Each with his bonnet of blue,
And every piper was fou,
Twenty pipers together.”
The pipers, however, could not have been very “fou,” at least until after the wedding, for,
“The twenty pipers at break of day
In twenty different bog-holes lay,
Serenely sleeping on their way
From the wedding of Shon Mac Lean.”
Had they been totally incapable they could hardly have got to twenty different “bog-holes.” It is difficult to define exactly the meaning of the phrases, “as drunk as a piper” and “as fou as a piper,” but they seem to have generally meant half seas over, not helplessly inebriated. The piper, being an important social personage, could hardly escape the reproach of being addicted to liquor, although there is nothing to show that his class were in this respect any worse than the average of the people of their day.
