Astonishingly affordable at £20 for the hardback book, there’s not excuse not to sneak this into a last-minute Boxing Day stocking….
This is a book about the Great Highland bagpipe, although it acknowledges that other flavours of pipe are possible. Internationally, the Great Highland bagpipes and Scottish music are sometimes imagined to be synonymous, although bagpipes can be found in many different countries. The book’s home focus is, however, Scotland, telling the story of how this instrument reflects particular facets of Scottish identity: power structures, gender, and changing socio-economic performance cultures, overall balancing the role of myth and romance in sustaining interest in the pipes, alongside delivering well-researched but accessible history.
The story opens with discussion of the origin of the pipes in Scotland and their wider global presence, with a wide variety of animal carcasses supplying ‘bag’ reservoirs to aid the human lungs emptying into pipes. This source of power also sets the operational parameters: “without a bag, the pipe player could adjust the sound levels of his playing according to the force of his breath and could create stop-start effects with his tongue – a range of musical possibilities denied to the bagpiper” (p.11). Fair enough; we all know it’s a loud instrument. But we may not have realised the extent to which this determined both function and social standing.
Reflecting contemporary debates about changing gender roles, the book has some interesting things to say about the intersections between piping and gender. Medieval piping seems to have been strongly associated with (male) sexuality, often crudely (e.g. p.12-13) or even demonically (an association that survives in Robert Burn’s “Tam O’Shanter”, with its diabolical piper). In later times, the military pipers brought a different kind of male performativity to bear to practice. However, in modern times, the advent of female pipers (p.110-114) is notable. McLauchlan discusses some possible pre-modern female pipers, before explaining how women in the 1920s and later gradually become more common , both as solo pipers, and in association with others. This section of the book was absolutely new to me, and I particularly enjoyed reading about the ‘Lothian Lasses’ pipe band who marched in support of votes for women (p.111). The formidable Bessie Watson, who marched for suffrage and eventually established the first state school pipe band in Scotland at Broughton High School, Edinburgh, is a particular hero(ine).
While the ‘facts’ in the book are not necessarily new but rather reflect a capable integration of preexisting sources, it is useful to have these chronologically presented. The earliest discussions in the book concern the mysteries of the Great Pipe’s origin: was this indigenous, or externally inspired? There is some evidence for Irish influence. McLauchlan first references the great piping ‘dynasties’ associated with clan chiefs who employed hereditary pipers (p.22) in a section that discusses the indebtedness of Scottish western highland culture to “a wider musical and poetic tradition within a Gaelic culture zone that spanned both Scotland and Ireland, with Ireland acknowledged as its ‘wellspring’. Irish ‘colleges’ of poetry and music inspired parallel structures in Scotland (and possibly – later in the book, p.40 – even influenced by Norse bardic traditions). Hugh Cheape (also cited here) has also written about the importance of Ireland to regional culture. While McLauchlan then goes on to show that bagpipes were also common in England, even that English pipers were paid to play at Scottish courts, these seem likely to have been small pipes rather than the Highland pipes heard in battles such as Flodden in 1513 (p.28). So were the great pipes first Irish, or a Scottish response to an Irish and English common practice? Stopping where the evidence runs out, it is fair to say, we don’t know.
The historical records become more numerous in the early modern period (1500-1700), when Lowland pipers, in common with pipers in northern England, were more likely to be associated with identity in the slowly expanding towns of this period (p.32) rather than clan household service. The functions of the music, however (entertainment, alarms, hunts, warfare) were not completely dissimilar between town pipers and clan pipers. Like clan pipers, town pipers such as John Reid, piper to Haddington in 1662, might be kitted out in clothes reflecting their importance to local communities (p.33). A challenge, however, is that descriptions of piping before the 18th century do not tend to make a distinction between lowland small pipes (bellows driven) and the Highland great pipe (blowpipe and bag). Moreover, both in this chapter, and in further discussion of piping into the18th century, it is clear that there is quite a bit of variation between designs featuring e.g. more, or fewer, drones.
Early modern piping sees the emergence of a more clearly understood common design of both instrument and repertoire. We learn that the earliest representation of drones in Scotland comes from an illustrated psalter of 1562-6, showing a pig piper (p.35); and of 3 drones, from the famous painting of 1714 of the Grant family piper. What is clear is that in the early modern centuries (c1500 to 1700), bagpipes came to be associated with battle accounts and military activity, “[rising] to prominence in a time of clan feuding and struggle” (p.38). The slow emergence of highland companies in royal service after 1603 Union of the Crowns also sees reference to pipers associated with these companies (p.43), something that would have ramifications for the Stuart cause after 1689.
