DEMONIAC PIPES AND PIPERS.
“A winnock bunker in the east,
There sat Auld Nick in shape o’ beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gi’e them music was his charge;
He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.”
—_Burns._
Tam o’ Shanter—The Devil’s favourite instrument—“Sorcerers” burned—A
bard’s satire—Glasgow Cathedral story—A Hebridean Tam o’ Shanter—
Continental ideas—Reformation zeal—Ghostly pipers—A “changeling
piper”—_The Lost Pibroch_—The Chisholm “enchanted pipes”—The Black
Chanter of Clan Chattan.
It was not at all a new idea that of Burns, when he represented the
arch-enemy of mankind playing the pipes to the revellers in Alloway’s
“auld haunted kirk.” The ancients had it, and the sylvan divinity Pan,
who can be identified with the Satan of Scottish superstition, is said
to have appeared as a performer on the bagpipe. A flute with seven reeds
was his favourite instrument, and this may be identified with the
bagpipe of tradition. Popular belief in the seventeenth century labelled
the pipes as the Devil’s favourite musical instrument. In 1679 some
unhappy women were burned at Bo’ness for sorcery, and they were accused,
among other things, “of meeting Satan and other witches at the cross of
Murestane, above Kinneil, where they all danced, and the Devil acted as
piper.” Satan is also alleged to have acted in the same capacity in the
guise of a rough, tawny dog at a dance on the Pentland Hills. Mac
Mhurich, the bard of Clan Ranald, composed a Gaelic satire on national
music, in which the “coronach of women” and _piob gleadhair_, the pipe
of clamour, are called “the two ear sweethearts of the black fiend—a
noise fit to rouse the imps,” and there is a story connected with
Glasgow Cathedral which shows further the prevalence of the idea. The
gravestones round the Cathedral lie so close that one cannot walk across
the ground without treading on them. This, however, has not always been
able to prevent resurrections, as would appear from the legend.
Somewhere about the year 1700 a citizen one morning threw the whole town
into a state of inexpressible horror and consternation by giving out
that in passing at midnight through the kirkyard he saw a neighbour of
his own, lately buried, rise out of his grave and dance a jig with the
devil, who played the air of “Whistle ower the lave o’t” on the bagpipe.
The civic dignitaries and ministers were so scandalised at the
intelligence that they sent the town drummer through the streets next
morning forbidding any to whistle, sing or play the infernal tune in
question.
A story curiously like that of Tam o’ Shanter, but of a much more
pleasant nature, at least for the human participator, comes from the
Hebrides—the particular isle is not stated. A gentleman innkeeper, who
was taught by Angus Mac Kay, the late Queen’s piper, and could play the
pipes as well as the violin, was sadly addicted to the drinking habit,
and had frequent fits of _delirium tremens_, in which he had
extraordinary experiences. Once when he had been indulging with his
usual prodigality, the result found him in a large hall, laid out for
dancing, and with a band of performers dressed in blue. The chief of the
blue imps stood as if in front of the orchestra, grinning, capering, and
gesticulating in the most fantastic manner. In the course of time,
however, he became more amiable, and, drawing up his tail over his
shoulder, he fingered it as if it were the chanter of the pipes, and
there poured out a most inspiriting jig, the force of which neither
demon nor man could resist, and the performance rivalled that in
Alloway’s “auld haunted kirk.” But, and this is where Tam o’ Shanter
failed and the innkeeper succeeded, “mine host” remembered the tune
after his recovery, and played it, and the last teller of the story says
he “heard it played by another party who had learned it from him.” But,
unfortunately, he was too lazy to make a copy, so the “Lost Jig” went
the way of the “Lost Pibroch,” and is now unknown to the World.
[Illustration:
THE DANCE OF DEATH
_From a Woodcut of the Time of Henry VIII._
]
That the idea of a demoniac piper is not peculiar to Scotland is shown
by the sculpture executed by the celebrated German artist, Durer, which
represents the Devil playing on the pipes; by an engraving of a pageant
at Antwerp in the sixteenth century, where a similar figure occurs, and
by various Continental stories and pictures. The pipes were, it should
be added, far more often associated with religious matters than with
demoniacal. The figure on the “apprentice pillar” in Rosslyn Chapel is
that of a cherub playing on a Highland bagpipe, and, as has been shown
in a previous article, there are many indications in ecclesiastical
architecture and in ecclesiastical history that the pipes were not
altogether banned from associating with the good. After the Reformation,
it is true, they were held to be the Devil’s instruments, and between
1570 and 1624 pipers were severely persecuted; but the zeal of the
reformers, while always praiseworthy, often outran their discretion, and
in their condemnation of instrumental music they included all minstrels.
