wonderful pageant of men in that old city which had been under fire
since October in the first year of war and was badly wounded, with
many of its ancient houses utterly destroyed, but still a city with
streets through which men could march, and buildings in which they
could find comfortable, but unsafe billets. It was the headquarters
of the battle which lasted in the fields outside by Monchy Hill and
by Fampoux and Roeux, Wancourt and Havinel until the end of May.
Arras is a city built above deep tunnels and vaults made in the
Middle Ages when the stone was quarried out of them to build the
houses, and lengthened and strengthened by our own engineers and
tunnellers, so that our men could live in them under the heaviest
shell-fire, and march through them to the German lines. Above, in the
old squares and streets, in houses still standing between gulfs of
ruin, several of our Divisional generals and some of our battalion
commanders established their headquarters, and when the first fierce
shelling eased off--though it never ceased until the last German
retreat in the autumn of 1918--the streets were always filled with
a surging traffic of men and mules and guns and motor lorries. Many
Scottish battalions of the 15th and 51st Divisions among others were
quartered here, and on one historic day there were assembled no less
than five pipe bands in full strength, who played up and down one of
the Squares amidst crowds of fighting men of English and Scottish
regiments. I remember one such day when the pipers of the 8/10th
Gordons, commanded then by Colonel Thom, were playing in the square.
The Colonel had a proud light in his eyes as the tune, "Highland
Laddie," swelled up to the gables and filled the open frontages of
the gutted houses. Snowflakes fell lightly on the steel hats of
the Scots standing in a hollow square, and mud was splashed to the
khaki aprons over their kilts as they smiled at the fine swagger of
the pipe-major and the thump of the drum-sticks; an old woman danced
a jig to the pipes, holding her skirt above her skinny legs. She
tripped up to a group of Scottish officers and spoke quick shrill
words to them. "What does the old witch say?" asked a laughing
Gordon. She had something particular to say. In 1870 she had heard
the pipes in Arras. They were played by prisoners from South Germany,
and as a young girl she had danced to them. It seemed to me a link
between two strange chapters of history in the city of Arras which
had been crowded with the ghosts of history since those days when
Julius Caesar had his camp outside its walls on the very ground--at
Etrun--where our Scottish troops had their huts.
The pipes of Scotland sounded in many villages of France and
Flanders, where for all time the wail of them will come down the
wind to the ears of men who hear with the spirit. They were played
not only in the roads and fields, but often at night in farmhouses
where Highland officers had their messes, or in cottages where some
battalion headquarters were established or in old houses within city
walls where there was a feast or a guest night. It was my privilege
to spend some of those evenings, when down the long table in a
narrow room the pipers marched, solemnly standing behind the guest's
chair and playing old dances and marches of Bonnie Scotland. Then
the colonel would offer the pipe-major a glass of whisky, which he
would raise high, toasting the health of the officers in Gaelic.
After that, on many a good evening in a bad war, the tables would be
cleared, and the young officers would dance an eightsome reel, with
laughter and simulated passion, and shrill cries of challenge and
triumph which stirred a stranger's soul. Or the pipers themselves
would be asked to give a dance, and in stocking feet on bare boards,
dance as lightly as gossamer and as nimbly as Nijinsky the Russian,
though big, brawny men. In small rooms the music of the pipes was
loud--too loud for any but Scottish ears--and it was hard on a French
"padre" who was trying to sleep upstairs in one small cottage, with
thin walls and cracks between old timbers of the ceiling, while
downstairs late into the night the pipers played merrily for those
who would fight in the next battle, near at hand. The effect of such
pipe-music within four walls was prodigious on a French officer
whom I took one night to the mess of the 8/10th Gordons. The full
pipe-band marched in as usual, and I saw my friend open his eyes wide
and stare with amazement at this apparition. When they stood behind
his chair playing lustily, so that the very glasses quaked on the
table, he became very pale, and after the second "strathspey" I saw
him collapse in his chair in a dead swoon. The Gordons thought this
a fine tribute to their pipers. They enjoyed the incident justly
though full of consideration for the French officer. He explained to
me after the symptoms that overcame him. "I felt," he said, "enormous
waves rolling up to me and passing over me; my heart beat wildly,
and vivid colours rushed past my eyes. Then I knew no more!" Nothing
would induce him to suffer such musical agony again.
