The Silver Chanter: Historical Tales of Scottish Pipers

By Stuart McHardy

All over the world people associate the bagpipes with Scotland. In this informative and entertaining book Stuart McHardy introduces Scotland's national instrument - its history, development and repertoire - and examines the part that the piper himself has played in Highland and Lowland society over the centuries.

The main bulk of the book is a series of thematically grouped tales from all periods and parts of the country in which we see aspects of traditional lore in stories of warriors, musicians, ghostly battles, the hand of friendship, exemplary heroism and the cost of supernatural help. There are tales of the MacCrimmons, the most famous island pipers of all, as well as Habbie Simpson, who was possibly the most famous of all the Lowland pipers. Whether dealing with great bravery or contemptible jealousy, the supernatural or the mundane, these stories reflect the central role that the bagpipes have played, and continue to play, in Scottish traditional culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Birlinn
• Release date: Dec 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781788853569

Stuart McHardy

 Stuart McHardy  is a writer, storyteller and lecturer. His interest in Scotland's past has led him to re-evaluate the role of the oral tradition in gaining a clearer picture of our history. He believes that while history is written by winners, story flourishes amongst history's survivors. He was Director of the Scots Language Resource Centre from 1993 to 1998 and is a founder member and past president of the Pictish Arts Society. An experienced broadcaster Stuart McHardy has long been interested in Scotland's musical traditions, playing music professionally since his teens. He lives in Edinburgh.

Book preview

Introduction

Illustration

The sound of Scottish bagpipes skirling through the night to the accompaniment of the intricate and unique patterns of Scottish snare drumming is a sound that is known throughout the world. It is somewhat ironic that this widespread popularity of the Scottish bagpipes is a result of Scottish regiments going round the world as part of the expanding British empire. That same British state had destroyed the Highland society which many people today believe is the original home of the bagpipes. This is of course totally wrong. Bagpipes are no more Scottish in origin than they are Indian or Croatian.

Bagpipes are known in hundreds of different societies. The Czechs, French, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians and Spanish all have their own bagpipes and outside Europe they can be found in India and Tunisia. Bagpipes had also been popular in England up to the sixteenth century. There is a widespread misapprehension that the bagpipes are in some way ‘Celtic’ because people in areas where the Celtic languages were once, and in some cases still are spoken, all play the bagpipes. While this includes such putative Celtic areas as Galicia in the north-western corner of Spain, where they play the long-droned gaita, it takes no account of the fact that the Welsh, a vibrant Celtic-speaking culture, do not have the bagpipes. The confusion of ideas regarding notions of Celticity can best be summed up by the Interceltique Festival at L’Orient in Brittany. This marvellous annual event is a celebration of the cultures of the Celtic-speaking peoples, with a particular emphasis on bagpipes. However, interviewing the pipe-bands representing Scotland in 1989 I discovered there was not one Gaelic-speaker among them – they were virtually all Scots speakers from Lowland areas, but dressed in the necessary kilts, bearskin hats etc. The dress of pipe bands is of course derived from the uniforms of the Highland Regiments of the British army and thus is hardly Scottish at all, even if the kilt was part of the traditional dress of the Scottish Highlander.

Despite the problems of Scottish history in general there is no doubt that the bagpipes are nowadays seen by many people throughout the world as being particularly Scottish. Pipers of course often play at weddings and I believe it says a lot for modern Scotland that a recent Sikh wedding in Edinburgh had the groom, in a golden turban, leaving the house for the marriage on a white horse – he and his brothers preceded by a piper and all of them in full Highland dress. The authenticity of modern Highland dress may be dubious but is now well-entrenched in Scottish society and it is a sign of a vibrant culture that it can change and develop rather than being rooted in an overly respectful attitude towards the past. But as ever in Scotland, there are always contradictions.

The point about the pipes not being a purely Highland instrument can be seen in ‘Tam o’Shanter’, one of the masterpieces of the incomparable poet Robert Burns.

