HARPERS, BARDS, AND PIPERS.
“O’er all this hazy realm is spread
A halo of sad memories of the dead,
Of mournful love tales, of old tragedies;
Filling the heart with pity, and the eyes
With tears at bare remembrance; and old songs
Of Love’s endurance, Love’s despair, Love’s wrongs
And triumphs o’er all obstacles at last,
And all the grief and passion of the past.”
Ancient musical instruments—Priestly harpers—Hereditary harpers—Irish
_versus_ Scottish harpers—Royal harpers—Use of harp universal—Welsh
sarcasm—Mary Queen of Scots’ harp—The last of the harpers—“The
Harper of Mull”—From harp to pipes—The _Clarsach_—Pipes supplanting
bards—The last clan bard—Bardic customs—Bards’ jealousy of pipes—The
bard in battle—Duncan Ban Mac Intyre—Two pipers scared—When the
pipes became paramount—The fiery cross—The coronach.
The harp was the immediate predecessor of the pipes; but in ancient
times, and also contemporary with the harp, there were other
instruments. The _Complaynt of Scotland_, written in 1548, speaking of a
company of musicians, says:—
“The fyrst hed ane drone bagpipe, the next hed ane pipe made of ane
bleddir and of ane reid, the third playit on ane trump, the feyerd on
ane cornepipe, the fyfth playit on ane pipe made of ane grait horne,
the sext playit on ane recorder, the sevint plait on ane fiddil, and
the last on ane quhissel.”
We cannot speak as to quality, but there was evidently no lack of
quantity in these days.
[Illustration:
HARPER: ON A STONE AT MONIFEITH
From _Chalmers’ Sculptured Stones of Scotland_.
]
The _Horn of Battle_ was used by the ancient Caledonians to call their
armies together. The _cornu_ was blown by the Druids and their Christian
successors, and St. Patrick is represented as carrying one. Ancient
writers, indeed, lay particular stress on the musical ability of the
Celtic priesthood, the members of which they describe as possessing
extraordinary skill as harpers, taking prominent part with their
instruments in religious ceremonies. The _cornu_ in its rudest form was
a cow’s horn, and could sometimes be heard at a distance of six miles.
The Irish Celts had various other instruments, but the harp was the
favourite, both in Scotland and Ireland. The Hyperboreans, who are
believed to have been the aborigines of Britain, were celebrated
performers on the harp, accompanying their hymns with its music; and
harpers were hereditary attendants on the Scottish kings and the
Highland chiefs, from whom they had certain lands and perquisites. The
cultivation of harp music reached the highest level in Scotland, the
players beating their masters, the Irish harpers, although the class
were more honoured in Ireland than in Scotland. In Ireland none but a
freeman was allowed to play the harp, and it was reckoned a disgrace for
a gentleman not to have a harp and be able to play it. The Royal
household of Scotland always had a harper, whose rank was much higher
than that of the ordinary servant, and the kings even were not above
playing. James I. of Scotland, who died in 1437, was a better player
than any of the Scottish or Irish harpers. In Scotland, however, the use
of the harp ceased with the pomp of the feudal system, while in Ireland
the people retained for many generations an acknowledged superiority as
harpers.
It has been claimed for the harp that it is, or at least was, the
national instrument of Scotland. It is admitted that most of the
Highland chiefs had harpers, as well as bards, and that their music was
esteemed as of no small moment. In several old Highland castles the
harper’s seat is still pointed out, harps are mentioned in Ossian, but
not pipes; there is a field in Mull called “The Harper’s Field,” a
window in Duntulm castle called “The Harper’s Window,” it is a matter of
history that Donald, Lord of the Isles, was killed at Inverness by his
own harper, after the misfortunes which followed his incursion into
Atholl; and there are many other references which prove the universal
use of the instrument. But we have very few traces of itinerant harpers
in the Highlands resembling those of Ireland and Wales. In Wales it was
the acknowledged national instrument. The pipes were known for some
centuries, but the Britons never took kindly to them, a famous poet
comparing their notes to
“The shrill screech of a lame goose caught in corn,”
or a
“Horrible, noisy, mad Irishman.”
