“The life of a shepherd is void of all care,

With his bag and his bottle he maketh good fare;

He hath yon green meadow to walk in at will-a,

With a pair of fine bagpipes upon a green hill-a;

Tringdilla, tringdilla, tring down-adown dilla,

With a pair of fine bagpipes upon a green hill-a.”

It may sound irreverent to connect the bagpipe with religious ordinances, though why one form of musical instrument should be deemed sacred and another profane is a hard question. To the modern Highlander a blast from the pipes on Sunday would be considered enough to bring a curse on the whole land, but our forefathers were not all so strict. They worked references to the pipes into the architecture of many of their churches, particularly in England and on the Continent. In St. James’s Church, Norwich, there used to be a window on which a piper was shown with a bagpipe with one drone; under a stall in Ripon Cathedral there is carved in oak a representation of two hogs dancing to a third playing on a bagpipe; in Beverley Minster, a group of pigs is carved in wood, all dancing round a trough to the music of one of their number, who plays a bagpipe having two drones and one chanter; among the numerous carvings in Westminster Abbey, there is a woodland scene representing a group of monkeys along with a bear, the latter playing the bagpipe; and in St. John’s Church, Cirencester, a monkey is depicted playing on the bagpipe. Then at Rosslyn and in Melrose Abbey, we have the pieces of architecture mentioned in a previous chapter.[[9]] Perhaps the most curious of these semi-ecclesiastical carvings is a representation of an ass playing on a bagpipe, which is graven on an ancient tombstone in the Cathedral Church of Hamburg. The animal walks on its hind legs, holding the instrument between its forelegs, and carved on the stone are the words—

[9]. See pages [37] and [45].

“The vicissitudes of the world compel me,

Poor ass, to learn the bagpipe.”