There sat Auld Nick, in shape o beast,

A touzie tyke, black, grim and large,

To gie them music was his charge:

He screw’d the pipes an gart them skirl,

Till roof and rafters aw did dirl.

Here he is satirising the Scottish idea of the devil, someone far removed from His Satanic Majesty, the personification of all evil, and the familiar term ‘Auld Nick’ shows a being that can be treated humorously. The point here is that Auld Nick is playing at Auld Alloway Kirk, in Ayrshire on Scotland’s southwest coast, far from the Scottish Highlands.

Pipers were never limited to the Highland areas of Scotland. In the Lowlands in the sixteenth century and later, many towns had an official piper whose role was to play through the streets every morning and evening at specified times as a means of public time-keeping. Effectively they woke the people up and later told them what time to go to bed. They would also play at regular events like feasts and fairs. While many of these town pipers did not survive beyond the seventeenth century, in some places the pipers held their positions; the Jedburgh pipers – the Hastie family – stayed on till 1790, and some pipers survived even longer. The position of town piper often included both a wage and a house. We have no records or traditions in the Lowlands of the schools of piping like that attributed to the MacCrimmons, or of any particular master pipers. The musicians would of course have had to have been instructed by someone, but we do not hear of any outstanding individual pipers in the Lowland areas. Their job was essentially to provide music for the community, something that can be said of pipers within Highland society too, even if the social occasions which called for pipers might vary. Much has been made of the piper’s role in Highland society since the early nineteenth century, but like much else from that period pertaining to Highland society, there has been a great deal of romanticising. There are stories here of Lowland origin and it is clear from what records we have that piping was widespread and common throughout Scotland from the Middle Ages onwards.

The History of the Bagpipe

Bagpipes are known in much of the world. Trying to figure out where and when they were first invented is an exercise in futility. Representations of bagpipes have been found in the Middle East and Egypt from the second millennium BC and there are mentions of the instrument in the Bible. Some records tell of the Chinese having a bagpipe as early as 2585 BC; it was known in ancient India and there are also classical Greek references to bagpipes. It is therefore quite obvious that bagpipes have developed in many different parts of the world over a long time and to try and find out how they came to Scotland, far less where they were first played, is a hopeless task. Due to the way western culture has developed there has long been a particular fascination with the civilisations of Greece and Rome. This has led to the suggestion that the Romans must have brought the bagpipes to Scotland because we have representations of bagpipes in a Roman carving at Richmond Castle in Kent and another from Stanwix, near Carlisle, a fort on Hadrian’s Wall. Another similar carving was found near Bo’ness on the river Forth in 1870 and there have been suggestions that the bagpipe was the favoured instrument of the Roman infantry just as the cavalry used the trumpet. The existence of the bagpipes before the first century is mentioned by the Greek playwright Aristophanes in his work The Acharnians, where he wrote, ‘You pipers who are here from Thebes, with bone pipes blow the posterior of a dog.’ This could be a reference to a skin bag. There was one very famous piper in Rome – Nero, who considered himself a good piper. During his reign the bagpipes were even included on a coin. Dio Chrysostom wrote in AD 115, ‘They say he can ... play the aulos both with his mouth and also with his armpit, a big bag being thrown under it.’

The lack of early written references to the bagpipe in Scotland has led to suggestions of it being imported at a later date but we should remember that, due to ongoing struggles with her southern neighbour, Scotland has very few early written sources. The invasions of both Edward I and Oliver Cromwell, nearly four hundred years apart, both saw widespread destruction of indigenous written material. When you add in the destruction that accompanied the Reformation in Scotland, when many churches, the natural places for old records to survive, were vandalised, it is easy to understand the lack of early Scottish documentation.