Weakness in the use of metaphor was evidently not a characteristic of
Welsh poetry at this date. In Wales they “esteemed skill in playing on
the harp beyond any kind of learning,” but somehow the instrument never
got the same hold on the national life of Scotland. If it had, it would
not have been supplanted so easily as it was.
When the pipes actually superseded the harp in Scotland it is hardly
possible to discover. We read that when Mary Queen of Scots made a
hunting expedition into the wilds of Perthshire she carried a harp with
her, and that that same harp is still in existence; that John Garve Mac
Lean of Coll, who lived in the reign of James VI., was a good performer;
and that once upon a time an English vessel was wrecked on the island
and that the captain, seeing this venerable gentleman with his Bible in
his hand and a harp by his side, exclaimed—“King David is restored to
the earth”; and that the last of the harpers was Murdoch Mac Donald,
harper to Mac Lean of Coll. Mac Donald received his learning from
another celebrated harper, _Ruaraidh Dall_, or Blind Roderick, harper to
the laird of Mac Leod, and afterwards in Ireland; and from accounts of
payments made to him by Mac Lean, still extant, he seems to have
remained in the family till the year 1734, when he went to Quinish, in
Mull, where he died in 1739.
This Murdoch Mac Donald was the musician who was immortalised by
Tannahill as “The Harper of Mull.” The story which inspired this song is
quite romantic, and will bear repetition. The following abridgement is
from Mr. P. A. Ramsay’s edition of Tannahill’s poems;—
“In the island of Mull there lived a harper who was distinguished for
his professional skill, and was attached to Rosie, the fairest flower
in the island, and soon made her his bride. Not long afterwards he set
out on a visit to some low-country friends, accompanied by his Rosie,
and carrying his harp, which had been his companion in all his
journeys for many years. Overtaken by the shades of night, in a
solitary part of the country, a cold faintness fell upon Rosie, and
she sank, almost lifeless, into the harper’s arms. He hastily wrapped
his plaid round her shivering frame, but to no purpose. Distracted, he
hurried from place to place in search of fuel, to revive the dying
embers of life. None could be found. His harp lay on the grass, its
neglected strings vibrating to the blast. The harper loved it as his
own life, but he loved his Rosie better than either. His nervous arm
was applied to its sides, and ere long it lay crackling and blazing on
the heath. Rosie soon revived under its genial influence, and resumed
the journey when morning began to purple the east. Passing down the
side of a hill, they were met by a hunter on horseback, who addressed
Rosie in the style of an old and familiar friend. The harper, innocent
himself, and unsuspicious of others, paced slowly along, leaving her
in converse with the stranger. Wondering at her delay, he turned round
and beheld the faithless fair seated behind the hunter on his steed,
which speedily bore them out of sight. The unhappy harper, transfixed
with astonishment, gazed at them. Then, slowly turning his steps
homewards, he, sighing, exclaimed—‘Fool that I was to burn my harp for
her!’”
It is said that Tannahill first heard this story at a convivial meeting,
as an instance of the infidelity of the fair sex, whose fidelity he had
been strenuously defending, notwithstanding that he himself was
disappointed in the only love affair in which he was ever seriously
engaged. The impression which the narrative made upon his mind led him
to the composition of the song:—
“When Rosie was faithfu’ how happy was I!
Still gladsome as simmer the time glided by;
I played my harp cheery while proudly I sang
O’ the charms o’ my Rosie the winter nichts lang;
But now I’m as waefu’ as waefu’ can be,
Come simmer, come winter, it’s a’ ane to me,
For the dark gloom o’ falsehood sae clouds my sad soul,
That cheerless for aye is the Harper o’ Mull.
“I wander the glens and the wild woods alone,
In their deepest recesses I make my sad moan;
My harp’s mournfu’ melody joins in the strain,
While sadly I sing o’ the days that are gane.
Tho’ Rosie is faithless she’s no the less fair,
And the thocht o’ her beauty but feeds my despair,
Wi’ painfu’ remembrance my bosom is full,
An’ weary o’ life is the Harper o’ Mull.
“As slumbering I lay by the dark mountain stream,
My lovely young Rosie appeared in my dream;
I thocht her still kind, and I ne’er was sae blest
As in fancy I clasped the fair Nymph to my breast.
