finished his meal, the princes of the earth may dine.”

The peasantry of the Highlands were always noted for their hospitality. “I have wandered,” says Mr. J. F. Campbell of Islay, than whom none knew the Highlands better, “among the peasantry of many countries, and this trip through the Highlands has but confirmed my old impressions. The poorest Highlander is ever readiest to share the best he has with the stranger. A kind word is never thrown away, and whatever may be the faults of this people, I have never found a boor or a churl in a Highland bothy.” Besides, the ancient Gaels were very fond of music, whether in a merry or a sad humour. “It was,” says Bacon, “a sure sign of brewing mischief when a Caledonian warrior was heard to hum his surly song.” They accompanied most of their labours with music, either vocal or that of the harp, and it was among these chiefs and these people that the national music of Scotland took its rise. It is a matter of regret that its wild strains are now more frequently heard amid Canadian woods and on Australian plains than in the land where it was cradled.