The concept of ‘Bagpipes’ is suggested to have existed as far back as 1300 BC evidenced from early sculptures and references by the Roman writer Aristophanes in the 3^rd or 4^th century BC. Further evidence appears in ‘terracotta figurines’ from Alexandria’ in Greece in the last century BC with a drone accompanied by a chanter or chanters. The first mention we have of mouth blown ‘bagpipes’ in Latin, is with the word ‘tibia utricularius’ ie. mouth-blown double-pipes with a bag of ‘skin’ dating to the period of Nero, the emperor of Rome, in the first century AD. That the pipes, in the form of both mouth-blown and bag ‘blown’, were a very important and popular component of the musical cultures of ancient Greece and Rome is without doubt. They were often publicly funded for both men and woman players – the numbers of whom played the pipes being about equal. According to music schola, the late F. Collinson, to establish a link between the Roman double pipes with those in the Lowlands of Scotland (South of the river Forth) and the early Scottish Highland pipes is impossible. However, the very existence of pipes in any form that has given rise to a large repertoire of pipe music of different genres, as well as different forms of pipes, cannot be ignored by history. The double-pipes were already in England before the Romans arrived in the first century AD but there is seemingly no evidence that the Romans brought them.[i] At the present day, most of the countries of Europe have some form of bagpipe with France alone having at least different types of bagpipe played there

IRELAND AND SCOTLAND

The bagpipes are likely to have come to Scotland from Europe and were adopted in the Gaelic societies of Ireland and Scotland at least by the early 16^th century[16thC], if not much earlier. The Bagpipes had usually at least one drone and were sometimes referred to as simply a ‘drone.’ It could have been a ‘bass’ drone, two octaves below the six finger key-note or a ‘tenor’ drone, one octave below. Whichever came first, it was eventually standardised as an instrument with a chanter, blow-stick, two tenors and one large bass drone. The single bass and single tenor was not uncommon in the 19thC. However, the military used the three-drone format that became the ‘standard’ structure in both Scotland and Ireland.

Above is a photograph of the pipes being played with the bass drone closest to the body and the two tenors on the outside.

The role of the ‘bagpipes’ several centuries later, in the court of Gaelic society is historically well recognised both in Gaelic speaking Ireland and Scotland.

In Ireland, the bagpipes are called the ‘War Pipes’ and in Scotland, following the failure of the 1745 Jacobite rising they were similarly deemed to be ‘an instrument of war’. Our earliest references to bagpipes (rather than to mouth-blown pipes without a bag) in Scotland were very sparse and rarely mentioned, even in Gaelic sources, before the late 16thC. An early 16thC one, in a martial context, is from a Frenchman’s observation of the Scottish Highland soldiers at the Battle of Pinkie near Edinburgh in 1549 stating:

‘while the French prepared for combat, the wild Scots incited themselves to arms by the sound of the bagpipes

This may suggest that the bagpipes and harp were forever associated with martial music and with acts of war. The bagpipes were patronised by the clan chiefs throughout the 17^th century especially and reached their zenith within the Gaelic court in ceòl mór, or ‘big music’, with its theme and variations. Today this music is misguidedly called ‘classical music’ or ‘pìobaireachd’ (borrowed into English as pibroch) that, for a Gaelic speaker, simply means ‘the art of piping.

In the earliest publication of pipe music scores in 1820 the title identifies the contents as ‘The Ancient Martial Music of Caledonia called Piobaireachd’. However, an earlier analysis of this music in 1760 in Ms. form and later published in 1803, does not mention the word ‘Pìobaireachd’ nor ‘Ceòl Mór but rather Martial Music . Gaelic speakers, though, use a simple term of convenience ‘Ceòl Mór’. That term incorporates a whole range of different rhythms and tempos of tunes with variations. For example, there are Laments (bardic and keening) Gatherings/Warning tunes, Marches, Salutes and a wide range of different rhythms implied by the titles and internal evidence of the repertoire. ‘Ceòl Beag’ ie. ‘Small Music’, in contrast, encompasses a repertoire with much wider differences between them:  Marches, Strathspeys, Reels, Jigs, Hornpipes and Airs. ‘Ceòl Beag’ is also played in very measured time for dancing - apart from the rubato song Airs.

