Bonaparte once said to a musician: "There is only one musical instrument I know that never gets out of tune—that is the drum."
Had he been a Scot he could have said "the bagpipe," which never fails to rally battling Scots. But Scotland, which has been shouting, for centuries about her great men, has never produced a Bonaparte, so the epigram remains to be said.
Three hundred years ago a band of Scotsmen, wearied of ecclesiastical feuds and tyrannous wars, sailed for America. Seeking a climate like their own they landed in Acadia, secured a grant from James I, fought the French, remained at Nova Scotia and colonized. Later some of them moved westward. Today Scottish-Canadians largely people the Dominion.
Last week the Canadian Rockies around Banff, Alberta, rang with the slogan* of Scottish clans and the skirl of their bagpipes. Descendants of the early settlers from all over the Dominion gathered for their third annual Highland Gathering and Music Festival. They danced the sword dance, sailor hornpipe and Highland Fling. They contended in throwing the caber, putting the stone. But chiefly they piped the bagpipes, vying for 21 prizes.
The bagpipe has a place in Genesis. In Egypt it was called the as-it and was piped ceremonially. In Rome it was called tibia utricularis. Colleges were formed for its instruction; Nero piped. Invading Romans took it to Britain. Early Britons named it the chorus. Itinerant pipers carried it farther into the Highlands and Iceland. The weird Asiatic music appealed to Celtic and Gaelic imaginations and stuck with them.
The bagpipe was the forerunner of the pipe-organ. Some early man found that by blowing into a bag with several ramifying reeds attached he could produce many notes at once. That and the "drone," a bell-ended pipe attached to the bag which sounds an uninterrupted bass note, are the main characteristics of the bagpipe. It has a limited range of notes, is very difficult to play. The bag is held under the piper's left arm, the blowpipe which feeds the bag is held in his mouth, his fingers play along the "chaunter," the melody pipe punctuated with lateral holes. The reeds point skyward.
In France the bagpipe was a favorite instrument in Marie Antoinette's day. Marie herself piped. Courtiers called it the musette and equipped it with hand bellows so that their pretty faces would not be empurpled by hard blowing. Respectability came to the musette when Schubert and Handel wrote pieces for it, when a musette player played in the Opera orchestra in Paris in the iSth century.
Every Scots chief had his hereditary piper who was entitled to a gilli (servant) to carry his pipes. The piper had the status of a gentleman. Wherever the chief went, his piper went along too. In the early morning while the laird was dressing the piper promenaded in front of the castle, piping his master a good morning. In emulation of the Scottish lairds, the English kings had their court pipers. Henry VIII was a notable bagpiper. Today in front of Buckingham Palace there parades in the morning the King's Piper. George V keenly enjoys the music, as did his grandmother, Queen Victoria, who kept two court pipers. One of them, Thomas O'Hannigan, went home one day after playing for Her Majesty and died of apoplexy.