The Highland bagpipe

“A Hundred Pipers”—Scotland becoming Cosmopolitan—The War spirit of the Pipes—Regiments, not Clans—Annual Gatherings—Adaptability of Pipes—Scotch folk from Home—An aged Enthusiast—Highlands an Extraordinary Study—Succession of Chiefs—Saxon introduced—Gaelic printed—Highlands in 1603—The Mac Neills of Barra—Highland hospitality.

“Wi’ a Hundred Pipers an’ a’ an’ a’” is a song that catches on with Highland people as well now as in the days when the piper was a power in the land. There is a never ending charm about the pipes, and there is a never ending swing about the song of the hundred pipers, that stirs the blood of the true-born Celt, and makes him applaud vigorously in rhythm with the swing of the chorus. But it is because the song harks back to the time when one good piper was a man to be revered, and a hundred in one place a gathering to be dreaded—if they were all there of one accord—that it continues to hold its own. It expresses something of the grandeur that was attached to the national music, when the clan piper was second only to the chief in importance, and the pibroch as much a part of the clan life as the fiery cross, so it is accepted as the one outstanding bit of song that helps to keep alive the traditional glory of the Great Highland Bagpipe. Not that there is any immediate danger of that glory fading. It is but changing in character. Scotland has become cosmopolitan, and the fastnesses of the Highlands are no longer the retreats of wild cateran clans, whose peculiar habits and primitive ideas of social life helped to bind them together with ties of family strength, and at the same time to keep them unspotted from the Lowland and outside world that knew not the Gaelic and the tartan and the pipes. The Piob Mohr is not now an agency to be reckoned with by any one who wishes to explore the hills and glens, neither are there any little wars in Lorn or elsewhere, in which it can have an opportunity of leading Mac against Mac, or clan against clan. As a Highland war spirit, its glory has departed, and he would be a bold man who would say he was sorry for it. True, the Highland regiments who fight Britain’s battles abroad still wear the tartan and march to the same old strains, but they are not now Highland clans. They are British battalions, whose empire, instead of being bounded by the horizon of a Scottish glen, is worldwide, and they march and wheel, and charge the enemy and storm the heights in strict accordance with the orders of a general who has his orders from Westminster. The only gathering of the clans we have nowadays are the gatherings in the halls of our big cities, where a thousand or two of people bearing a common name meet under the presidency of the next-of-kin of the chief of olden times, and drink, not mountain dew, but tea, and have Highland or Jacobite songs sung to them by people whose profession is singing, and applaud dancers and pipers who dance and pipe because it pays them to do so. This is very far removed from the time when the Piob Mohr was in the zenith of its power, though when one gets enthused with the atmosphere of such a meeting, and forgets the slushy streets outside, and the telegraph and the railway, and other nineteenth century things that have made the Highlands impossible, the song of the hundred pipers is quite sufficient to make the blood course quicker, and to translate one for a moment to other scenes and other times. But it is only for a moment. The prosaic present comes back with a reality that will not be denied, and one remembers with a sigh that the song is but a sentiment, and that never more will the gathering cries of the clans re-echo through the glens, the fiery cross pass from hand to hand, or the peal of the pibroch ring from clachan to clachan in a wild cry to arms.

As an inspiration to the clansmen the bagpipe is no more, but it remains an integral part of Scottish life and character. It is one of the peculiarities of the instrument that it adapts itself to circumstances. When that phase of life in which it was born and brought up, as it were, passed away, it quietly but firmly declined to be moved into the background. There is something of the stubbornness of the old reivers about it, and just as the Highlander in his times of greatest adversity stuck to his pipes, so the pipes seem determined to stick to the Highlanders in spite of the tendencies of latter-day civilisation. The love of the Highlander for his pipes is too deep-rooted to vanish simply because circumstances change. When Rob Roy lay a-dying, and when an old enemy came to see him, he had himself decked out in his plaid and claymore, and when the interview was over, “Now,” said he, “let the piper play Cha til ma tulidh,” and he died before the dirge was finished. That spirit has lived through the many changes that have taken place since Rob Roy’s day, and it lives in a modified form now. Nothing will make a Scottish audience, especially a Scottish audience far from home, cheer as the pipes will, and no sound is so welcome at an open-air gathering, or to the wandered Scotchman, as the wild notes of the national instrument. In the preface to one collection of Highland music we are told of a well-known Edinburgh man, discreetly referred to as “W—— B——, Esq.,” who was at the time the most exquisite violinist in Scotland. Even at the venerable age of eighty-three, whenever he heard the sound of the pipes he hastened to the place, and after giving the itinerant player a handsome reward, he withdrew to a passage or common stair near by and had what he called “a wee bit dance to himsel’.” This does not seem a very wonderful proceeding, though the story applies to about forty years ago, for even now many a Highlander if he is in anything like a private place, will begin to “Hooch” and dance if he should happen to hear the pipes. He would never think of dancing to any other music—other music is foolishness unto him. Many things may and will change, but it is hardly possible to imagine circumstances which could dislodge pipe music from its honoured place as the national music of Scotland.

The preservation of the Gaelic, the kilt, and the pipes is the most notable feature in Highland history. Without his tartan, his language, and his music, the Gael would be only “A naked Pict, meagre and pale, the ghost of what he was.” But he has kept these, his distinguishing characteristics, and the Scottish Highlands of to-day is one of the most extraordinary studies in Europe, retaining as it does a language the most ancient, and the customs and music which distinguished it in ages the most remote, in spite of circumstances which might have proved too much for any social system whatever. The nature of the country did much to perpetuate these things. It was hilly, and, in the old days, inaccessible; the wants of the people were supplied among themselves, their manners were simple and patriarchal, and they had little intercourse with strangers except through trading in cattle and an occasional foray into the low country. So a spirit of independence and jealous pride of ancestry was cultivated, and in tradition, song, and music, the exploits of their forbears were celebrated. All this went to make Celtic Scotland a nation by itself, and its people a peculiar people. There is nothing in the political history of any country so remarkable as the succession of the Highland chiefs and the long and uninterrupted sway they held over their followers.