The point I am making, is that the blanket use of ‘piobaireachd/pibroch’ to describe a range of different characteristics of melodies in this ‘classical’ genre, has, I believe, had a subtle influence on the performance style of this martial and court music. This ‘blanket use’ of one word to describe the genres and differences between them, has led to a ‘levelling out’, as it were, of the rich repertoire into a single homogenous performance style that ignores the music’s function(s) in the Gaelic society from which it arose. This signifies the beginning of a departure from the cultural context of Gaelic society to an English colonised one. Although the editor and compiler of the first published collection of Ceòl Mór (1820) was a native of Skye and a Gaelic speaker, called Donald MacDonald, the organisation that published the collection, ‘The Highland Societies of London and Scotland’, had the English texts written by a chosen individual who was not a Gaelic speaker and would probably have formulated the title. The music was published for the upper echelons of society, having been relatively expensive, and had elements of post Jacobite romance enshrined within its pages and piano accompaniment. 

If we go back to the early 17^th century, we find that ‘The Statues of Iona’, passed in 1609, required the heirs of the Gaelic Highland clan chiefs be educated in English speaking protestant Lowland schools. This was a major step in the process of colonisation and imperialism. At the beginning of the century, chiefs of clans were being awarded with honours by the English and Scots’ governments in the form of ‘titles’ such as that bestowed to Sir Rory Mór MacLeod of Dunvegan in 1613. By the end of the century, patronage by chiefs for their musicians, poets and entertainers was being abandoned. In 1693 the hospitable chief of the MacLeods of Dunvegan Castle in Skye who patronised the blind harper and poet Ruairidh Dall Morrison died and his son, having been educated in a Lowland school abandoned the tradition. A powerful song was written by Ruairidh Dall, Òran Mór MhicLeòid (the big song of MacLeod) berating the abandonment of patronage in the castles of the Gaelic chiefs. As the harp lost its patronage, the martial music of the pipes became increasingly dominant.

The 18^th century witnessed the decline and destruction of Gaelic society through the final Jacobite battles of 1715 and the final massacre at Culloden in 1745. Gaelic society was never to recover from this again.

The Battle of Culloden resulted in the banning of the highland dress, the ‘féile’ or kilt by the English Hanoverian government. Pipes were not banned as many presume but the whole culture was subject to severe repression through burning houses, killing livestock, crops and evicting people. However, in the intervening period men were being press-ganged and captured all over the country up until 1756 when the big push started to recruit Highland soldiers for the British imperialist expansions in Europe and the East Indies. In the seventy years following Culloden military recruitment emerged as the single most successful British government policy implemented in the Highlands.

Throughout the early the 18^th and 19^th Century the pipes came to be recognised as a ‘martial instrument’ or an instrument of war inciting people to battle, after it had been part of the retinue of the clan chiefs in the Gaelic court with the older Harp, for centuries. It did so to such an extent that in Donald MacDonald’s 1820 publication, it is declared that the ‘The Bag-Pipe is, perhaps the only national instrument in Europe. Every other is peculiar to many countries, but the Bag-Pipe to Scotland alone.’ – such was the image perceived within but probably not from without; because it is not correct. However, the tenor of these comments is one of a particular romanticism of martial heroism and national pride as part of a much bigger imperialist picture. Many persons have claimed that the Highlanders were banned from playing the pipes, post-Culloden, but this was not the case. They were certainly not encouraged and almost completely laid aside.’ However, it did not take the English government long to realise that the most efficient way of getting Highlanders to fight in Imperialist battles of the British around the world was to raise and recruit Highland regiments that by tradition would have pipers accompanying them on the battlefield. The pipers, clad in tartan, formed the indelible image of the brave Highland warrior-soldier being led into the field of battle by the unarmed piper playing a rousing tune to incite them to inexorable bravery. These realities continued up to and including the second world war.