They vested supernatural powers in things which we now look upon as
ordinary. The miseries of the Civil War were foretold by the appearance
of a monster in the River Don, the disappearance of gulls from the lakes
near Aberdeen, the loud tucking of drums in Mar, and in a seaman’s house
at Peterhead, where trumpets and bagpipes and tolling of bells gave
additional horror to the sound.
The ghostly piper of Highland mythology was often seen mounted on a big
black horse, while multitudes of voices sang round him, sometimes in
light clothing and with long white staffs in their hands. In one
instance—it comes from Dairy, in Ayrshire—“the sound of voices was
terrible, and all struck in at the chorus. The tunes seemed to part and
make way for the rider to get out, but, no, they closed again.” One such
piper frequented the wild passes of Drumouchter, about the highest and
most dreary part of the hills now crossed by the Highland Railway. At
the hour of gloaming passers-by could hear the melancholy wailing of the
pipes, but they never could tell from whence it came. Prince Charles
Edward Stuart is alleged to have fought there a band of English cavalry,
when on his retreat from Derby in 1745, and though his men won, the
piper, if he was Prince Charlie’s piper, seems to have considered the
incident a matter of perpetual mourning. Other sights and spectres, as
of people engaged in mortal combat, are said to have been seen near the
place.
In a North Highland story, a “changeling” plays the pipes. A tailor went
to a farmhouse to work, and just as he was going in, somebody put into
his hands a child of a month old, which a little lady dressed in green
seemed to be waiting to receive. The tailor ran home and gave the child
to his wife. When he got back to the farmhouse, he found the farmer’s
child crying and disturbing everybody. It was a fairy changeling which
the nurse had taken in, meaning to give the farmer’s own child to the
fairy in exchange, but nobody knew this but the tailor. When they were
all gone out, he began to talk to the child. “Hae ye your pipes?” said
the tailor. “They’re below my head,” said the changeling. “Play me a
spring,” said the tailor. Out sprang the little man and played the
bagpipe round the room. Then there was a noise outside, and the elf
said, “It’s my folk wanting me,” and away he went up the chimney, and
then they fetched back the farmer’s own child from the tailor’s house.
Apart from their connection with supernatural beings or supernatural
agencies, the pipes have at various times in the history of Scotland
been credited with supernatural power. The “Lost Pibroch” itself is an
echo, but a magnificently worded echo, of the old connection between the
pipes and the supernatural. In it we have something like a modern
literary curiosity, a Highland story written in the true Highland ring
and spirit, and yet as splendid an intellectual treat to a non-Highland
reader as he can get anywhere in the King’s English. It exaggerates the
power of the pipes, but it is an exaggeration that is fully in unison
with the nature of the people, and it is the gem of all the stories of
pipers and the supernatural. “Then here’s another for fortune,” said
_Paruig Dall_, and he went through the woods with his pipes under his
oxter, to follow those whom his notes had already set awandering.
The Chisholm preserves, or at least did at one time preserve a relic
believed to be of great antiquity. It is a chanter which is supposed to
have a peculiar faculty of indicating the death of the chief by
spontaneously bursting, and after each fracture it is carefully repaired
by a silver fillet, which is an improvement on the original method of
mending with a leathern throng. The family piper, when from home at a
wedding, heard his chanter crack, and at once started up, saying he must
return, for The Chisholm was dead. And he was.
But the most famous of all such articles is “The Black Chanter of Clan
Chattan.” This is a relic of the fight between the Clan Quhele and the
Clan Yha on the North Inch of Perth in 1396. It is made of _lignum
vitæ_, and, according to tradition is endued, with magical powers. About
the end of the battle, so the tradition goes, an aerial minstrel was
seen hovering over the heads of the Clan Chattan, who, after playing a
few wild notes on his pipes, let them drop to the ground. Being made of
glass, they all broke except the chanter, which was made of wood. The
Clan Chattan piper secured the chanter, and, though mortally wounded, he
continued playing the pibroch of his clan until death silenced him. Some
traditions say the original chanter was made of crystal, and, being
broken by the fall, that now existing was made in exact fac-simile,
others that the cracks now seen were those the chanter received on
falling to the ground. In any case, the possession of this particular
chanter was ever after looked on as ensuring success, not only to the
Mac Phersons, but to any one to whom it happened to be lent. The Grants
of Strathspey once received an insult, through the cowardice of some
unworthy members of their clan, and in their dejection they borrowed the
Black Chanter, the war notes of which roused their drooping energies and
stimulated them to such vigour that it became a proverb from that time,
“No one ever saw the back of a Grant.” The Grants of Glenmoriston
afterwards received it, and they restored it to the Mac Phersons about
1855. It is still carefully preserved at Cluny Castle, and some
entertain the belief that on its preservation depends the property of
the house of Cluny.
