The Small pipes

Bagpipes of many sorts have been played throughout these islands for many hundreds of years – there are medieval representations in both carvings and a few texts. It is not known whether these represent an accurate picture of the instruments played, or whether they are stylised, as was much artistic work of those times.

The bellows-blown bagpipes with both conical and cylindrical-bore chanters of Lowland Scotland and Ulster have all derived over the centuries from the medieval single-droned and mouth-blown instrument. The evolution of the various bellows pipes can be seen as a response to social changes, and the needs of musicians to meet specific music criteria.

From the late fifteenth century, pipers were employed in the principal Burgh towns of Lowland Scotland. Their duties were to accompany the drummer and wake the town at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning and to play around the town at 7 or 8 o’clock at night, thus demarcating the working day. The pipers and drummers were well thought of and received fine uniforms and shoes, free meals and housing, and were allowed to play at weddings and other festivities for a fee.

The music that has come down to us reflects these two major uses. On one hand a great number of dance tunes survive, and on the other town tunes or processional tuns still remain.

The small pipes were not proscribed after Culloden and they ere known to be played in both the 1st Highland Battalion and the 77th Regiment (Montgomery’s Highlanders).

The Bagpipes

Speculation on the origin of the bagpipe in Scotland is futile. The bagpipe, alongside the drum and the harp, shares the claim to being the oldest of musical instruments and attempts to establish a reasonable history have met with little success.

Evidence that the bagpipe existed as far back as the fourth millennium BC in Babylonia and China is controversial, as are claims for the instrument’s existence in ancient Egypt, India, Assyria and Greece.

The playing of the bagpipe survived in various forms and was not confined to any one stratum of society, being popular at country fairs, weddings and the palaces of kings.

There is historical mention of the pipes in Wales and Ireland at the beginning of the Twelfth century, whilst there is the well-known literary reference in England in the fourteenth century when Chaucer’s miller, in ‘The Canterbury Tales’, led the pilgrims out of London to the strains of the Bagpipe.

By the mid-seventeenth century every town in Scotland had a piper and by1824 an English traveller is reputed to have said that the Scots were enthusiastic about their pipes.

Whether the pipes were brought to, or evolved in Scotland is a debatable matter, but if they came from somewhere else, how is it that elsewhere the instrument has all but disappeared whilst in Scotland it has developed? The answer lies mainly in the development of a particular type of music; known as piobaireachd (meaning pipe playing), that can only be played on the pipes.
The only changes, which have occurred over the years, therefore, to the instrument now known as the Highland Bagpipe, are the number of drones, which have been attached. The development of competition playing demanded standardisation and two drone pipes were last accepted in 1821.
The association of bagpipes with Scottish culture and the identity of Ulster-Scots have brought about the necessity of the kilt as a symbol of that tradition. It'’ unlikely that many of those wearing the kilt realise that by doing so they are ‘cocking a snook’ at the English establishment!

The first pipe band competition on record took place in 1905, but the World Championship was only instituted in 1947. On only three occasions has the competition taken place outside Scotland (in Belfast in 1956, 1962 and in Nottingham in 1979.

Northern Ireland became a branch of The Scottish Pipe Band Association in 1950 with 10 bands but today represents around a third of the membership with 92 bands and is the largest branch of the association.
Although the playing of piobaireachd has not featured a great deal in Northern Ireland, the emphasis having been on the army legacy, namely, the pipe band, a number of players from the province are beginning to show their skill at this, the once only authentic art of piping, with Robert Watt showing the way, having been elevated to the Gold Medal class. Other young pipers may well emulate this achievement. The Northern Ireland Piping and Drumming school. Which was set up in 1982 with Sam Bailie as its director, includes instruction in piobaireachd as an obligatory element in its curriculum and has been responsible for the upsurge of interest in this ancient and majestic music.