Initially, the music used for daily standing orders in the regiments, from reveille to lights off in the evening, were tunes from the ‘ceòl mór’ or ‘pibroch’ tradition – tunes that were well entrenched in Gaelic culture. In an early regiment, between 1778 and 1783[ii], A gathering tune was ‘Cogadh neo Sìth’ (War or Peace); ‘A’ Ghlas Mheur’ (The Finger lock) was used as a Reveille; Bodaich nam Briogais (The Old Men with the Trousers) used for ‘trooping’ – more like what became ‘Marches’ more commonly identified in the ‘ceòl beag’ or ‘light-music’ genre – rather than the ‘ceòl mór’.Some of those ‘classical’ pieces were taken from the common-or-garden melodies already well known in Gaelic oral tradition already.  Those ‘marches’ in the ceòl mór genre were a translation of a Gaelic word ‘spaidsearachd’; more akin to ‘strutting’ around than to marching in regular measured time. Here are some audio examples of some well-known orally transmitted melodies from Gaelic tradition, initially used for different orders of the regimental day.

The following are audio examples of the themes or ‘urlars’ of these tunes as they would have been played at the time of their use. I will follow this with audio examples of the same pieces that have become standardised in competitions and rigidly adhered to at the present day:

Cogadh neo Sìth (War or Peace) 

A’ Ghlas Mheur (Fingerlock) 

Bodaich nam Briogais (The Old Men with the Trousers) 

However, these tunes are now played inordinately slow and clearly not in the style of an incitement to gather or for a wake-up call. Over time, the whole repertoire changed in tempo from a more animated style to a much slower one throughout the 19thC. The reason was that the music was placed into a competitive environment, divorced from natural context, standardised and judged over the period of 200 years to give us a completely different style of performance:

Cogadh neo Sìth (War or Peace) Modern style

A’Ghlas Mheur (The Fingerlock) Modern style

Bodaich nam Briogais (The Old Men with the Trousers) Modern style

The pieces above have now become accepted as the ‘traditional’ way of playing these just as the great piping dynasties of the 17^th and 18^th centuries would have played them up until the time of the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

In the ‘ceòl beag ‘repertoire, there was an explosion in the compositions of martial pieces of music eg. Quicksteps and Marches especially. Strathspeys, Reels and Jigs. Many of these had military titles, referring to the regiment they belonged to and/or the particular historic events of the day eg. 74^th Farewell to Edinburgh; The 72^nd Punjabis, the 1^st Royal Scots in Macedonia etc – at least 150 of those kinds of titles exist. In the Strathspey genre, many titles were changed from Gaelic into English and called after ‘important’ people representing the landed or military gentry. Thoir an Gille dh’fhear-eigin [Give the boy to someone] was renamed Miss Louisa Campbell’s delight later becoming what it is known today as Lady Loudon– named after a Campbell landowner’s daughter.

The following audio has the tune in original Gaelic style then into the standardised modern setting:

7.Thoir an Gille dh’fhear-eigin into Lady Loudon 

‘Gille crùbach anns a’ Ghleann’[The crippled boy of the Glen] is another that was renamed becoming ‘Miss Drummond of Perth. The following is an audio (8) of these showing changes in style from the earlier period associated with the step dancing tradition and the second one associating it with the new ‘choreographed’ post-clearance Highland dancing style: 

However, many of the titles from the Gaelic tradition, such as a reel that simply identifies a woman as ‘Mary daughter of fair-haired Donald’ ‘A Mhórag nighean Dòmhnuill Duinn’, is renamed as ‘Lord MacDonald’.

