THE “LANGUAGE” OF THE PIPES.
“Wild as the desert stream they flow,
Wandering along it’s mazy bed;
Now scarcely moving, deep and slow,
Now in a swifter current led,
And now along the level lawn
With charming murmurs softly drawn.”
Have the pipes a language?—A wild, fanciful notion—How it got a hold—
How much of it is true?—The reed actually speaking—A powerful
influence—The power of association—Neil Munro—Descriptive Highland
airs—_A Cholla mo run_—Military stories—In South Africa—An
enthusiastic war correspondent.
In this chapter we would walk warily, knowing that we are on dangerous
ground. The question is, Has the bagpipe a language more than any other
instrument? Can it speak to the heart of the Highlander more than any
other instrument can speak to hearts that know it, and the music which
it discourses, and the associations of that music? Through the great
bulk of what has been written about the bagpipe there runs this idea of
its power, this wild, fanciful notion that it has an actual language and
that those who understand that language can converse by its means. Some
have even attempted to analyse the music, and to discover the alleged
secret, while others have held that _canntaireachd_, fully dealt with in
the next chapter, was in reality a language and not merely a very rude
system of musical notation. And this notion of the speaking power of the
pipes got such a hold on the imaginative people of the Highlands that,
although personally each of them did not understand how the thing was
possible, many of them accepted it as truth and believed the stories
illustrating the subject, which ultimately became part of their
traditional literature. It seems like sacrilege to disturb the ideas
which have been accepted as absolute truth for centuries, but there is
no doubt whatever that of the speaking power of the pipes about seventy-
five per cent. exists in the vivid imaginations of the retailers of
Highland tradition. It was indeed in the chanter-reed of the pipes that,
after a long search, and after great difficulties, Baron von Kempelen, a
distinguished Continental mechanic and musician, discovered the nearest
approach to the human voice. He believed it was possible to get an
approximation of language by some mechanical contrivance, and he was
able to convert the reed to the elements of a speaking machine, and
through its aid and with many appliances he obtained letters, syllables,
words, and even entire sentences. But all the same, the bagpipe cannot
speak any more than it can fly. If it has ever in all its history
conveyed, by means of an extemporised tune, information to people at a
distance definite enough to enable them to alter all their battle
tactics, we require better historical proof of the incident than is to
be got of any of the stories to be given here.
While, as a simple matter of fact, it is true that the bagpipe cannot
speak, it is equally true that its music exercises a strangely powerful
influence over the Celtic mind. The race are, or at any rate were, of a
peculiarly imaginative temperament. This, taken along with the fact that
their music always had strong associations, explains a great deal. Many
of the pibrochs were composed without premeditation, under the influence
of exuberant joy or the wildest sorrow or despair. Consequently, when,
under favourable circumstances, they were again played by master hands,
they roused up the old memories, and did really, though not literally,
speak to the listeners. The construction of the pipe also helps. It is
the only instrument since the days of the old Highland harp which
represents the Gaelic scale in music, and it is this that makes the pipe
appeal so naturally and so intensely to the Gael. To him, especially if
from home, it speaks of the past of his own race, and of the days of his
youth. In this lies its special charm:—
“When he hears the bagpipe sound
His heart will bound like steed for battle.”
Pipe music has many voices, and it expresses many of the emotions which
are given vent to by language that can be printed. Neil Munro, as
enthusiastic a Highlander as any man, does not believe in the “speaking”
theory, but he believes in the descriptive character of the music. As
witness—
“The tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous,
that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with
a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it.”
The tune that, as _Paruig Dall_ said, had “the tartan of the clan it.”
And—
“Playing the tune of the ‘Fairy Harp,’ he can hear his forefolks,
plaided in skins, towsy-headed and terrible, grunting at the oars, and
snoring in the caves; he has his whittle and club in the ‘Desperate
Battle’ (my own tune, my darling!), where the white-haired sea-rovers
are on the shore, and a stain’s on the edge of the tide; or trying his
art on Laments he can stand by the cairn of Kings, ken the colour of
Fingal’s hair, and see the moon-glint on the hook of the Druids.”