I shall always remember one piper I saw in the ruins of the Château
of Caulaincourt. How he came there, or why he stayed there, I do not
know, because few of our troops were in the neighbourhood, and the
place was a desert. The château had been a vast place, with high
walls and terraces and out-houses, but the whole place had been
hurled into ruin by the Germans on their first retreat in the spring
of 1917. They had opened the family vaults and pillaged the coffins,
and I remember being struck by the pathos of a little marble tablet
I saw on a refuse heap, to which it had been flung. On it were the
words in French, "The heart of Madame la Marquise de Caulaincourt."
Poor dead heart of Madame la Marquise! In life it would have broken
at the sight of all this ruin. But there, quite alone, on the central
avalanche of stones, stood a Scottish piper playing a lament.... I
heard from other officers that he was seen there later, still alone,
and still playing his pipes, but why we could not tell.
The last time I heard the pipes was at the end of the war. They were
playing Scottish troops over a bridge across the Rhine, at Cologne,
and at the journeys' end of all that long and tragic way through
which our men had fought with heroism, through frightful fire, with
dreadful losses, until victory was theirs, final and complete. Along
those roads the pipes of war went playing, month after month, year
after year, from one battle to another, and in their music for ever,
as long as remembrance of this war lasts, there will be the tears and
the tragedy and the triumph, reminding the world of all that gallant
youth of Scotland which fought in France.
THE PIPES IN THE EVERYDAY LIFE OF THE WAR
By ARTHUR FETTERLESS
I do not think any one can write with greater pleasure than I for the
Pipers' Record. My only regret is that, personally, I never chanced
to see the pipes go into direct action. I know that, in the earlier
stages of the war, and in a few celebrated cases later, the pipes
went into the charge, but I had not the good fortune to be present
on one of these occasions. Others, however, will have written of
these things, and I do not think I can do better than speak of events
actually known to myself relating to the pipes and the pipers in the
general life of the war.
The pipes! Ah! No memories of the great war will ever be complete to
any member of a Highland regiment without the recollection of the
pipes, for they are unquestionably the finest battle instrument ever
created. They mourned with us in hours of sorrow. They cheered us in
hours of weariness. They played gaily in hours of rest and merriment.
Back in billets, in ruined villages, half the battalion would turn
out to hear "Retreat" played by the pipe-band. It was one of the
events of the day, in the summer in the sweltering heat of the
dust-laden huts behind the front-line, in the winter in the dank cold
mid the seas of mud, in the midst of which the pipers played upon an
island that was sometimes almost a floating raft.
At these times the rumble of the guns was overwhelmed, and the
horrors of war and the atmosphere were for a little time forgotten.
And the fact that the pipes were the pride of the battalion was
evident from the remarks of the men, if several Highland battalions
were billeted together.
"Your pipes are no' a patch on ours!"
"Aw, away wi' ye, look at yer big drum; he canna twirl his sticks
above his heid."
"Umph! We've got a pipe-major, onyhoo."
"Aye." A grudging admission.
Such remarks were of the everyday talk of the men who heard the pipes.
Again, at the periodical meetings and games of Highland brigades, the
massed bands of the battalions were always there playing a mighty
skirl. There were, of course, piping competitions in conjunction with
competitions in Highland dancing and sport.
All these occasions did much to rob modern war of its dismal
character, and bring back something of the glamour of arms, and the
glory of strong men.
But enough of general remarks. I wish to write of five typical scenes
from the life of the war relating to pipes and the pipers.
* * * * *
In the first I am standing at the entrance to one of the low
dug-outs, covered over with turf, which used to lie, and perhaps
still exist, a few hundred yards from the Café Belge up the road to
Ypres. Most people who fought in that sector found a billet in them
at some time, or knew them--filthy they were.
Overhead a couple of aeroplanes are hovering, very high up. An
occasional shell can be heard, coming from a long distance away, with
a rolling noise. The shells are probably 9-inch or perhaps larger,
and they are bursting with crash and splash in the fields around or
near the road.
From the direction of the Café Belge I see a company of men in kilts
advancing, men heavily laden with all the usual impedimenta of packs,
rifles, etc. They look, in the distance, tired and grim, and in
formation they are straggling, owing to the appallingly muddy state
of the road.
A shell bursts in the field to the left of the road along which they
are coming. There is a heavy cloud of smoke, and streams of mud and
slime are spued upwards and around. For a moment the leader seems to
hesitate, and the party halts. Then they move on again.
Suddenly there is a sound as of tuning up, and two pipers commence
to play. The advancing men steady in formation and come slogging
through the mud, with step almost rhythmic to the music.