Outside of battle marching, piobaireachd emerges as a sophisticated musical form, a theme and variations approach that was taught orally, by chanting (a practice known as canntaireachd). In these years, we see the rise of ‘colleges’ of piping, after the Irish model: for example, led by the MacCrimmons in Skye, but also elsewhere. The historiographical writing on this period, we learn, often focusses on the origin stories of particular tunes: what people were associated with them, and what local histories these might reflect.
Written piobaireachd emerged later, in treatises such as Joseph MacDonald’s A Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland Bagpipe (c1760, printed 1803). By this time, the role in identity politics of the piper had been transformed by the Jacobite period, discussed in chapter 4. McLauchlan does not hold back in his writing here in considering the degree to which romance – or one might say, partisan political representation on both sides of the conflicts – shaped the historical representation of piping. (Slyly, the author points out that the soundtrack on many recent films and TV dramas about the Jacobite wars feature not the Great Highland Bagpipe, but the uilleann Irish bellows pipes, p.45). Nevertheless, at battles such as Culloden in 1746, the Great Pipes, with blowpipe, bag and some array of drones, were clearly a feature: interestingly, and this will be news to many readers, on both the Hanoverian and Stuart side (p.49). Because, this war divided Scots as well as Scots and English: indeed, Norman MacLeod, head of the household in which the MacCrimmons could be found, supported (on and off) the Hannoverians.
Bagpiping after Culloden was somewhat complicated by the popularity of the pastoral, bellows small pipes, in the period, which momentarily made the Great Pipes seem rather old fashioned. Between 1746 and the early 19th century, Great Pipes became subject to a kind of romantic nostalgia for “old” Scottish – oft conflated with Jacobite – culture. It is at this point also that more written texts begin to be produced, perhaps as oral transmission routes close off, in order to preserve the older repertoire in a time of its possible decline. However, Great pipes and their repertoire survived thanks to social institutions such as the Highland Societies of Edinburgh and London (p.58), founded in order to rehabilitate Highland culture, which encouraged piping through organised competitions. The mingling of truth and imagination in the post-Jacobite era fuelled much of this romantic repackaging, and piping culture was transformed again.
In terms of repertoire, this late 18th / early 19th century sees the emergence of new ‘light’ pipe music forms, and more standardised designs. Marches and dance music start to appear in repertoire books – perhaps for small pipes, but also accessible to the great pipers – inspired by the music written for fiddles (p.64), such as the Collection of Quicksteps, Strathspeys, Reels, and Jigs arranged for the Highland Bagpipes by Donald MacDonald (published 1828). The military associations of Highland culture more widely was absorbed into the British army, and bagpipes became a regular feature in Highland regiments as these spread around the world, organising marching armies, and entertaining overseas troops with sounds of an imagined homeland. The British military mythology surrounding the fighting spirit of the Highlanders also sees the growth of exaggerated claims surrounding the post-Culloden “suppression” of the bagpipes as an ‘instrument of war’, when in fact the 1746 Act of Proscription, which did impact clan tartan, makes no mention of pipes or pipers (p.65). Scottish soldiering took on a Highland cultural veneer, which fed into misrepresentations of the 18th century realities.
Victorian new-minted ‘traditions’ therefore included, particularly in association with new competition practices, performances of Highland dancing and music, betartaned theatrically, which did not necessarily reflect the actual history of either. This is the period when the idea of different clans having distinct tartans emerged, reflecting not so much tradition as the application of feudal heraldic notions of liveried identity, to post-Jacobite Scottish identity. The Victorian decades – 1930s to the early 1900s – see pipes arriving in the ballroom. Histories continued to appear – but often sparked subsequent debates over their truthfulness. For example, essays about the MacCrimmon pipers published as part of A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd and Highland Pipe Music (1838), included discussion of lines of authentic repertoire transmission via the MacCrimmon piping college at Boreraig in Skye. The editor of this book, although not the author of the historical essays, was Angus Mackay, the piper to Queen Victoria, a famous competition champion, whose reputation was somewhat damaged by his suffering from chronically bad mental health. Reactions to Mackay’s book sparked apparently fierce debates: some now assumed the Macrimmon piper college to be (rather like the epic poetry of Ossian) a romantic fabrication. These arguments went on well into modern times (p.78-79), a shibboleth of cultural affiliations in Highland bagpiping circles.