Most of the old Highland airs were composed on particular occasions, or
for the purpose of conveying particular feelings. One, for instance, is
designed to express the succession of emotions in the mind of an
Ardnamurchan crofter while tilling his soil in an unpropitious season
and hesitating whether to emigrate or attempt to pay his landlord the
triple rent a rival had offered. Another commemorates the arrival of
Prince Charlie at a farmhouse in Skye, where one of his followers was
sent forward to see if he was likely to find friends there. To a
Highland ear the tune expresses the first hesitating, half-whispered
questions of the messenger, then his confidence as he finds the goodwife
favourable, and finally his composed feelings on finding that he was
among friends. Another was composed on an occasion when the Mac Kenzies
attempted to obtain possession of the lands of Mac Donell of
Glengarry.[4] The chief of the Mac Kenzies had his men and allies
assembled at different points, one party being concealed in a church at
Beauly, and, tradition says, this church was burned over the heads of a
worshipping congregation by friends of the Mac Donells. But the pibroch
contradicts this, for when the tune is properly played the listener in
fancy hears the flames rustling and blazing through the timbers of the
church, mingled with the angry remonstrances and half-smothered shouts
of the warriors, but there is no representation of the more feeble
plaints of women and children. Had these been among the victims, their
cries would surely have formed the burden of the tune.[5]
Footnote 4:
See Index under _Gilliechroist_.
Footnote 5:
It should be stated that the best authorities now agree that there
never was a church burned at the place referred to.
Many other instances of descriptive pipe music are to be found. The
pibroch of _Daorach Robbi_ contains the keenest satire ever levelled at
the vice of drunkenness. The ludicrous imitation of the coarse and
clumsy movements, the maudlin and staring pauses, the helpless
imbecility of the drunkard as he is pilloried in the satire with the
ever-recurring sneering notes, _Seall a nis air_ (Look at him now) are
enough to annihilate any person possessing the least sensibility, who,
while hearing them, is conscious of having been in the position
described, even for once in his life. _Gillidh Callum_ is a striking
contrast to _Daorach Robbi_. The total abstainer could hardly find a
better text than the latter, while the man who advocates temperance only
would be strongly supported by the former, which illustrates enlivening
virtues of the fruit of the vine without its degrading effects. So with
most pipe music. It describes something, and in this respect is second
only to the recitative of the bards. It is, of course, necessary that
performer and listeners should be Highland themselves. No one who is not
versed in the poetry and music of the Highlands can impart to others, or
appreciate for himself, the spirit of romance and pathos and love and
sorrow and martial sentiment which is in the music, just as no actor can
play well unless he enters into the spirit of the play. To the
enthusiast for Highland music, the feelings aroused by other instruments
are general and undefined, and common to Frenchman, Spaniard, German, or
Highlander, but the bagpipe is sacred to Scotland. Gaelic itself has a
sentiment that cannot be expressed, and so with its music. It appeals to
us, but we cannot express it, and only those who know it understand it.
And now for one or two of these stories where the pipes are alleged to
have spoken. The best known is that of _A Cholla mo run_, or “The
Piper’s Warning.”[6] The piper and friends were entrapped in Duntroon
Castle, while Coll Citto, his master, and his followers were away at
Islay, and the enemy laid an ambush to entrap the returning party. The
piper one day saw Coll’s boats returning, and he knew that unless
something was done they would sail right into the ambush. So he asked
leave to go out on to the battlements and play a tune. This was granted,
and the piper played extempore music, which to those in the boats
meant:—
Footnote 6:
See Index under _A Cholla mo run_.
“Coll, O my dear, dinna come near,
Dinna come near, dinna come near;
Coll, O my dear, dinna come near,
I’m prisoner here, I’m prisoner here.”
and more to the same purpose. Coll instantly took warning, turned his
boats and fled. But the Campbells, in whose custody the piper was, also
understood, and, some accounts say he had his fingers cut off, others
that he was killed on the spot for his bravery in warning his friends.