"Crash!" Another shell bursts nearer them, splashing some of the
platoon with mud. The pipes play on.
"Crash!" A third shell bursts short of them.
The pipes play on, and the men march steadily past to the music of
the pipes. They cover another hundred yards, and a shell bursts in
the road where the platoon were marching a few seconds before. I say
to myself, "Thank God, they got through in time."
As I look back it seems to me that that was not too bad an example of
steadiness of pipers and men under dangerous fire. But of course it
was all just an everyday sort of thing--a few men relieving trenches
with a couple of pipers to cheer them on the way up--part of the
everyday life of war.
The pipes only began to play after the shelling broke out.
* * * * *
My second scene is an incident taken from life in France. I think the
pipes did their share in fostering the _entente_, and the arrival of
Highland battalions with their pipe-bands marching in front did much
to engrave in the hearts of the French people memories which will be
carried on from generation to generation.
In this second scene I stood at the entrance to a French town when a
very famous battalion entered the main street marching to attention,
with pipe-band playing. It was the first Scottish battalion to enter
that town.
Near me stood a little girl in a white dress. Her face, on seeing the
band, first expressed astonishment. The expression changed to pleased
interest, and finally she burst into gleeful smiles.
As the band came near her she danced along beside the pipers, a
beautiful golden-haired child, supremely happy.
The people standing around cheered and waved with French enthusiasm.
To them undoubtedly, in one of the darkest hours of the war--those
magnificent men and the music of the pipes bore a message of hope and
determination, with the promise of ultimate victory.
To any people who are inclined to be supercilious about pipe-music,
the recollection of the unfeigned pleasure of a beautiful child on
hearing the pipes for the first time has often seemed to me to supply
an answer. Those who cannot understand pipe-music might be able to do
so if they were ready to receive it in the same simple spirit.
* * * * *
About the end of October 1915 the trenches on Hill 60 in front of
Ypres, were in a particularly sodden state. The rotting sandbags
which formed the parapets were a mass of oozing earth, continually
being scattered by shell-fire and rebuilt again by the toilsome
labours of mud-covered "Jocks."
The Hun sniper, too, was exceptionally vigilant in these parts, and,
as he had the advantage of ground and of enfilade fire from several
points, to put a head above the parapet in daylight meant almost
certain death. Men also were being continually wounded and killed
while passing along the trenches at points where the parapet had
become too low, and it had not been possible to build it up quickly
enough.
As the combined result of shell-fire, sniping, and the bad state of
the trenches, the amount of work which could be done in daylight
was small. Repairs were done at night. There were also, on account
of these difficulties and others, very few loop-holes available, so
that, excepting through periscopes, the average man saw very little
of the enemy. He scarcely ever got a shot at him by day. I suppose
it was the result of all these things put together which created the
scene.
On a very dull morning a party of Seaforths were gathered in a bay of
one of the trenches. I was round the traverse in the next bay. One of
the party of men was on sentry duty with a periscope; the rest were
cleaning rifles.
Owing to the dullness of the day, mud and filth, the _ensemble_ was
dismal. Suddenly there sounded from the direction of Sanctuary Wood
the music of pipes playing. Why they were playing then, or where
exactly they were playing, I have never known, but there certainly
floated across to the dismal trenches the music of "Horo, My Nut
Brown Maiden."
To us in the trenches the distant music sounded perfectly glorious,
and the burdens of the hour were for a time lifted away. That the
men found it so was evident from their action.
Everybody knows the soldier's version which runs to the same air,
and it apparently struck the fancy of the men as applicable to the
occasion, for there burst forth from the adjoining bay a cheerful
chorus:
"Aa canna see the tairget,
Aa canna see the tairget,
Oh, aa canna see the tairget,
It's owre far awa."
The last line was converted by one of the chorus party into the line:
"For Jerry he's owre fly."
On looking round the corner of the traverse I saw the concert-party
incredibly cheerful, and entirely oblivious of war, mud or danger,
for the pipes had asserted their sway.
* * * * *
There are many marches which the pipers made, including marches
to battle, of which I might write, but I think my second last
reminiscence had best be taken from the journey of the conquering
Second Army which tramped from Ypres to the Rhine on the last great
triumphal march.
Of the 250 miles odd which the Army covered, I am certain that the
pipers of my battalion piped at least a good half, perhaps more.
What could we have done without them on that march? As we tramped
through village after village and town after town, neath welcome
banners and cheering crowds, men wearied with marching, not always
too amply rationed, yet swung forward with assured tread to the lilt
of the pipes through every village and town.