For a long time in the western world it has been the norm to see ‘civilisation’ and ‘progress’ as something that spread out from the Mediterranean cultures to the barbarians in the north and west. While writing and the development of cities were undoubtedly spread with the advance of the Roman empire, the idea that we in Scotland were unenlightened savages awaiting education at the hands of the invading Romans is an insult. We also have a problem in understanding the past in that it became the norm in European universities to stress the influence of classical culture. The notion that there is no significant culture without writing has led to suggestions that Scotland was an isolated and backward wee country far behind the Mediterranean centres of civilisation. This is demonstrably untrue as there were great megalithic structures like Calanais in Lewis and Maes Howe in Orkney being raised in the fourth millennium BC, before the Egyptians started building their pyramids. Recent research underlines the reality that sea transport was extensive in such distant times and that cultural exchange was the norm over wide areas. Widespread evidence suggests that there was some form of bagpipe in use over much of Europe when the Romans began to create their empire. If one person has an idea in one place it is quite likely that someone else will have the same idea somewhere else, and the wide variety of types of bagpipe would suggest that far from being local responses to outside influences, they are in fact local variants on a common approach to musical development.

Given that in Scotland a carnyx, a sophisticated bronze Caledonian war trumpet dating back to the first century AD, was found on the shores of the Moray Firth, it seems just as likely that there would have been an indigenous form of the bagpipe at that time in Scotland. There is also a carved stone representation of a man playing a double pipe on a Pictish symbol stone from St Vigeans at Arbroath. This seems likely to have been a pipe with a drone, suggesting that early in the first millennium AD some of the technology of the bagpipe was in use in Scotland.

The earliest specific evidence for the bagpipe in Scotland is thought to be two sculptures that used to be visible at Melrose Abbey. This is mentioned by Dalyell in his Musical Memoirs of 1849. One of these carvings was of a pig playing the pipes and Manson in The Highland Bagpipe mentioned a tradition that it was carved during the reign of James IV as a satire on the Highlanders. While there is no doubt that the Stewart monarchs were in a constant struggle with the Highland clans, the idea of the pipes being specifically associated with the Highlands in this period cannot be sustained.

The bagpipe was still used in England in the time of Chaucer and the tradition of the Lowland pipes is itself of considerable antiquity. Again in this respect we should remember that bellows pipes are a variation of the same basic idea of the bagpipe. The Lowland, Border and Northumbrian piping traditions are as authentic as those of the Highlands and the notion that they are separate and distinct traditions arises from an obsession with differentiating people on the grounds of language. While much of the tradition of the Highland pipes developed among Gaelic speakers and that of the Borders amongst Scots speakers, the idea that people speaking different languages are separated in a similar fashion to people living along the borders of modern nation states is somewhat simplistic. The norm for many human beings in much of the world is not to speak just one language but rather to speak two or more. Professor Sandy Fenton made a telling point at the conference founding the Elphinstone Institute in the 1990s when he said to forget the Highland line, and to think of a Highland sausage – an area where two overlapping language groups share various aspects of culture and social existence.

The world-famous fifteenth-century Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh has carvings of pipers and piping, and we have growing references to the use of pipes amongst the Highland clans from the fourteenth century onwards. Traditions that survived amongst the Macdonald and Menzies clans maintained that their ancestors were playing the pipes at Bannockburn.

The Scottish bagpipe is undoubtedly the best-known form of bagpipe in the world. While all bagpipes are a development of earlier blown pipes – the bag allowing both continuous playing and considerably more volume than the lungs themselves – the Scottish bagpipe has become known all over the world because of its use by the British army. In country after country the Scottish regiments were the shock troops of the British empire and the massed pipes of the army bands have had an incredible effect on peoples of all religions, races and cultures. This is somewhat ironic when one considers that the people amongst whom the ‘piob mhor’ developed – the tribal peoples of the Scottish Highlands – were discouraged by the government from playing it themselves in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745–53. The Disarming Acts of 1746 banned the carrying of arms and the wearing of the kilt, while the playing of bagpipes, like other aspects of ancient Highland culture, was actively discouraged, though not specifically banned. Many commentators mention the fact that as a musical instrument of war, the ‘great pipes’ of the Highlands were without equal. The loud and shrill notes of the bagpipe, sometimes likened by those unappreciative of their majesty to the caterwauling of cats, could be heard above the noise of hand-to-hand fighting and can carry up to ten miles in favourable climatic conditions.

