THE PIPES IN BATTLE.
“Fhairshon swore a feud
Against the Clan Mac Tavish,
Marched into their land,
To plunder and to rafish.
For he did resolve
To extirpate the vipers,
With four-and-twenty men
And five-and-thirty pipers.”
A Culloden incident—Ancient Celts in battle—The harper and bard
superseded—First mention of pipes in battle—First regimental pipers—
In the navy—Prince Charlie’s pipers—An “instrument of war”—A Mac
Crimmon incident—Power of pipes in battle—A Magersfontein incident—
Byron’s tribute—Position in actual battle.
Professor Aytoun in these cynically humorous lines, from the “Bon
Gaultier Ballads,” would have us believe that the piper was more
important in times of war than the actual fighting man. He was
important, no doubt, but hardly in the proportion of thirty-five to
twenty-four. The Duke of Cumberland, a man whom Highlanders, and more
especially those with Jacobite leanings, do not hold in very high
reverence, was making ready to meet Prince Charlie at Culloden, and when
he saw the pipers of the clans who supported him preparing their musical
instruments, he asked somewhat testily, “What are these men to do with
such bundles of sticks. I can get far better implements of war than
these.” “Your Royal Highness,” said an aide-de-camp, “cannot get them
better weapons. They are the bagpipes, the Highlanders’ music in peace
and war. Without these all other instruments are of no avail, and the
Highland soldiers need not advance another step, for they will be of no
service.” Then Cumberland, who was too good a tactician to underrate the
value of anything, allowed the pipers to take their part in the fight.
It is difficult to believe, although the story is given on good
authority, that he was so ignorant, but we know that a general who did
not understand the music of his different regiments would nowadays be
considered very deficient indeed. Officers of our day not only
understand about the music, they fully appreciate its value. This is
particularly true of the officers of Highland regiments who, as a rule,
do all they can to foster a love for the pipes, knowing quite well that
“Its martial sounds can fainting troops inspire
With strength unwonted and enthusiasm fire.”
The use by the Celts of the bagpipes in battle fits in beautifully with
all we know of the ancient people. Their demeanour in the actual fight
was always remarkable. In old times they did not fight as they do now,
with weapons deadly at long distances from the enemy, and to use which
in a uniform style they are disciplined. Each warrior fought for his own
hand, with his own claymore, subject, after the fight began, to no
system of rules. Before the battle a strange nervous excitement, called
by ancient writers, _crithgaisge_, or “quiverings of valour,” came over
him. This was followed by an overpowering feeling of exhilaration and
delight, called _mir-cath_, or “the joyous frenzy of battle.” It was not
a thirst for blood, but an absorbing idea that both his own life and
fame and his country’s good depended on his efforts, and a determination
to do all that could be done by a resolute will and undaunted spirit.
The _mir-cath_ has been seen in a modified form on several occasions in
modern warfare, but only when the Highland soldier has a chance of
charging with the bayonet. Then that shout which precedes an onset no
foe can withstand is heard, and the Highlanders forget themselves and
rush forward like an irresistible torrent.
The harp was originally the national musical instrument of the
Highlands, but its strains were too soft and melting for the clash of
arms, and the utmost efforts of the harper would fail to rouse the
vengeful fervour of the Gaelic heroes. The pibroch’s shrill summons,
telling the sad tale of devastated straths and homeless friends, with
notes that had often led them to victory aforetime, was needed to gather
them to the fray; it drowned with its piercing tones the wailings of the
bereaved, and called in maddened ardour for revenge on the enemy. It was
perhaps a descent when the pipes had to be substituted for the voice of
the bard, and it was certainly a descent when the pipes as a domestic
instrument superseded the soft and soothing harp. But the two changes
were inevitable, and the first is not so great as it seems. The pipes
almost spoke to the people, and their music was but another language in
which their deeds and those of their ancestors were being preserved.
The bards, who preceded the pipers as an inspiring military force,
seemed themselves not only susceptible to the influence of the _mir-
cath_, but capable of imparting it to others. Before the battle they
passed from clan to clan, giving exhortation and encouragement in wild
recitative strains, and rousing the feelings of the warriors to the
highest pitch of frenzy. When the noise of fighting drowned their
voices, the pipes, after they became general as military instruments,
kept the enthusiasm alive. Both bard and piper helped when the battle
was over to celebrate the deeds of those who had survived and the honour
of the brave who had fallen, the piper’s part of the work being more
often the playing of laments for the departed. By these means, death was
robbed of its terrors, for the honouring of the dead who died nobly
naturally produced a magnanimous contempt for the last enemy. The pipes,
from their first introduction, had no rival as an instrument of war.
