Blair Collection > Celtic monthly > Volume 5, 1897

THE CELTIC MONTHLY.
.'17
mountain glen, and the tield, but the Irish
pipes are melodious and agreeable in a private
apartment. One of the earliest references to
the great Highland pipe occurs in a charge of
misdemeanour against a piper in the year 1623
in the Kirk Session Register of Perth. There
is no doubt that the instrument of to-day is in a
more advanced stage; anciently, it only consisted
of the chanter or hautbois affixed to a bag, and
Maclean in his "History of the Celtic Language"
considers the bagpipe as originally consisting of
" a bladder with drones, and chanter of reed or
bulrushes." In those grotesque carved ornamen-
tations on the stalls of King Henry the Seventh's
Chapel in Westminster Abbe}', and at Hull,
and Beverley in Yorkshire, the bagpipe is seen
represented as above described. " It is also
sculptured in marble, amidst other mystical
figures, in the Cathedral of Upsala in Sweden."
Some Biblical commentators have identified
M.\CCRI.MMOX, THE PRINCE OF [Mi'LRs
•' In pi'ace or in ivar no more returiiiitif."
the sacbut of scripture with the bagpipe, while
others associate it with the trombone. I think
the following opinion of a Highlander on the
bagpipes may be neither uninteresting nor out
of place : — '• Mr. Barclay, an eminent Scots
artist, was engaged in painting a Highland
scene for Lord Breadalbane, in which his Lord-
ship's Highland piper was introduced. When
the artist was instructing him as to attitude,
and that he must maintain an appearance at
once of animation and ease by keeping up a
conversation, the Highlandman replied that he
would do his best, and commenced as follows :
'Maister Parclay, ye read yer Pible at times I
suppone, Sir ? '
'Oh! yes.'
' Weel, Maister Parclay, if ye do tat. Sir, ten
you've read te third and fifth verses of te third
chapter of Daniel, when te princes, te governors,
te captains, te judges, te treasurers, te coun-