Welcoming bands played the Marseillaise, the Brabançonne, and the
British Anthem, and the crowds shouted their "Vive les Alliês," etc.
The pipes played their regimental and national marches in return, and
if intercommunication through language was not perfect, yet there was
complete accord through music.
Undoubtedly, on that never-to-be-forgotten march, the pipes were
indispensable.
* * * * *
The last scene is taken from Germany. Perhaps I should speak of
massed bands parading in the main squares and streets of the great
towns of the Rhine, bringing home to the Hun as forcibly as in any
way the destruction of his ill-judged schemes; or perhaps I should
speak of the pipers on some of the great occasions--presentations of
medals, presentations of colours, etc.
I prefer to write of a very simple event. Happening where it did, it
seemed so homely.
I was riding through a forest not far from Cologne when I heard the
music of pipes. I turned off the road and proceeded along a pathway
which led to a green sward in the forest.
There I saw a solitary piper marching slowly up and down playing a
lament. His loneliness seemed to me to symbolise two things--the
completeness of victory, and the detachment of the conquerors. The
music sounded very beautiful among the trees.
I did not interrupt the piper, but if I know anything at all of
piping, I am sure that that piper in the forest felt for a little
while almost as if he were treading his native heath again, and
dreamt of the Highland hills and forests from which he had come.
After all, in Germany, we were strangers in a strange land and not
wishing to stay there. Having done our work, we said in our hearts,
"let us away!" for the Huns will always be Hunnish. But we are
Highland, and the pipes are calling us home.
* * * * *
Beat on drums; let the pipes play and the banners be unfurled for
every triumphal march that shall be. But when the marches are played
let us never forget that every march has grown more glorious by the
war and the blood of the men who fell; that every march has woven
around it a thousand memories of life and death, of hardship, of
danger, and of victory.
In days to come we will remember--to battle we went by _that_ march;
to Longueval we went by _that_ march; and from Loos we came by _that_
one. And for every battle march that the pipers play, we know that a
million feet and more have marched to its song.
That record of great work--that, with death and other things they did
not count--_that_ is the Pipers' Record.
THE OLDEST AIR IN THE WORLD
By NEIL MUNRO
Col Maclean, on two sticks, and with tartan trousers on, came down
between the whins to the poles where the nets were drying, and joined
the Trosdale folk in the nets' shade. 'Twas the Saturday afternoon;
they were frankly idling, the township people--except that the women
knitted, which is a way of being indolent in the Islands--and had
been listening for an hour to an heroic tale of the old sea-robber
days from Patrick Macneill, the most gifted liar in the parish. A
little fire of green wood burned to keep the midges off, and it was
hissing like a gander.
"Take your share of the smoke and let down your weariness, darling,"
said one of the elder women, pushing towards the piper a herring
firken. Nobody looked at his sticks nor his dragging limb--not even
the children; had he not been a Gael himself Maclean might have
fancied his lameness was unperceived. He bitterly knew better, but
pushed his sticks behind the nets as he seated himself, and seated,
with his crutches absent, he was a fellow to charm the eye of maid or
sergeant-major.
"Your pipes might be a widow, she's so seldom seen or heard since you
came home," said one of the fishermen.
"And that's the true word," answered Col Maclean. "A widow indeed,
without her man! Never in all my life played I _piob mhor_ but on my
feet and they jaunty! I'll never put a breath again in sheep-skin. If
they had only blinded me!"
There was in the company, Margaret, daughter of the bailie; she had
been a toddling white-haired child when Col went to France, and had
to be lifted to his knees; now she got up on them herself at a jump,
and put her arms round his neck, tickling him with her fingers till
he laughed.
"Oh bold one! Let Col be!" her mother commanded; "thou wilt spoil his
beautiful tartan trews."
"It is Col must tell a story now," said the little one, thinking of
the many he used to tell her before he became a soldier.
"It is not the time for wee folks stories," said the mother; "but
maybe he will tell us something not too bloody for Sunday's eve about
the Wars."
Col Maclean, for the first time, there and then, gave his tale of The
Oldest Air in the World.
* * * * *
"I was thinking to myself," said he, "as I was coming through the
whins there, that even now, in creeks of the sea like this, beside
their nets adrying, there must be crofter folk in France, and they at
_ceilidh_ like yourselves, telling of tales and putting to each other
riddles."