The Black Chanter seems to have kept its magic power, for, during all
the troubles of the ’45, Cluny Mac Pherson accompanied Prince Charlie in
his victories and helped him much by his own and his followers’ bravery.
But when the final blow was given to the fortunes of Charles Edward at
Drummossie Moor, the Mac Phersons were not there, and it is said that
before the battle an old witch told the Duke of Cumberland that if he
waited until the green banner and the Black Chanter came up he would he
defeated. The battle was over before Cluny arrived, for he was met by
the fugitives when on his way from Badenoch to join the Prince. The Mac
Intoshes, who claim that their chief is the chief of the Clan Mac
Pherson, were at Culloden and in the thickest of the fight, but they had
not the Black Chanter, and so they, too, shared in the defeat. It is
certainly curious that no battle at which the Mac Phersons were present
with the green banner of the clan, the Black Chanter, and the chief at
their head, was lost. We do not, of course, believe in this phase of the
supernatural nowadays, and it has been irreverently asserted that this
particular chanterwill not play, that a piper of Cluny’s who was in the
service of the chief for seven years testified to this, and that it is
nothing more nor less than a chanter that has been spoiled in the
making. We do not contend that it really had supernatural powers—the
probability is all the other way—but when the clan believed it had,
that, by inspiring them with confidence, perhaps served the same
purpose. Many clans and peoples find inspiration in that which to the
sceptical and hypercritical is but a fetish, and though we may smile at
old-time stories of the supernatural, we should remember that those
things were not smiling matter to the people of those days, and that the
people who live as long after us as we live after those who believed in
fairies and other uncanny things are almost sure to find much more to
laugh at in our practice and beliefs than we find in the practice and
beliefs of our ancestors. Meantime, let us close with a piece as grand
as ever was written in any language, dedicated to Culloden and the Black
Chanter of Chattan by Mrs. Ogilvie—remembering that the past deserves
our respect, not only for the brave people it produced, but also for the
legacy of enjoyable song and poetry and tradition it has handed down to
us—
“Black Chanter of Chattan now hushed and exhausted,
Thy music was lost with the power of the Gael;
The dread inspiration Mac Pherson had boasted
For ever expired in Drummossie’s sad wail.
“On old St. Johnstone’s dark meadow of slaughter
Thy cadences buried the piper’s last breath;
The vanquished escaped amid Tay’s rolling water,
The conqueror’s pibroch was silenced by death.
“That piper is nameless, and lost in like manner
The tribes are forgotten of mighty Clan Quhele;
While Chattan that bears the hill-cat on his banner,
No time can extinguish, no ruin assail.
“From the hand of a cloud-cleaving bard thou wert given
To lips that embraced thee till nerveless and dead;
Since then never idly Mac Pherson hath striven,
Nor trust in his fortune been shaken by dread.
“O mouth-piece of conquest! who heard thee and trembled?
Who followed thy call, and despaired of the fight?
Availed not that foemen before thee dissembled,
For quenched was their ardour and nerveless their might.
“The blast of thy pibroch, the plaint of thy streamer,
Lent hope to each spirit and strength to each arm;
While the Saxon confronting was scared like the dreamer
Whose sleep is of peril, of grief, and alarm.
“Led on by thy promise, what chieftain e’er sallied
Nor proved in the venture how just was thy vaunt?
At the spell of thy summons exultingly rallied
The faltering pulse of dispirited Grant.
“Forerunner of victory! Why didst thou tarry?
Thy voice on Drummossie an empire had changed;
We then had not seen our last efforts miscarry,
The Stuart had triumphed, the Gael been avenged.
“Ah, fatal Drummossie—sad field of the flying!
The Gathering sank in the hopeless Lament;
What pibroch could stanch the wide wounds of the dying?
What magic rekindle the fire that was spent?
“Proud music, by shame or dishonour ne’er daunted,
By murmur of orphan, by widowed despair,
The fall of thy country thy spell disenchanted,
With the last of the Stuarts it vanished in air!
“Yet rouse thee from slumber, Black Chanter of Chattan,
Send forth a strong blast of defiance once more;
On the flesh of thy children the vulture doth fatten,
And sodden with blood are the sands of Lahore.
“As fierce as the tiger that prowls in their forest,
Those sons of the Orient leap to the plain;
But the blade striketh vainly wherever thou wanest,
Black Chanter of Chattan bestir thee again!”