This was a common feature of Highland music throughout the 19^thC – not just in bagpiping alone. It would appear to have become more frequent when, in the 19^thC, the new landlords who had by now become, for the most part, anglicised had resorted to keep the old traditions of supporting a piper to play in their large manor or castle and do the duties expected of them – playing at certain times of day and for guests. How these name changes happened is hard to ascertain, but the piper had to take some responsibility. Many of the tunes have numerous titles in Gaelic as well as in English or Scots. Not being able to speak the language and being in the service of the patron, it would not be difficult to imagine that a piper might dedicate a tune from their own tradition to their patron. At the present day, Gaelic speaking pipers have forgotten the Gaelic titles for the most part and that connection is also lost.

Returning to the ‘Ceòl Mór’ tradition ie. the genre that considered to be crucial before becoming a ‘master’ of the pipes. It had the term ‘classical’ bestowed on it by way of patronage from ‘professional people’ in such a way that every embellishment, over and above the notated score, has been edited and ‘improved’ by an overseeing Piobaireachd Society, and to be played exactly as notated. In the last forty years or so though, scholarship has been more thorough and less ‘romantic’ regarding the history of this instrument and its role in Scottish society.

This ‘classical’ music, as it is now commonly labelled, resulted in it being performed for the public through competitions that started in 1781 by an organisation, The Highland Societies of London and Scotland, that set out to ‘standardise’ the music and to ‘accommodate its Music to all other instruments – such as the Organ, Piano-Forte, Violin and German Flute.’

Competitions have continued annually since the late 18thC when the passions of even the audience were aroused by performance and competition performance  remains the main performance ‘stage’ of this music in Scotland. It is now an ‘Art Music’ rather than community and functional music of a people. It was patronised and slowly changed by those people whom Stendhal the French writer and psychologist called

‘men of letters who consider the privilege of criticising arts and music as a legitimate appendage for their professional titles.

The performance style has changed so much from the free expression and appropriateness that emanates from function. As the style has been ingrained into the piping culture for some time now and the competitions have been the main platform with limited communication with the public, there is a reluctance to change; conformity being the accepted norm. The inferiority complex that has been engendered into the population from years of colonisation means that one can only hope that the next generation will tire of this rigid standardisation.

[ii] Double-pipes meaning two parallel chanters. Roman pipers had, like the Greeks, the tibiae impares(double pipes of unequal length with Greek equivalent of auloi elymoi); and the equal-length tibiae sarranae (no Greek equivalent or name)

[ii] F.Collinson The Traditional and National  Music of Scotland’ (1966:95)

[ii] Ibid .pp37-38

[ii] Ibid: 57

[ii] ibid

[ii] F.Collinson: ‘ibid (1966: 30,42,43) Nero was a performer of the bagpipes.

[ii] See Cannon ‘The Highland Bagpipe and its Music’ (1988: 8)

[ii] Interestingly, extracts from very early BC texts referring to use of pipes in battle by the Spartans used pipe music rather than horns or trumpets in battle. The use of pipes is in contrast with the ‘War Pipes’ of Ireland and Scotland in that they were not used for the purpose of making the warriors more aggressive but that they created an image of fearlessness and order that was more effective than the breaking of ranks and disorder often created by ‘incitement’ to battle in a fierce impetuous manner.

[ii] Donald MacDonald

[ii] Joseph MacDonald’s Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe

[ii] He also had, for the first time ever, a number of fully notated tunes from the Ceòl Beag repertoire as a sample of what was to publish later in 1828.

[ii] The last chief to have a harper and fiddler in his retinue was a MacLean, until 1828.

[ii] But as Donald MacDonald’s 1820 publication preface states; ‘the Bag-Pipe was, for a long time, almost completely laid aside.

[ii] A.MacKillop (2000) ‘More Fruitful than the Soil’:Army Empire and the Scottish Highlands 1715-1815’

[ii] Donald MacDonald(1822) Preface paragraph 3.

[ii] The Argyll or Western Fencible Regiment that lasted only 5 years.

[ii] Intro to Donald MacDonald’s 1820 coll of Ancient Martial music of Caledonia called Piobaireachd…..