Ten fun facts about the bagpipes

Depending on your tastes, bagpipes are primal and evocative, or crude and abrasive. Adore or despise them, they are ubiquitous across the city centers of Scotland (for tourists or locals?). In anticipation of St Andrews Day, and your Robert Burns poetry readings with a certain woodwind accompaniment, here are 10 facts you may not have known about the history of the bagpipes.

Traditionally, bagpipes were made from the skin of a whole animal, turned inside out, with the pipes attached where the legs and neck would be.
The chanter is never silent so there can be no rest between notes, and its volume cannot be changed. This is why variation is created with grace notes more than through dynamics.
Far from being a Scottish invention, bagpipes have a lengthy history. References to them exist in Suetonius, Martial, and Dio Chrysostom. Even Aristophanes suggests that players from Thebes sound like dogs in distress.
The tyrant Nero was a ruthless ruler, strategist, and persecutor of the pious. He was also said to be a skilled piper.
Across Europe bagpipes have been in continuous use for centuries, especially in Great Britain, Ireland, and north-western Spain. In Bulgaria, where the skins are prepared in milk, the instrument is called a Gaida.
Scottish Highlanders played it as a battle-field instrument meant to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies and to stir their allies to acts of bravery.
In 1745 the Scottish Loyalists government banned the instrument. The bagpipes were driven underground, where many wish they had stayed.
When a reckless piper broke this law, a court ruled that “no highland regiment ever marched without a piper” and that therefore in the eyes of the law, his bagpipe was an instrument of war. He was executed on 6 November 1746.
The song “A Flame of Wrath for Patrick MacCrimmon” is a piping standard. It gets its name from the story of a piper from Glenelg, near The Isle of Skye. The musician set a whole village alight in order to avenge the murder of his brother, the eponymous Patrick. It is said the piper overlooked the blaze from a hill, playing this relentless chant.
In April 2015 the bagpipes came unstuck again when busking regulation introduced by Boris Johnson sought to limit performances which involved instruments with “loud repetitive sounds.” Apparently the bagpipe fell afoul of this regulation.

Any other fun facts to add?

Headline image credit: Bagpipes at the Strawberry Festival by Virginia State Parks staff. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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