The banning of traditional Highland weapons and dress in the Disarming Act can, in today’s terms, be seen as a deliberate attempt at cultural annihilation, even if it did not specify the bagpipes as an instrument of war. From the 1730s onwards, when General Wade began driving modern metalled roads into the Scottish Highlands, the days of Highland society, the last Celtic-speaking warrior society of Europe, were numbered. British society was shaken to the core in 1745 by how close the Highland army, with its pipers, came to taking over London and reimposing the Stewart monarchy. However in the aftermath of this struggle, which carried on in a desultory guerrilla campaign in the Highlands till the mid-1750s, the British army continued to use the bagpipes in the regiments that had been raised from the Highland regions. The tradition of the pipes stirring up the Highland warriors to battle was adapted by the expanding military machine of the British empire, with great effect.

It is one of the ironies of history that in the modern world the pipes have become synonymous with Scottish Highland culture throughout the world. Despite their assault on Highland Gaelic society the British government fully appreciated the power of the pipes in battle and the Scottish Highland regiments, raised from the 1730s onwards, were allowed to use them throughout the period. They were also allowed to wear a form of their traditional dress, though it was banned in the Highlands. This is not quite as anomalous as it seems. We should remember that the Jacobite rebellions of the eighteenth century were in reality part of an ongoing civil war and that some of the worst atrocities committed in the Highlands after Culloden were perpetrated by Scotsmen. There were Highlanders and Lowlanders, and pipers, on both sides.

The army pipers must have helped to preserve the role of piping within Scottish society as a whole, for Highland pipers in the British army often returned home to Scotland; it is stretching belief to think not one of them would have played a note out of uniform over the period. During the period 1746–53, when the British army garrisoned virtually the entire Highlands of Scotland and her major cities, there was probably a substantial falling-off in bagpipe-playing by ‘civilians’ but, just as weapons were hidden, so bagpipes must have been, and once the troops left the glens it seems likely that pipers would have gone back to their playing. It is not difficult to envisage a scene where the British army garrison departed from a glen in the early 1750s and immediately a set of pipes appeared and music was played in celebration.

One view of history tries to suggest that the ’45 was a struggle between Scotland and England. It was not. Scots and English fought on both sides and were driven by religious and political beliefs. The end result, however, was that the Highlands – where for centuries both Edinburgh and London had been unable to impose their will – were changed for ever and a society that in many ways preserved ancient continuities with the Iron Age disappeared.

With the revival of interest in all things ‘Celtic’, a word that would have meant nothing to any of the Celtic-speaking peoples before 1700, piping became very popular in the early nineteenth century. This was partly due to the romanticised vision of Highland society presented by Sir Walter Scott. His organisation of the royal visit of 1822, when George IV went out and about in Edinburgh in a kilt (and pink tights!), helped to make such interest fashionable. It would, however, be wrong to dismiss the vigour of indigenous culture in the second half of the eighteenth century as being solely inspired by such romanticism. A strange form of nationalism had developed in which the poet Robert Burns, a radical freethinker and avid supporter of the French Revolution, could pen songs in support of the Jacobite cause. The Jacobites had supported the Stewarts, a dynasty well known for their scorn of Gaelic culture, belief in the divine right of kings and latterly, total indifference to Scotland. This strange combination of beliefs stemmed from a variety of causes: the resentment of the corruption that led to the Union of the Parliaments in 1707; the lack of benefits for most of the population from that union; the revulsion at the activities of the British army after Culloden; and probably partially from nostalgia as shown in the very idea of Auld Lang Syne – a vague time in the past when life was much better than the present.

By the mid-nineteenth century Romanticism had taken over and what is know seen as tartan kitsch was in full swing. The creation of the modern formal Highland dress, while based on the philabeg or little kilt – the full plaid was the philamore, or great kilt – is a nineteenth-century invention. Piping, with the pipers wearing the militarised derivative of actual Highland dress devised by the British army, became a very obvious symbol of this touristic version of Scottish culture. However, in amongst all this, the revival of piping, despite the myths and fantasies, did represent a new flowering of Scottish music. It has long been accepted wisdom amongst writers on piping that the tradition survived through the Middle Ages due to the patronage of Highland chiefs. I would suggest that this is only part, and probably a small part, of the story.