Thou fause, fleeting vision, too soon thou were o’er,
Thou wak’d’st me to tortures unequalled before,
But death’s silent slumbers my grief soon shall lull,
An’ the green grass wave o’er the Harper o’ Mull.”
The transition from the harp to the bagpipe was spread over about two
centuries. In 1565 George Buchanan speaks of the Highlanders using both
instruments, and during the seventeenth century the use of the harp
declined to such an extent that the number of professional harpers was
very small indeed. The civil wars largely accounted for this, as the
fitness of the bagpipe for the tumult of battle gave it an easy
superiority over the harp. Writing at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, Alexander Macdonald, the Keppoch bard, said he preferred the
pipes to the harp, which he called _ceol nionag_, maidens’ music. When
the bards thus openly avowed their liking for the pipes, the transition
period was over, for the harp was wont to be their favourite instrument.
The harp still exists as the _clarsach_, which is being revived by
Highland Associations, more especially in Glasgow, but, if the Irishism
may be permitted, the bagpipe is now “the harp of the Gael.”
Besides supplanting the harp, the pipes also supplanted the bards
themselves. The bards were in their day a more important body of men
than the harpers, and naturally much more relating to them has come down
to posterity. They existed from the remotest period of which there are
any records, and it was only in 1726 that, with the death of Neil Mac
Vuirich, the Clan Ranald bard, the race of distinctively clan bards
became extinct. The race continued to exist—bards exist to this day for
that matter—but not as clan bards, and after 1726 they were only public
makers of verse.
The bards, like the harpers, though to a greater extent, wandered from
house to house, keeping alive among the people the memories of their
wrongs, celebrating the valour of their warriors, the beauty of their
women, and the glory of their chiefs. The calling was held in such high
esteem that after the fall of Druidism it was maintained at the expense
of the State. The bards, however, became so numerous, overbearing, and
extortionate that they lost favour, many of them were killed by their
enemies, and those left, shorn of their pride, but retaining their
skill, occupied honourable positions in the retinues of their chiefs. In
the heyday of their glory the bards summoned the clans to battle, and
they moved about among the men inciting them to deeds of valour, their
own persons being held as inviolable by friend and foe. The leaders
looked to them to inspire the warriors, just as at the present day
pipers are expected to supply enthusiasm to the regiment when on the eve
of battle. The bard exhorted the clans to emulate the glory of their
forefathers, to hold their lives cheap in the defence of their country,
and his appeals, delivered with considerable elocutionary power and
earnestness, always produced a profound effect. When the pipes began to
be used, they took the place of the bard when the din of battle drowned
his voice, and after the battle was over the bard celebrated the praises
of the brave who had fallen and the valour of the survivors, while the
piper played plaintive laments for the slain. The bards themselves did
not always fight—they thought they were of more value as bards than as
fighters. At the battle of Inverlochy, _Ian Lom_, the Lochaber bard, and
the most celebrated of the race, was asked to share in the fighting, but
declined. “If I go along with thee to-day, Sir Alasdair,” said he, “and
fall in battle, who will sing thy victory to-morrow?” “Thou art in the
right, John,” said his chief, “Let the shoemaker stick to his last.”
_Ian Lom_, however, is acknowledged to have been a brave man, and his
attitude on this occasion is not considered a reflection on his
character.
The bard, especially if he were also a musician, was always in great
request at social functions, and in the absence of books he constituted
the local library. The class had naturally exceptional memories, and
they became walking chroniclers of past events and preservers of popular
poetry and everyday history. They did not welcome the pipes with any
degree of enthusiasm. Instead, some of them used all their arts to throw
ridicule on the newer instrument. _Ian Mac Codrum_, the North Uist bard
(1710–1796), composed a satire on the bagpipe of one, _Domhnull Bhan_,
or Fair-haired Donald, which is exceedingly humorous and sarcastic, and
in the course of which he says:—
“It withered with yelping
The seven Fenian battalions,”
whatever they were. Then, he continued, the Gael loved the pipes as
Edinburgh people loved tea, although the pipes had weakened for the
first time
“The strength of Diarmaid and of Goll.”
