The Highland bagpipe : $b its history, literature, and music: with some account of the traditions, superstitions, and anecdotes relating to the instrument and its tunesManson, W. L. (William Laird)
History
The Highland bagpipe : $b its history, literature, and music: with some account of the traditions, superstitions, and anecdotes relating to the instrument and its tunes
Manson, W. L. (William Laird)
Bagpipe
“I was at a wedding in the town of Inveraray,
I was at a wedding in the town of Inveraray,
I was at a wedding in the town of Inveraray,
Most wretched of weddings, with nothing but shell-fish,”
thus mercilessly lashing his churlish host. The wedding evidently was so
poor that all the company got was limpets, and the song is another hit
at the poverty of Inveraray. Burns echoed it when he wrote:—
“There’s naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger;
If Providence has sent me here
’Twas surely in his anger.”
The tradition, by the way, was so implicitly believed in, that the
playing of the tune at a wedding, up to a comparatively recent date, was
regarded as a premeditated insult.
One curious story is told of the tune. Not very many years ago the
steamer _Cygnet_ was sailing in a Highland loch when a sailor’s wife
gave birth to twins. The fact was noticed more particularly because a
few years before, in the same steamer, under the same captain, and at
the same place, a similar event had taken place. On the first occasion
the mother was a Mrs. Campbell, and, strangely enough, just when the
twins were born, a piper on board happened to be playing vigorously “The
Campbells are Coming,” quite ignorant of the additions that had just
been made to the passenger list.
The tune was played by the 78th Highlanders when coming to the relief of
Lucknow, and was that heard by Jessie of Lucknow—if there was such a
person—as she lay half asleep on the ground.
CHAPTER XXII.
SOME WORLD-FAMOUS PIBROCHS.
“Oh, heard ye yon pibroch sound sad on the gale,
Where a band cometh slowly with weeping and wail,
’Tis the chief of Glenara laments for his dear,
And her sire and her people are called to the bier.”
—_Campbell._
Mac Crimmon’s Lament—Best known of all pipe tunes—Its story—Blackie’s
poetry—Scott’s—The war tune of Glengarry—A tragic story—The pibroch
o’ Donuil Dhu—Too long in this condition—Pipers and inhospitality—
Oh, that I had three hands—Lochaber no more—Allan Ramsay’s verses—An
elated Mac Crimmon—Rory _Mòr’s_ Lament—Clan Farlane pibroch—Pipers,
poetry, and superstition.
There are several reasons why “Mac Crimmon’s Lament” should be the best
known of all pipe tunes, but the most important is the fact that it is,
and must ever continue to be, inseparably associated with the famous
pipers of Dunvegan. The tune was composed by a piper who was leaving
home, and had a presentiment that he would never return, but it has
often been used in other circumstances. In the evicting days, when
Highlanders were compelled to emigrate from their native shores, the
favourite air when they were embarking was
“_CHA TILL MI TUILLE_”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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