That they were used as such in ancient times we have historical proof.
Among the Highlanders the bagpipe is supposed to have superseded the
war-song of the bards about the beginning of the fifteenth century. We
have the tradition of the Clan Menzies that it was used at Bannockburn,
but though we grant that on many occasions
“The Menzies’ pipers played so gay,
They cheered the clan in many a fray,”
as the family chronicler tells us, we can hardly accept the evidence of
tradition alone, when it is backed up by little or nothing from history.
The first mention of military bagpipe music is given in accounts of the
battle of Glenlivck, in 1594, but it is not until after 1600 that we
find pipers mentioned as men of war by reputable historians. In 1627,
says the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland, a
certain Alex. Mac Naughton of that ilk was commissioned by King Charles
I. to “levie and transport twa hundredthe bowmen” to serve in the war
against France. On January 15th, 1628, he wrote to the Earl of Morton,
from Falmouth, where his vessel had been driven by stress of weather. In
a postscript he said:—
“My L.—As for newis from our selfis, our bagg pypperis and Marlit
Plaidis serwitt us in guid wise in the pursuit of ane man of war that
hetlie followit us.”
The English of the postscript is, like the spelling, a little shaky, and
I am not going to explain how it was possible to pursue “ane man of war
that hetlie followit us,” or whether the pipers frightened the enemy or,
as a cynical writer observes, “merely supplied the wind for the sails”
and helped the ship away. The quotation, however, proves conclusively
that there were soldiers in these days who wore the tartan—“Marlit
Plaidis” is decidedly poetic—and had bagpipers in their company.
“Besides,” continues the Transactions, “the piper Allester Caddel was
followed by a boy,” his gillie presumably, and there were also “Harrie
M’Gra, harper, frae Larg,” and “another piper.”
In 1641, Lord Lothian, writing from the Scottish Army at Newcastle, puts
in a word for the pipers:—
“I cannot out of our armie furnish you with a sober fiddler; there is
a fellow here plays exceeding well, but he is intollerably given to
drink; nor have we many of those people. Our armie has few or none
that carie not armes. We are sadder and graver than ordinarie
soldiers, only we are well provided of pypers. I have one for every
company in my regiment, and I think they are as good as drummers.”
They were evidently better than fiddlers, anyhow.
In 1642 there were regular regimental pipers, and it is believed that
the 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers, then the North British Fusiliers, was
about the first regiment which had them. When the town of Londonderry
was invested in 1689 by James VII., two drums, a piper, and colours were
allotted to each company of infantry, each troop of horse had a trumpet
and a standard, and each troop of dragoons had two trumpets, two
hautbois, and a standard. When the figures relating to the strength of
the army are analysed, it is found that each regiment must have had
fourteen pipers, fifty-six drums, five trumpets, and fourteen hautbois—
that is, if the bands were at full strength.
That pipers were not always confined to the land forces is shown by an
advertisement in the _Edinburgh Courant_ in 1708, asking for “any person
that plays on the bagpipes who might be willing to engage on board a
British man-of-war.” British and Dutch ships are known to have been
lying in Leith Roads at the time, which accounts for the advertisement.
A harper is mentioned as being in the navy as early as 1660, so music
was not a new thing on board a man-of-war.
Although drummers were used in Highland regiments before 1745, the
pipers outnumbered them very much, for whenever one was found who could
play the pipes, the clans compelled him to follow them. Prince Charlie
is said to have had thirty-two, who played before his tent at mealtime,
and that their instrument was considered a weapon of war is proved by
the fact that although a James Reid, one of the pipers who was taken on
the suppression of the rebellion, pleaded that he had not carried arms,
and was not, therefore, a soldier, the Courts decided that the pipe was
a warlike instrument, and punished the performer just as if he had
carried a claymore. When, after the battle of Prestonpans, the Prince
entered Edinburgh, we read that—
“As he came marching up the street,
The pipes played loud and clear,
And a’ the folks came running out
To meet the Chevalier.”
At the time of the rebellion the pipers had come to be highly respected
members of the clans. Almost as much so as the bards were in their day.
In 1745 the Mac Leods marched into Aberdeenshire and were defeated at
Inverurie. Mac Crimmon, the great piper from Dunvegan, and master of the
celebrated Skye “college,” was taken prisoner after a stout resistance,
and the following morning it was found that not one of the pipers of the
victorious army played through the town as usual. When asked the reason
of their extraordinary conduct, they answered that while the Mac Crimmon
was in captivity their instruments would not sound, and it was only on
the release of the prisoner that they resumed their duties. The Mac
Crimmons were then, however, so well known all over the Highlands that
the action of the other pipers can hardly be considered remarkable.