The Construction of the Bagpipe

The basic construction of the bagpipe consists of:

–a chanter

–a bag of skin or leather

–a mouthpiece

–a set of drones, nowadays three but originally just one

The chanter is the part of the instrument played by the fingers and contains a double reed. It has seven finger-holes and a thumb-hole, and has a usual range of an octave and one note. It is attached to a skin bag, which allows a continuous supply of air to be maintained by the player through the mouthpiece. This contains a round piece of leather hinged onto the bag end which acts as a one-way valve. As the player blows air in, the flap opens; when he stops blowing the air pressure within the bag forces the flap shut – as opposed to playing a fife or whistle directly with air from the lungs. Early pipes, which survive in different parts of Europe like the Balkans and Galicia, have a single drone, a device which lets the player finger the tune to an accompanying steady note. This is the earliest form of the bagpipe and was in use in Scotland as late as the sixteenth century. By squeezing the bag with his left hand while a breath is taken, the piper can keep up a flow of air in both the drone pipe(s) and chanter. The drones, two tenor and one bass, each have their own double reed. It seems likely that the first pipes in Scotland, no matter how they got here, would have been single drone pipes. The development of a two-drone pipe in Scotland happened in the first half of the sixteenth century. Adding a second tenor drone gave the pipes a richer harmonic complexity. The addition of a third drone, a bass drone, making the great pipes as we know them today, didn’t take place till the early 1700s. This further increased the harmonic depth of the instrument and of course also greatly increased the volume of the pipes. Previous to this there was a mention of the ‘great pipes’ in 1623 but this probably referred to a two-drone set. Given the problems later associated with the pipes, it is noteworthy that in 1623 the piper playing the great pipes at Perth was prosecuted for playing his instrument on a Sunday and thus profaning the Sabbath.

The Music of the Pipes

PIBROCH

The Gaelic word ‘piobaireachd’, now ‘pibroch’ in Scots and English, means ‘what a piper does’ and underlines the importance of the classical pibroch tradition in the history and development of the Highland bagpipe over the past couple of centuries. Today a pibroch consists of an ‘urlar’, Gaelic for ground, which presents the theme, followed by a series of variations of increasing complexity on that theme. Once the piper has exhausted the tune, or his own possibilities for variation, he returns to the theme before finishing the piece. Around three hundred old pibrochs have been preserved. Among the oldest are thought to be ‘The Battle of Harlaw’ (1411), ‘Black Donald’s March to the Isles’ (1427), ‘The End of the Great Bridge’ (1427), ‘MacRae’s March’ (1491), ‘The Park Piobaireachd’ (1491), ‘MacIntosh’s Lament’ (1526), ‘The Battle of Waternish’ (1578), and ‘Hector MacLean’s Warning’ (1579). The dates are in fact speculative. Some pibrochs have also been used as tunes within the song traditions of both Gaelic and Scots. In the aftermath of the 1746 Disarming Acts a whole generation was discouraged from playing the pipes outside the army and it seems certain that in this period many great tunes were lost forever. The piping tradition in Scotland, having survived the Disarming Acts, has developed with levels of commitment and seriousness that have led to the claim that the old pibrochs have survived as they used to be played, note for note, thus preserving the ancient authenticity of the tradition even as it continued to develop. This idea is hard to sustain, given the effectiveness of the Disarming Acts, and people may believe it or not as they will. In recent years the innovations of player/composer Martyn Bennett serve to show that this ancient tradition still has plenty of potential for future development, even for young audiences raised on a diet of electronic music.

Pibroch can be understood as the classical music of the Highland bagpipe although the instrument can of course be used in many other settings. Weddings, funerals, dances and parades have all been using pipers, either solo or in bands with drummers, for a long time in Scotland. The repertoire of Scottish music suitable for the pipes consists of reels, Strathspeys, schottisches