The last bard known to have acted officially in battle was Mac Mhuirich,
or Mac Vuirich, the Clan Ranald bard of the day, who recited at the
battle of Harlaw, in 1411. Mac Mhuirich was disgusted at the growing
popularity of the pipes, and composed a set of verses descriptive of the
bagpipe and its lineage, which are more graphic, humorous and forcible
than elegant or gentlemanly. Duncan Ban Mac Intyre, the bard of
Glenorchy, has a poem on “Hugh the Piper,” who, it seems, had insulted
the bard in some way. Hugh is compared to a wicked dog barking at the
passers-by, and intent on biting their heels. He is to be hurled out of
the society of bards and pipers as a fruitless bough is cut away from a
flourishing tree, it is hinted that if he would quit the country it
would be a good riddance, he is made the impersonation of all sorts of
defects, and his musical efforts are compared to the cries of ducks,
geese, and pigs. It should be added, however, that the same bard
composed _Ben Dorain_, the most famous of his poems, to a pipe tune,
dividing it into eight parts corresponding to the variations of the
pibroch, and moulding the language into all the variations of the wild
rhythm, so his spite must have been more at Hugh himself than at his
music.
The antipathy of the bards to the pipes is easily understood. They had
all along been the acknowledged inspired leaders of the people, inciting
the clans to battle with their wild verses. The pipes with all their war
spirit could hardly match this, which is culled from a battle song
supposed to have been written on the eve of the invasion of England that
terminated so tragically at Flodden:—
“Burn their women, lean and ugly!
Burn their children great and small!
In the hut and in the palace,
Prince and peasant, burn them all!
Plunge them in the swelling rivers,
With their gear and with their goods;
Spare, while breath remains, no Saxon,
Drown them in the roaring floods.”
Neil Mac Mhuirich, the bard already mentioned, had been at a bards’
college in Ireland, and brought back to his father’s house not only
stores of knowledge, but also the small-pox. Afflicted with the disease,
he lay on a bed near the fire, where John and Donald Mac Arthur, two of
the famous race of pipers, came in, and sitting down in front of his
bed, began tuning their pipes. The discordant sounds raised the bard,
and he, bursting with indignation, started railing at the pipes in a
poetical and mock genealogy of the instrument. The poem itself is
presentable in Gaelic, but in English it would be too much for the
average reader. It emphasises strongly the bard’s aversion to the pipes,
comparing them and their music to many ridiculous things in nature and
art. The pipers, who had intended to make the house their quarters for
the night, were startled by the fierce invective coming from behind
them, and on looking round and seeing the swollen and marked face of
Neil, worked up into extraordinary excitement, terror took hold of them
and they fled in consternation. The bard’s father evidently sympathised
with his son, for he waited patiently until the poem was ended, and then
exclaimed “Well done, my son, your errand to Ireland has not been in
vain.”
When the pipes became paramount is about as difficult to determine as
when they first threatened the position of the harp. They seem to have
existed alongside the harp and the coronach and the fiery cross for a
considerable time, as we have references to all these in the literature
of the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Mac Leod
of Dunvegan, who lived about 1650, had a bard, a harper, a piper, and a
fool, all of whom were most liberally provided for. We have got a blind
harper, _Ruaraidh Dall_, harper to Mac Leod of Glenelg, and a blind
piper, _Ian Dall_, piper to Mac Kenzie of Gairloch, each of whom
excelled in his own sphere, and both of whom flourished about 1650,
while, as we have seen, the bards and the pipers were often at
loggerheads. The pibroch did not supersede the fiery cross at all, for,
so long as the chiefs found it necessary to call the clans together, the
goat was killed with the chief’s own sword, the cross was dipped in the
blood, and the clansman sent round.
The last battle at which a bard recited was fought in 1411, the last
clan bard died in 1726, the last clan harper in 1739, when the
hereditary pipers were in all their glory; the fiery cross was last used
in 1745, when it travelled thirty-six miles through Breadalbane in three
hours, and the coronach was superseded gradually by the lament of the
pipes. The bards ceased to live as an order on the accession of the
Kings of Scotland to the British throne, and there were no means
provided at the Reformation for educating ministers or teachers for the
Gaelic speaking part of the country. But all through the centuries
covered by the dates given there were pipers. There are pipers still,
not indeed clan pipers, but the class are recognised as peculiarly
belonging to the Highlands, while harpers and bards have gone completely
under in the great social revolution through which the Highlands have
passed.
[Illustration]