Somewhere about 1066 Malcolm Canmore removed his court from Iona to Dunfermline and introduced the Saxon language, and about 1270 Gaelic was entirely superseded in the Lowlands. Latin was used in all publications, and there were not many who could read what few books there were. Gaelic was not printed till 1567, centuries after it had ceased to be the language of the court or of “society.” Then a book of John Knox’s was issued in Gaelic, but it was 1767 before the New Testament appeared in the Celtic tongue. When it did ten thousand copies were sold. There was, of course, a vast store of poetry and literature floating around in the minds of the people, passed down from generation to generation; but, with the exception of two small collections, one by Rev. John Farquharson of Strathglass in 1571, and the other by Alexander Mac Donald, Ardnamurchan, about eight years later, it had all to wait until 1759, when James Mac Pherson, the collector of Ossianic poetry, compiled or wrote (whether he compiled or wrote it is too delicate a matter to express a definite opinion about in this place) the classics of the Highlands. In spite of all these disadvantages, perhaps by reason of them, the Highlands remained the Highlands until the beginning of the present century. The many years of tribal warfare and of warfare with other peoples, did not destroy the individuality of the race, it was the slow civilising process of later ages that made the Highlands less a distinct nation than a province of the big British Empire.

Of the circumstances in the midst of which the pipes and pipe music first got a hold on the affections of the Highland people we know but little. There were harpers before there were pipers, and probably bards before there were harpers, but these did not record contemporary history or the traditions of their age with any degree of fulness or accuracy, if indeed they can be said to have recorded anything at all who only told the next generation what they had heard from the previous. Writing in 1603 a traveller says of the Highlanders:—

“They delight much in musicke, but chiefly in harps and clairschoes of their own fashion. The strings of the clairschoes are made of brass wire, and the strings of the harps of sinews, which strings they strike either with their nayles growing long, or else with an instrument appoynted for that use. They take great pleasure to deck their harps and clairschoes with silver and precious stones; the poore ones that cannot attayne hereunto decke them with christall. They sing verses prettily compound, containing (for the most part) prayses of valiant men. There is not almost any other argument whereof their rymes intreat. They speak the ancient French language, altered a little.”

As to the country itself, it was a mysterious, unknown land to all but the native. Ancient historians puzzled over its mystery, but could not fathom it. So they wrote under the shadow of the mysterious. Procopius, a Greek writer who flourished about A.D. 530, and wrote of the Roman Empire, speaking about the Highlands, says:—

“In the west, beyond the wall (Antoninus’ Wall), the air is infectious and mortal, the ground is covered with serpents, and this dreary solitude is the region of departed spirits, who are translated from the opposite shores in substantial boats, and by living rowers. Some families of fishermen are excused from tribute in consideration of the mysterious office which is performed by these Charons of the ocean. Each in his turn is summoned at the hour of midnight to hear the voices and even the names of the ghosts, he is sensible of their weight, and feels impelled by an unknown but irresistible power.”

Now we know how it was that the Romans could not conquer the Highlands. But we also know that the Highlanders were not, when the Romans came, the ignorant barbarians they are represented to have been, for Cæsar ascertained from them that the coast line of Britain was two thousand miles in length, an estimate not so very wide of the mark.

We are told by one fourteenth century historian that “In Scotland ye shall find no man lightly of honour or gentleness, they be like wyld and savage people;” and by another that “as to their faith and promise, they hold it with great constancie,” statements which are not at all contradictory. The once prevalent idea that a Highland chief was an ignorant and unprincipled tyrant who rewarded the abject submission of his followers with relentless cruelty and oppression was entirely erroneous. He might be naturally ferocious or naturally weak, but in either case the tribal system curbed excess, for the chief men of the clan were his advisers, and without their approval he seldom decided on extreme measures. But though the sway of the chiefs was thus mild in practice, it was arbitrary, and they themselves were proud of their lot, their lands, and their dependents. It is related of the lairds of Barra, who belonged to one of the oldest and least-mixed septs in the Highlands, that as soon as the family had dined it was customary for a herald to sound a horn from the battlements on the castle tower, proclaiming aloud in Gaelic, “Hear, oh! ye people! and listen, oh! ye nations! The great Mac Neill of Barra having finished his meal, the princes of the earth may dine.”

The peasantry of the Highlands were always noted for their hospitality. “I have wandered,” says Mr. J. F. Campbell of Islay, than whom none knew the Highlands better, “among the peasantry of many countries, and this trip through the Highlands has but confirmed my old impressions. The poorest Highlander is ever readiest to share the best he has with the stranger. A kind word is never thrown away, and whatever may be the faults of this people, I have never found a boor or a churl in a Highland bothy.” Besides, the ancient Gaels were very fond of music, whether in a merry or a sad humour. “It was,” says Bacon, “a sure sign of brewing mischief when a Caledonian warrior was heard to hum his surly song.” They accompanied most of their labours with music, either vocal or that of the harp, and it was among these chiefs and these people that the national music of Scotland took its rise. It is a matter of regret that its wild strains are now more frequently heard amid Canadian woods and on Australian plains than in the land where it was cradled.