“In a morning when the chief is dressing, he walks backwards and forwards close under the window without doors, playing on his bagpipe, with a most upright attitude and majestic stride. It is a proverb in Scotland, namely, the stately stride of the piper. When required he plays at meals, and in the evening to divert the guests with music when the chief has company with him. His gilley holds the pipe till he begins, and the moment he has done with the instrument he disdainfully throws it down upon the ground, as being only the passive means of conveying his skill to the ear, and not a proper weight for him to carry or bear at other times. But for a contrary reason his gilley snatches it up, which is that the pipe may not suffer indignity from its neglect.”
The last half of the paragraph is not applicable, and never was. One might as well expect a professional violinist to throw down his instrument on the stage after playing a solo, leaving the fragments for a super to pick up. Pipers respect the bagpipe as much as other musicians respect their own peculiar instruments, and they were never so “daft” as to indulge in the antics described by this writer. But then, the writer was an Englishman, and may therefore be excused.
DANCING TO PIPE MUSIC
(Highland Dress with Belted Plaid.)
The piper was a professional gentleman, a skilled musician, who went to college, and had a seat at the table with his chief. As a favoured retainer, he enjoyed certain perquisites. When, for instance, an animal was slaughtered for the family of the chief, a certain part of the carcase was allotted to the piper. When the civil wars broke up the clan system, the chiefs ceased to keep hereditary pipers, and the race soon became extinct. Afterwards, when a man considered he had enough of this world’s goods to warrant the expenditure, and felt that he would like to hark back a little to the ways of the fathers, he got the best piper he could, just as he got any other servant. In this way the system of family pipers is perpetuated, and will be so as long as the Sovereign and others of high rank set the example.
The pipes took an important part in the enjoyments of Highlanders. They were always to the front at weddings or where the people were making merry. An old time poet puts it plainly, if rather quaintly, when he says:—
“A braithel where the broth was fat,
In ancient times a token sure,
The bridegroom was na reckoned poor;
A vast o’ fouk a’ roun about