"_Ubh! ubh!_ It is certain there are no crofters in France,
whatever," said William-the-Elder. "It is wine they drink in France,
as I heard tell from the time I was the height of a Lorne shoe, and
who ever heard of crofters drinking wine?"
"Wherever are country people and the sea beside them to snatch a meal
from, you will find the croft," insisted Col the piper. "They have
the croft in France, though they have a different name for it from
ours, and I'll wager the bulk of the land they labour is as bare as a
bore's snout, for that is what sheep and deer have left in Europe for
the small spade-farmer."
"Did'st see the crofting lands out yonder?" asked Margaret's mother.
"No," said the piper; "but plenty I saw of the men they breed there;
I ate with them, and marched with them, and battled at their side,
for we were not always playing the pipes, we music-fellows.
"And that puts me in mind of a thing--there is a people yonder, over
in France, that play the bagpipe--they call them Brettanach--the
Bretons. They are the same folk as ourselves though kind of Frenchmen
too, wine-drinking, dark and Papist. Race, as the old-word says,
goes down to the rock, and you could tell at the first glance of a
Brettanach that he was kin to us though a kilt was never on his
loins, and not one word in his head of the Gaelic language. 'Tis
history! Someway--some time--far back--they were sundered from us,
the Brettanach, and now have their habitation far enough from Albyn
of the mountains, glens and heroes. Followers of the sea, fishermen
or farmers; God-fearing, good hard drinkers, in their fashion--many a
time I looked at one and said to myself, 'There goes a man of Skye or
Lewis!'"
"And the girls of them?" said Ranald Gorm, with a twinkle of the eyes.
"You have me there!" said Col. "I never saw woman-kind of the
Brettanach; the war never went into their country, and the Bretons I
saw were in regiments of the army, far enough from home like myself,
in the champagne shires where they make the wine.
"We came on them first in a town called Corbie, with a church so
grand and spacious a priest might bellow his head off and never be
heard by the poor in the seats behind. 'Twas on a week-day, a Mass
was making; that was the first and last time ever I played pipes in
the House of God, and faith! that not by my own desiring. 'Twas some
fancy of the priests, connived between them and the Cornal. Fifteen
of us marched the flag-stones of yon kirk of Corbie playing 'Fingal's
Weeping.'"
"A good brave tune!" remarked the bailie.
"A brave tune, and a bonny! I'll warrant yon one made the rafters
shiver! The kirk was filled with a corps of the tribe I mention--the
Brettanach--and they at their Papist worshipping; like ourselves,
just country folk that would sooner be at the fishing or the croft
than making warfare.
"My eye fell, in particular, on a fellow that was a sergeant, most
desperate like my uncle Sandy--so like I could have cried across the
kirk to him 'Oh uncle! what do ye do so far from Salen?' The French,
for ordinary, are black as sloes, but he was red, red, a noble head
on him like a bullock, an eagle nose, and a beard cut square and
gallant.
"When the kirk spilled out its folk, they hung awhile about the
burial-yard as we do ourselves in Trosdale, spelling the names on the
head-stones, gossiping, and by-and-bye slipped out, I doubt not, to a
change-house for a dram, and all the pipers with them except myself."
[Illustration: DUNIQUAICH, LOCH FYNE
_From the Water-colour Drawing by George Houston, A.R.S.A._]
"God bless me!" cried Ronald Gorm.
"Believe it or not, but I hung back and sought my friend the red one.
He was sitting all his lone on a slab in the strangers' portion of
the graveyard, under yews, eating bread and onion and sipping wine
from his flask of war. Now the droll thing is that though I knew he
had not one word of Christian Gaelic in his cheek, 'twas the Gaelic I
must speak to him.
"'Just man,' says I to him. 'Health to you and a hunter's hunger! I
was looking at you yonder in the kirk, and a gentleman more like my
clansman Sandy Ruadh of Salen is surely not within the four brown
borders of the world nor on the deeps of ocean. Your father must have
come from the Western Isles, or the mother of you been wandering.'
"Of all I said to him he knew but the one word that means the same
thing, as they tell me, in all Celtdom--_eaglais_. To his feet
got the Frenchman, stretched out to me his bread and wine, with a
half-laugh on him most desperate like Uncle Sandy, and said _eaglais_
too, with a flourish of the heel of his loaf at the kirk behind him
to show he understood that, anyway. We sat on the slab, the pair of
us, my pipes stretched out between us, and there I assure, folk, was
the hour of conversation!"
"But if you could not speak each other's tongue?" said a girl.