We have at least one instance, and that from the far north, of the pipes being used to call people to church. In that corner of Caithness in which John o’ Groat’s House is situated there lived, more than two hundred years ago, a parish minister named Rev. Andrew Houston, or Hogston. Mr. Houston somehow could not get his people to attend church, and at last he decided to invoke the aid of the pipes. Accordingly, each Sabbath morning, a short time previous to the hour of service, a piper began at one of the more outlying portions of the parish and played his way to the church. The plan worked well, for the people, attracted by the novelty, followed the music Sabbath after Sabbath, and thus the minister gathered together a good congregation. This Mr. Houston was the first Protestant minister of the parish, and there is a tradition to the effect that not only did he use the pipes for the purpose mentioned, but that after the close of the service he allowed his congregation to have a game at shinty before going home. There is a large headstone to his memory in the kirkyard of his parish. It bears a Latin inscription and the date 1620. In our own day the most notable instance of the pipes in church was at the first commemoration service held in York Minster in memory of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale. The 1st Royal Scots were stationed in York at the time, and three pipers, under the leadership of Pipe-Major Matheson—a Golspie man—played selections of Highland music inside the Cathedral. The King’s Own Scottish Borderers relieved the Royal Scots, their pipers playing “The Flowers of the Forest.” Afterwards the pipers of the Black Watch played. The late Rev. Dr. George Mackay, of the Free Church, Inverness, was a man of a humorous disposition, and after referring one Sunday in an adverse manner to a proposal to introduce instrumental music into the church, said that if they (the congregation) were obliged to fall back upon a “human instrument” to aid them in the service of praise, they would have nothing to do with the organ—it was an instrument of foreign manufacture—they would use the bagpipe. What was more appropriate than that Highland people should use a Highland instrument? Some time later, when the question of instrumental music was being discussed at Inverness Free Church Presbytery, the Doctor, with a twinkle in his eye, turned to an elder who was a member of Presbytery, and who in his younger days was known to play the pipes occasionally, and asked him, “Could you let us have ‘French’ on the bagpipe?” The elder, however, was an austere individual, and, with an attempt at a smile, he replied, “Yes, and ‘Balerma’ too, doctor; but when I want to sing God’s praises, I use my own pipe.”