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of the steamer provided for English tourists. The discordant noises that our Loch Lomond piper produced from his ear-splitting apparatu's were a real detraction to the enjoyment of the scene. "Wooing, wedding, and repenting,' may, as Beatrice says, be like a Scotch jig;' but the lovers and newly-married people on board did not need to be reminded of this through the medium of the bagpipe. It was but a poor revenge to sketch this modern wind-controlling Æolus; but it was all that lay in my power.

We have very many things to be thankful for in England in the nineteenth century, and, among others, that the good old days are passed and gone when the bagpipes were common throughout the land. Whether they were of Celtic or Gothic origin, and through what curriculum of instruction the students of the colleges for pipers had to pass are matters which may be safely left to the care of those who have the ability, no less than the inclination, to devote themselves to such a work.* Major-General Stewart, in his Sketches of the Highlanders,'† has stated what must be the very

*See Dalyell's Musical Memoirs of Scotland, for much curious matter relative to the bagpipe. Mr. J. F. Campbell, in his lately-issued and concluding volume of Popular Tales of the West Highlands, says, 'A work on Gallic music is in course of preparation. Meanwhile, those who are curious in such matters may hear bagpipes in nearly all the European countries where Celts have been. I have heard the pipes in Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. I believe they are in Albania, and I have heard tell of something of the kind in the Himalaya mountains. They are to be seen in old English prints and old German pictures. Who first invented them is a question yet to be solved.' (Vol. iv. p. 404. 1862.) Macculloch devotes two chapters to Highland music; and, in speaking of the bagpipe, says: "The instrument itself, under a variety of forms, has been known from almost all antiquity, and has been found all over the world. That it was used among the Greeks and Romans we are assured from ancient monuments.' (Highlands and Western Isles, iv. 381.)

† Vol. i. Appendix xxx.

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ANTIQUITY OF THE BAGPIPE.

183

general opinion with regard to an instrument which is so capable of torturing the tympanum of the ear, and, by its frantic notes, leading us to think of its player in a sentiment thus expressed towards our Loch Lomond piper, To judge from his drone, that fellow must have a bee in his bonnet!' and General Stewart's honest confession is all the more valuable as coming from a Scot and a partisan :- Playing the bagpipes within doors is a Lowland and English custom.' (How about the piper at Highland banquets?) In the Highlands the piper is always in the open air, and when people wish to dance to his music it is on the green, if the weather permit; nothing but necessity makes them attempt a pipe dance in the house. The bagpipe was a field instrument, intended to call the clans to arms, and to animate them in battle, and was no more intended for a house than a round of six-pounders. A broadside from a first-rate, or a round from a battery, has a sublime and impressive effect at a proper distance. In the same manner the sound of the bagpipe, softened by distance, had an indescribable effect on the minds and actions of the Highlanders. But, as few would choose to be under the muzzle of the guns of a ship of the line, or of a battery when in full play, so I have seldom seen an Highlander whose ears were not grated when close to the pipes, however much his breast might be warmed and his feelings roused by the sounds to which he had been accustomed in his youth, when proceeding from the proper distance.' The proper distance, then, even to General Stewart's idea, would appear to be almost out of earshot-an opinion in which everyone on board the Loch Lomond steamer must have coincided.

We all know that music hath charms,' and the way

as this on which we are sailing up the loch to Tarbet; for, while there is the same breadth of sunshine, there is a similar pall-like cloud just appearing from behind the shoulder of mighty Ben, and threatening that stormy change of weather which did indeed come that same evening. Wo to the tourist who is condemned to hurry through his programme without any reference to the weather; his impressions of the country must necessarily depend upon the fickleness of the climate; and the landscape which he has travelled so many miles to see, may be blotted out by mists, or drenched in a down-pouring rain. Here, for example, is a steamer bearing down upon us, chartered expressly for a monster excursion. These excursionists left Edinburgh shortly after six this morning; they came by rail to Callander, stopping at Stirling for breakfast; they coached through the Trossacks; sailed up Loch Katrine; crossed Rob Roy's country; dined at Inversnaid; and are now sailing down Loch Lomond. They will reach Glasgow this evening, and will sail at an early hour in the morning, by the Iona,' to Oban, through the Crinan Canal. On the next day they will have a peep at Staffa and Iona, and will then return to Glasgow. They are thus the victims of a programme of speed and cheapness, which may be made dear at any price if the weather is unfavourable. For the present, however, they are in luck; the sun smiles upon them, and we are sharers in their good fortune.

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CHAPTER XVII.

SCOTCH MUSIC AND SCOTCH SCENERY.

The Piper, the Modern Æolus-Antiquity of the Bagpipe--
An Honest Confession-An atra cura-Tom, the Piper's
Son-A Novel Mode of Instruction-Real Musicians-A
Judge at Fault-The Scottish Fête-Mons. Clairvoyant and
the Baggypipe-Nightingales-Scotia's Philomela-Tarbet-
The Vanity of Human Wishes-The Piper again!

UT all this time, while I have been speaking of

BUT

everything as being serene, and sunny, and perfectly charming, I have been guilty of a suppressio veri, and have been withholding the fact that our steamer bore with it an atra cura, which was well nigh sufficient to throw a gloom over the brightest scene, and destroy the charm of the sunniest memory. We had a bagpiper on board. Hinc illa lachrymæ; hence the indulgence in curt and homely Saxon phrases; hence the objurgations, not loud but deep, which met the ear, and jarred strangely with the praises lavished upon the landscape. The blind fiddler, who was also on board, and to whose merits a printed testimony had been posted up by the cabin door, was a mitigated nuisance; but the bagpiper was an unmitigated evil, and never ought to have been permitted to walk the deck. If the sound of the bagpipes is necessary to a Scotchman (or Scotsman, as the sticklers delight to have it) for the proper enjoyment of Scottish scenery, by all means let him be gratified-but in another vessel, and that out of ear-shot

in which bagpipe music may be made effectual 'to soothe the savage breast,' is told in the anecdote of 'Tom, Tom, the piper's son.' Tom was the son of the Dalkeith piper of the Duke of Buccleuch, and when Tom misbehaved, his father tied him in a chair, and then blew up his pipes in a wild skirl, the drone being placed at the lad's ear. In a few minutes Tom would become quiet, and perhaps senseless. This was an original, but somewhat harsh method of correction, and a neighbour remonstrated with the father, and told him that it would be much better if he would give his son a beating with a stick. A stick!' exclaimed the piper, 'ye little ken him. Ye might break a' the hazels in the Duke's woods over him, and he'll no be a bit the better. But the pipes mak the callant as quiet as a pussy, and dings the music into his head, and I hae hopes that he'll one day make a grand piper, for, by this way, he has amaist learnt a' the tunes already!'

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Captain Burt tells us of the piper of a regiment at Stirling who was highly indignant at a drummer being placed beside him, and said, Shall a little rascal, that beats upon a sheep-skin, tak the right haund of me, that am a musician!"* It is said that all the best pipers are indeed musicians, and have a style of their own - like your Joachims and Ernsts; and that each chief could tell the sound of his own piper out of a thousand. The exception, however, proves the rule; and I was told by a Highland laird, who had assisted at a bagpipe contest, as one of the judges, that, as another of the judges had boasted so highly of the merits of his own piper (who was one of the competitors) that it was very evident that he would award the prize to him; it was accordingly proposed for the judges to sit behind

* Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland,

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