The Highland bagpipe

by W. L. Manson

And wasna he a roguey, a roguey, a roguey;

And wasna he a roguey, the piper o’ Dundee.”

—Old Scots Song.

Royal pipers—In France—At the English court—The Edinburgh Piper—Dumbarton—Biggar—Wigtown—Glenluce—Dumfries—Linlithgow—Aberdeen—Perth—Keith—Dalkeith—Dundee—Peebles—A weird story—Falkirk—“Gallowshiels” pipers’ combat—The Hasties of Jedburgh—Habbie Simson of Kilbarchan—Bridgeton—Neil Blane of Lanark—The Piper of Northumberland.

Although as a clan musician the piper was to a large extent a public character, he was quite as public in one or two other capacities. There were semi-royal pipers, and there were burgh pipers. We have not much record of the former, that is, until our own day, when the piper is one of the principal personages in the Royal retinue—but we have plenty of the latter. In 1505, we read, “pipers on drones” shared of the royal bounty of James IV.; and we have various references to pipers in connection with Court ceremonials. In France the piper was an appendage of the royal household in the seventeenth century, and in Ben Jonson’s Irish Masque, performed at the Court of England in 1613, six men and six boys danced to the bagpipe. But there is nothing to show that the piper in olden days formed part of the regular following of Scottish sovereigns. Pipers were kept by English noblemen, but their instrument was not the Highland. It was as burgh pipers that they were best known in a public capacity, in the Lowlands of Scotland at any rate. Each burgh had one or two, and the office, like that of clan piper, was in many cases hereditary. The pipers were supported out of the public funds along with other minstrels. Here is Rev. James Mac Kenzie’s description of the relation of the piper to a burgh, given in his History of Scotland:—

(From Drawings by J. Sands. By permission of Messrs. J. & R. Glen, Edinburgh.)

“The folk of the old town are fond of music. We have minstrels who hold a life appointment in the service of the burgh; their instruments are bagpipes, to be sure. Evening and morning and at other times needful the pipers march through the town to refresh the lieges with ‘Broken Bones at Luncarty,’ ‘Port Lennox,’ ‘Jockie and Sandy,’ ‘St. Johnstone’s Hunt’s up,’ and the like inspiriting strains. The law of the burgh requires that the pipers ‘sall have their daily wages and meat of the neighbours of this guid toon circulary, conform to the auld loveable use.’ Some of the burghers are so lamentably void of taste that they count the music dear and grudge the piper his ‘reasonable diet circularly.’ Some even refuse to entertain the piper when it comes to their turn, and get fined for their pains.”

In 1487 Edinburgh had three public pipers, and the Town Council then ordained that they should get their food day about from persons of substance, or that such persons should pay them money equivalent to threepence per piper. In 1660, after the magistrates had permitted “John Johnstone, piper, to accompany the town’s drummer throw the town morning and evening,” they gave him a salary and perquisites, but next year, rather capriciously, when he applied for a free house during his term of office, they resolved that he was not required, and dispensed with his services. About 1505 we have records of public pipers in Dumbarton, Biggar, Wigton, Glenluce, Dumfries, and elsewhere, and in 1707 we read the piper of Linlithgow was convicted of immorality and excommunicated.

Aberdeen had its piper, and in 1630 the magistrates prohibited him playing in the streets. The language of their prohibition was anything but complimentary. Thus:—“The Magistrates discharge the common piper of all going through the toun at nycht, or in the morning, in tyme coming, with his pype—it being an incivill forme to be usit within sic a famous burghe, and being often found fault with, als weill be sundrie nichtbouris of the toune as by strangeris.”