Many and many a time has the efficacy of pipe music in rallying men and
leading them on to victory been proved. At Quebec in April, 1760, when
Fraser’s regiment were retreating in great disorder the general
complained to a field officer of the behaviour of his corps. “Sir,” the
officer replied, warmly, “you did very wrong in forbidding the pipers to
play this morning; nothing encourages the Highlanders so much in the day
of battle, and even now they would be of some use.” “Then,” said the
general, “let them blow like the devil if that will bring back the men.”
The pipers played a favourite martial air, and the Highlanders, the
moment they heard it, reformed, and there was no more disorder. When the
regiment raised by Lord Mac Leod in 1778, called the 73rd or Mac Leod’s
Highlanders, was in India, General Sir Eyre Coote thought at first that
the bagpipe was a “useless relic of the barbarous ages and not in any
manner calculated to discipline troops.” But the distinctness with which
the shrill sounds made themselves heard through the noise of battle and
the influence they seemed to exercise induced him to change his opinion.
At Port Novo in 1781, he, with eight thousand men, of which the 73rd was
the only British regiment, defeated Hyder Ali’s army of twenty-five
battalions of infantry, four hundred Europeans, from forty thousand to
fifty thousand horse, and over one hundred thousand matchlock men, with
forty-seven cannon. The 73rd was on the right of the first line, leading
all the attacks, and the general’s notice was particularly attracted by
the pipers, who always blew up the most warlike strains when the fire
was hottest. This so pleased Sir Eyre Coote that he called out—“Well
done, my brave fellows, you shall have a set of silver pipes for this.”
And he was as good as his word, for he gave the men £50, and the pipes
which this bought had an inscription testifying to the high opinion the
general had of the pipers. At the battle of Assaye, again, the musicians
were ordered to lay aside their instruments and attend to the wounded.
One of the pipers who obeyed this order was afterwards reproached by his
comrades. Flutes or hautbois, they told him, they could well spare, but
for the piper, who should always be in the heat of the battle, to go to
the rear with the whistles was a thing unheard of. The unfortunate piper
was quite humbled, but he soon had an opportunity of playing off the
stigma, for in the advance at Argaun shortly after, he played with such
animation that the men could hardly be restrained from breaking the line
and rushing to the charge before the time.
Of a different nature is a story told of the Seaforth Highlanders. On
the 12th of August, 1793, as the grenadiers of Captain Gordon’s company
at Pondicherry were on duty in the trenches, exposed to a burning sun
and a severe cannonade from a fortress near by, Colonel Campbell, field
officer of the trenches, ordered the piper to play some pibrochs. This
was considered a strange order to be made at such a time, but it was
immediately complied with, and, says the writer of the chronicles of the
regiment, “we were a good deal surprised to perceive that the moment the
piper began, the fire from the enemy slackened, and soon almost entirely
ceased. The French all got upon the works, and seemed more astonished at
hearing the bagpipes than we with Colonel Campbell’s request.” It was a
new kind of warfare, and again justifies the use of the appellation
“weapon” instead of “instrument” used by the court which tried the
Jacobite piper in 1746.
We all know the story of Lucknow, and though we know that, as a matter
of history, it is entirely discredited, we cannot deny its extreme
probability, and the intense effect the sound of the pipes in the
distance would have had on the fainting men and women in the Residency.
Something like the Lucknow story is that of Prince Charlie, who, when
the clans were slow in gathering to his standard at Glenfinnan, retired
to a hut and rested, disheartened and anxious. When at noon on the 19th
of August no appearance was made he became hopeless, but in the
afternoon the sound of the pipes made themselves heard, and shortly
after the clans appeared. This is the moment which the authoress of the
well-known song, “The March of the Cameron Men,” has described:—
“Oh proudly they walk, but each Cameron knows
He may tread on the heather no more,
But boldly he follows his chief to the field,
Where his laurels were gathered before.
“I hear the pibroch, sounding, sounding,
Deep o’er the mountain and glen,
While light springing footsteps are trampling the heath,
’Tis the march of the Cameron men.”
A good instance of the power of the pipes to rally men is told of the
fateful battle of Magersfontein, during the present war in South Africa.
