“A winnock bunker in the east, There sat Auld Nick in shape o’ beast; A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gi’e them music was his charge; He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.” —_Burns._ Tam o’ Shanter—The Devil’s favourite instrument—“Sorcerers” burned—A bard’s satire—Glasgow Cathedral story—A Hebridean Tam o’ Shanter— Continental ideas—Reformation zeal—Ghostly pipers—A “changeling piper”—_The Lost Pibroch_—The Chisholm “enchanted pipes”—The Black Chanter of Clan Chattan. It was not at all a new idea that of Burns, when he represented the arch-enemy of mankind playing the pipes to the revellers in Alloway’s “auld haunted kirk.” The ancients had it, and the sylvan divinity Pan, who can be identified with the Satan of Scottish superstition, is said to have appeared as a performer on the bagpipe. A flute with seven reeds was his favourite instrument, and this may be identified with the bagpipe of tradition. Popular belief in the seventeenth century labelled the pipes as the Devil’s favourite musical instrument. In 1679 some unhappy women were burned at Bo’ness for sorcery, and they were accused, among other things, “of meeting Satan and other witches at the cross of Murestane, above Kinneil, where they all danced, and the Devil acted as piper.” Satan is also alleged to have acted in the same capacity in the guise of a rough, tawny dog at a dance on the Pentland Hills. Mac Mhurich, the bard of Clan Ranald, composed a Gaelic satire on national music, in which the “coronach of women” and _piob gleadhair_, the pipe of clamour, are called “the two ear sweethearts of the black fiend—a noise fit to rouse the imps,” and there is a story connected with Glasgow Cathedral which shows further the prevalence of the idea. The gravestones round the Cathedral lie so close that one cannot walk across the ground without treading on them. This, however, has not always been able to prevent resurrections, as would appear from the legend. Somewhere about the year 1700 a citizen one morning threw the whole town into a state of inexpressible horror and consternation by giving out that in passing at midnight through the kirkyard he saw a neighbour of his own, lately buried, rise out of his grave and dance a jig with the devil, who played the air of “Whistle ower the lave o’t” on the bagpipe. The civic dignitaries and ministers were so scandalised at the intelligence that they sent the town drummer through the streets next morning forbidding any to whistle, sing or play the infernal tune in question.