All agree that he spoke to Coll in the boats across an expanse of water
by means of the pipes alone, and the tune has ever since been associated
with the incident in which it originated.
Then there is the story of “Women of this Glen,”[7] alleged to have been
instrumental in warning some of the Mac Ians on the eve of Glencoe, and
several others very similar.
Footnote 7:
See Index under _Bodaích nam Bríogais_.
Some stories come from wars of a less remote date. A Scottish regiment,
we are told, on a sunbaked plain in India, was being mowed down by some
mysterious disease. The doctors could not tell what it was, but the
kilties were being swept off by it, one by one. At last it was
discovered. Away on the outskirts of the camp, in the short still
gloaming of the Eastern evening, a group of the men had gathered round
the regimental piper. Their heads were buried in their hands, and big
hot tears rolled through their fingers. And the weird, wae strains of
“Lochaber no more,” played more melancholy than ever, filled the air.
They were dying of homesickness, and the bagpipe spoke to them of home
and all that was there. Another Scottish regiment had been at the Cape
for a long time, and the officers found that the bagpipe so affected the
men as to make them unfit for duty. The men were homesick, and their
music intensified this feeling, and it had to be stopped for a time. The
men of course knew the tunes, and what they meant, but there is nothing
to show that the same tunes played on another instrument would not have
had the same effect.
We had the old idea revived in all its beauty by one of the ablest of
the war correspondents in the recent South African War. Mr. Julian
Ralph, of the London _Daily Mail_, in a letter to his paper, spoke
eloquently of the services rendered to the Highland Brigade by their
pipers, and of the way in which the pipes spoke to the men and the men
listened to the pipes. He was a stranger to the music, and at first he
was not impressed by it. But gradually he came to like it, and to miss
it when he was not within the range of the notes. Here is how he tells
of the pipes speaking to the men:—
“Then off strode the fresh player with the streamers floating from his
pipes, with his hips swaying, his head held high, and his toes but
touching the earth. Once I heard a man say, ‘Gi’ me the pipes, Sandy;
I can tell ye what naebody has said,’—at least, those were the strange
words I thought that I distinguished.”
After General Wauchope was killed along with so many of his men at
Magersfontein, the soldiers were for a time gloomy and dispirited.
“‘It’s the pipes that make them so,’ said an officer. ‘The pipes are
keeping them a great deal resentful, and still more melancholy.’ ‘The
pipes? What have the pipes to do with their feelings?’
“‘Eh, man? Don’t you know that the pipes can talk as good Scots as any
man who hears them? Surely ’tis so—and ’tis what the pipes are saying,
first in one player’s hands and then in another’s, that keeps the men
from forgetting their part in the last battle.’
“Once, as the days passed, when I saw this officer again at leisure, I
went to him for an explanation of his surprising disclosure. I had
been trying to learn the language of the pipes in the meantime, but I
acquired no more understanding than a dog has of English when he
distinguishes between a kindly human tone and a cross one. I could
tell when a tune was martial and when another was mournful. When a gay
one rang out—if any had—I would not have mistaken it for a dirge. To
some this may seem a very little learning, but I had begun by thinking
all the tunes alike.
“‘Yesterday,’ said my friend the officer, ‘we’d a little match between
men who had some skill at embroidering the airs of the old ballads
with trills of those grace-notes that they call warblers, but this
contest was broken up by a rugged son of the hills who, after asking
for the pipes, flung from them a few strong, clear notes which gained
the attention of all who are born to a knowledge of the music that
speaks. I am not one of those, but I called my soldier-servant up and
asked him what was being played.’ ‘Well, sir,’ said he, ‘that’s Mac
Callum—a great museecian he is. And hark, sir; he has the right of it
and boldly he is telling every one his thoughts. He says that every
man kens that the gran’ general who’s dead was as cunning and skilfu’
in war as ony man above him, and ’tis late in the day—now that he’s
laid away and dumb—to put blame on him as if he were an ignoramus and
a butcher, like some others. And now, oh! brawly ye’re tellin’ it, Mac
Callum—he says there may be scheming and plotting in high places but
no skullduggery o’ ony sort, however it is gilded, will ever deceive
ane single true chiel o’ the Highlands.’”