When, at one stage, it seemed as if “retreat” had been sounded, a piper
tried to tune his pipes, but his lips were too dry. A major handed him
his own water bottle, and immediately afterwards, “Hey, Johnnie Cope”
rang out. The men gathered round the piper as he stood there playing,
marking time with his foot, and the tide was turned. The soldiers were
sifted back into regiments and companies, and something like order was
evolved out of chaos.
Foreigners do not understand how a certain kind of music can have such a
powerful effect on men, and even our friends south of the Cheviots have
been known to sneer at it, but the facts are too stubborn to ding, and
they are acknowledged by men of the highest military experience. Perhaps
there is no nobler tribute to their power and military beauty than that
of Lord Byron, himself an Englishman:—
“And wild and high ‘The Cameron’s Gathering’ rose,
The war note of Lochiel, which Albyn’s hills
Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes:—
How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills,
Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills
Their mountain pipe, so fill the mountaineers
With the fierce native daring which instills
The stirring memory of a thousand years
And Evan’s, Donald’s fame rings in each clansman’s ears.”
The Highland soldier has proved on many a hard-fought field the
inspiring influence of
“Those thrilling sounds that call the might
Of old Clan-Alpine to the fight,”
but in all the great battles fought and won by Highlanders since 1689
the pipes have not been used in the actual charge. There is an
impression that the regimental piper keeps in front of, or alongside,
his men, and actually plays them into the enemy’s ranks, and this idea
has been largely fostered by the pictures that have appeared of such
incidents as that of Dargai. As a matter of fact such a method is
totally impracticable. In a regiment in line advancing, the pipe band is
formed up in the centre, behind the reserves. When a charge is about to
take place, the word of command, “Prepare to Charge,” is given, and
every soldier knows what this means. When the word, “Prepare to Charge,”
is given, the front rank comes to the charge, while the rear rank
remains at the slope. Meantime the line section, or whatever the party
may be, steadily advances. Simultaneously the pipers strike up the
charge in marching time, and all ranks anxiously await the command,
“Charge.” When this comes the pipers and drummers instantly change from
marching to double time. With the music and the cheers and shouts of the
Highlanders, the charge is pressed home, being generally made at a
distance of from fifty to sixty yards from the enemy, the piper closely
following up his regiment, company, or section, playing the charge and
thus cheering the troops onward. All then is confusion and wild
excitement, and after that the battle is either lost or won. To rally
the regiments the “assembly” is sounded, preceded by the regimental
call, to distinguish what regiment should respond. After the melee every
battalion forms up at lightning speed on their markers, and are again
under the control of their officers for the furtherance of any other
movement. Such is the position of a pipe band when a charge is made in
line. There is another way while troops are manœuvring, and when the
pipers may be ordered to rejoin their companies. Their position then
would be behind the centre of their companies, with the buglers, at
various points. It is then quite possible for the piper or pipers to act
precisely in the same way behind their companies as the combined band
would do behind the battalion if they were in line. Under extraordinary
circumstances, where troops are detached outside of military rule, one
cannot easily define where the piper might be placed—he might be
anywhere. We read that in former wars, such as the Peninsular, where a
breach was made by the troops, pipers sometimes got inside the breach,
and, standing on the ramparts, played their hardest to encourage the
troops; but under ordinary circumstances the piper’s position is behind
his party; and if he is professionally unemployed, he occupies himself
in attending to his fallen comrades or performing any other duty that
may be assigned to him. It is hardly possible, considering the methods
of modern warfare, to think of circumstances in which a piper should
lead a charge in front of his company.
Although we must sweep away this cherished idea and consign it to the
region of muzzle-loading guns and frontal attacks, this does not in the
least reduce the military value of the instrument. There is no music
half so good for marching purposes as that of the pipes and drums. It
gives the soldiers a quick swinging step, taking them over the ground
without a drag. This cannot be said of the brass or fife band. The
pipers carry no cumbrous accoutrements, and when their bags are full
they can keep up the music for two or three miles; in fact, on one
occasion in India the Black Watch pipers played for over four miles.
During the Indian Mutiny the marching of the British soldier was a
wonder to all who knew the climate, the more so, as much of it had to be
done with a hot sun beating down upon the feather bonnets and red coats
as their wearers toiled across a country of sand, with camels,
elephants, bullocks, and camp followers by the thousand, often marching
close upon the column. The swing and go of a Highland regiment is
something peculiar to itself, and is due in great measure to the pipes.
It is something born of the music, and it has often proved its value in
actual warfare, where marching was conjoined with fighting, as, for
instance, with the 93rd at Balaclava, where
“That thin red line of Gaelic rock,
Just tipped with shining steel,
Answered with long and steady stride
Their own loved pipes’ appeal.”