At length the immoralities of the humble musicians became a bye-word, so much so that a slanderous biographer of Archbishop Sharpe thought he had blackened his character enough when he said, “As for his father, he was a piper.” There was nothing to be said after that. So late as 1860, a traveller in Caithness-shire who visited Brawl Castle, one of the county seats, wrote, more let us hope in joke than in earnest—“John Gunn, their piper, played extremely well, but it was sometimes necessary to station him in a distant room, as the skirl was a little too harsh to be enjoyed at close quarters, particularly when John made too free with whisky, without which, however, it was not easy to get John to play at all.” Gambling, ebriety, nocturnal revels, and gross immoralities, says the author of _Musical Memoirs of Scotland_, accompanied this subordinate species of music, to the manifest annoyance of the more tranquil part of the community, and even then (1849) where frequent in towns, licentiousness was seldom far removed from it. In 1661 the minister of a Scottish parish has left it on record, “he found two women of his congregation ‘full’ on a week day, and dancing with pipers playing to them.” Truly a severe indictment. From these things it is refreshing to turn to the story of William Mac Donald of Badenoch, who played so well, even when rivals had given him too much drink, that he always got a prize at competitions. His son was piper to the Prince of Wales, but owing to religious scruples he resigned his situation and burned his pipes. He evidently did not think there was anything sacred about the instrument.