Apart from Angus Mackay, it is clear that the 19th century saw the emergence of great pipers, technically virtuosic, whose example and teaching bequeathed much to subsequent repertoire and practice. Names include John Ban Mackenzie (1796-1864), Donald Cameron (c1810-69), Lt John McLennan (1843-1923), George Stewart and Donald Ross, and others, who were clearly both formidable teachers as well as competitive performers. The founding of the Scottish Pipers’ Society in 1881 (p.85-6) shows piping was now prized as a bourgeois skill, distinct from its older, servant, status.
Piping had hitherto been a solo occupation, but in these years we also see the appearance of pipe bands, first associated with military regiments, but later taking other civic functions. The book is rich in anecdotes about the exploits of pipe bands marching around the globe in the service of the British empire, including the postcolonial legacy presence of piping and bands in countries exposed to British influence. For Scots, the colonial moment has left its mark in many tunes named after far away, former colonies (p.95), and stories behind these are part of the history told here.
The twentieth century saw many changes. The Great War added another layer of repertoire that functioned as a lasting commemoration of trauma, and more stories of no longer legendary heroic pipers. McLauchlan observes with perspicuity, “there is clearly a deep-seated human need to find glory in such moments of horror” (p,.105).
After the war, there was a great deal of historical re-evaluation of the repertoire and role of piping. The role of the Piobaireachd Society (founded in 1903) inter alia was to promote what might be considered an ‘art’ music, rather than the military tradition, although pipe bands and their relatively recent competitive traditions continued to thrive. Indeed, the rise of socialist politics in the 20th century gave pipe bands a new role, to maintain class-based solidarities in local areas.
The second world war added to the military stories and tunes attached to the instrument: Bill Millin’s role in the D-Day landings inevitably features largely, and – for the losers matter in war as well as the victors – we also learn of bagpipes being allowed in prisoner of war camps (p.117). After that war, a new kind of politics – the rise of Scottish nationalism – contributes to the establishment of new piping structures. The College of Piping, founded in Glasgow in 1944, and its journal Piping Times (founded 1948), are now on the scene, a charitable organisation promoting both teaching and curation of writing and instruments associated with what is now seen as a national instrument. Publishing projects associated with members of the College curates repertoire that reflects a national narrative: McLauchlan observes that the opening tune of The College of Piping Tutor for the Highland Bagpipe Part 1 (1953) is “Scots Wha Hae”, in legend the tune played before Bannockburn in 1314 (p.127).
The book is not widely illustrated, but does have a section of colour plates, with generous captions, which help to illustrate what the author wants to say about the appearance and social reality of pipes and pipers through time.
The author is himself a bagpiper, although not professionally affiliated (I think) with any one institution, and this helps provide him with insights into the often hotly contested discussions in contemporary piping about authentic and inauthentic repertoire, and the nuanced difference between expert opinions. The final chapter in the book allows him space to explore how institutional moulds were broken in the late 20th century. New styles of playing repertoire (‘medley sets’), more female participation, and the absorption of piping into folk/rock band, a fusion of different musical cultures, are innovations here. New names from this world of fusion music include the Battlefield Band (p.141-2), and the Whistlebinkies (p,146), inspired by Irish folksters the Chieftains. “Folk piping” is a distinctively new ‘tradition’, an offshoot of the 20th century folk revival, which encouraging new composition and concert style performance.
A final chapter has affectionate stories of contemporary heroes, such as Perthshire-born Gordon Duncan (“a man who has gathered a thousand stories around him”, p.161) and Martyn Bennet (pp.165-168), legendary piper and electronic dance musician, who was wildly innovate before his tragically early death from cancer in his 30s, and whose last creative project – GRIT – was a studio album exploring the past and present possibilities of piping welded to digital technology. Clearly, truth and romance continue to rub shoulders in the world of piping.
The book ends with discussion of the ‘whither now’ sort, evaluating the strength of the tradition alongside the fragility of contemporary public funding opportunities and short-fallings in education provision. It’s not all gloom. Each time I think, this is the end of the book, there is another anecdote about heroic creative efforts to pipe on in new forms, advocating for the good piping can do both for individuals and their communities: even, in the conclusion, to global communities of non-Scots who also seem to find the sound uplifting.
There are other books out there that might also be on your shelves, but few that would be as accessible to non-experts and experts (for there are comprehensive end-notes for folk who like to truth-check their histories) alike.
Buy, read, gift.
Further Reading
- Richard McLauchlan, The Bagpipes: A Cultural History (London: C Hurst & Co, 2025)