“‘And then,’ said my gossip, ‘the pipes passed to the hand of another
man,’ and my servant—seeing me about to move away—touched my arm and
bade me wait, as this new player was another adept with the pipes.
‘He’s grand at it,’ said he; ‘well done, Stewart.’ He’s saying, sir,
that the reason none will heed those who blame our grand leader that’s
gone is that there’s men of rank among us—and of proud blood—that’ll
stand up to any man at home and swear that when our fallen chief came
back with his orders for the battle he complained of them sorely, but
he said, ‘No better could he get,’ and when he lay down in his blanket
his head was full of the trouble that was coming on him—he not being
able to learn what he needed to know against the morrow.
“There was more of this recital of what the pipes had spoken to the
regiment, but it would only be irritating a sore to repeat it. The
pipers spoke even more plainly as the bold outpourings of one incited
bolder from another. At last there were suggestions, by pipes grown
mutinous, of sentiments which, happily, have seldom been spread within
the British Army. But what I have told suffices to illustrate my sole
point, which is that the gift of eloquent speech in chords and trills
is born with the master-pipers.
“I never saw my officer-friend again for more than a nod or a word in
passing. But on one day the pipes next door rang jubilantly, and man
after man applied himself to them with ginger in his touch. Each blew
triumphant, thrilling, heart-stirring chords, and every piper
swaggered at his work with such a will as to send his aproned kilt to
and fro with what seemed a double swing to each beat of the time.
“I said to myself, ‘They have learned that Hector Mac Donald is coming
to be their new brigadier, and the pipes are assuring them that every
Highlander may be himself again, certain of victory and new glory
under a leader second only to the one they have lost.’ I still believe
my conjecture was right.
“And I know from living next door, as it were, that the cloud of gloom
that had hung over the brigade was dispelled almost with the
suddenness of its horrid appearance.
“After that the kilties began to make in this war a continuation of
their glorious record in so many lesser wars in the time that was.”
All of which is very fine writing, but one cannot get rid of the idea
that Mr. Ralph was the victim of an elaborate joke. The speaking theory
was new to him and he accepted it in all its amplitude. There is no
report of what his officer-friend said when he read Mr. Ralph’s article—
if he ever did read it.
The simple truth about the “language” of the pipes seems to be that a
Highland listener gets from the pipes what, in a more or less degree,
anyone gets from the music he loves—a stimulant for his emotion and
imagination, nothing more. He is an emotional being, and his
imagination, aided and abetted by the sorrows and the joys of many
generations—which affect his disposition though he knows it not—and by
the many associations of particular tunes or styles of playing, runs
riot when he hears the pipes, and to him they speak as no other
instrument ever can speak. A primitive instrument working on the
feelings of a primitive people has a much more direct and intense
psychological effect than on a sophisticated people who have scores of
different cunning instruments and myriads of airs, a fact which should
always be remembered when the “language” of the pipes is discussed.
After all it depends much more on the listener than on the instrument.
In our appreciation of any music, and in the effect it has on us, there
is involved all that we ourselves have been, seen, heard, thought, and—
sometimes—forgot. A plaintive love air brings up the old days, the sunny
weather, the sweethearts of our youth, all the store of associations
that are buried in us, and—who knows?—all the loves and hates, the joys
and sorrows of our dead fathers, modified or intensified by our own
personal character. Therefore to us that plaintive air is the sweetest
of music. To the Highlander the bagpipe conveys the fine rapture a high-
class audience gets, or at least professes to get, from Sarasate’s
violin and Paderewski’s piano. To him it has a direct message, but to
the rest of the world it is what a violin is to him, probably less. But
as for an impromptu tune conveying intelligence like spoken language—ah
well, we must draw the line somewhere.