A satirical writer of 1659, when he wished to be specially cynical, proposed that two illustrious persons should be married, and that “the banquetting house should be prepared forthwith, with a pair of bagpipes and a North Country jig to entertain the nobles that shall attend the nuptials.” There was apparently nothing to be said after that. In a political satire of the same year, Sir Archibald Johnstone, a prominent person of that time, is thus addressed:—“Pure Sir Archibald Johnstone, wea is me for thee, for thou hadst thought to be a muckle laddy, but now the peeper of Kilbarchan will laugh thee to scorne.” He could get no lower than to be laughed at by the piper. A sneering biographer of Archbishop Sharpe, speaking of the prelate’s grandfather’s pipes, says:—“If the pipe and bags be yet in the prelate’s possession, it is like he may have use for them, to gift them to some landwart church, to save the expense of a pair of organs, which may be well enough for our rude people, who can sing to the one as well as to the other; and if instrumental music be _juris divini_, as the prelates assert, it cannot be thought that any people should be so phanatick as to admit the organs in divine service and refuse the pipes.” The Earl of Northampton, a contemporary of Shakespeare, concludes a treatise against alleged prophecy with the remark that “oracles are most like baggepypes and showmen, that sound no longer than they are puffed up with winde and played upon with cunning.” Thackeray, in _The Irish Sketch Book_, says, “Anything more lugubrious than the drone of the pipe, or the jig danced to it, or the countenances of the dancers and musicians, I never saw. Round each set of dancers the people formed a ring, in which the figurantes and coryphees went through their operations.” Thomas Kirke, the Englishman who wrote _A Modern Account of Scotland_, in 1679, said—“Musick they (the Highlanders) have, but not the harmony of the sphears, but loud terrene noises, like the bellowing of beasts; the loud bagpipe is their delight; stringed instruments are too soft to penetrate the organs of their ears, that are only pleased with sounds of substance.” Dr. Mac Culloch, already quoted,[13] who travelled Scotland in 1824, calls the bagpipe as vile a contrivance as can be imagined, and describes in graphic language all its alleged defects, and the sad result of listening to its music:— Footnote 13: See Page 80.