From 1700 till 1750 was perhaps the most critical time in the story of the Great Highland Bagpipe. The disaster at Culloden nearly spelt ruin for the pipes as well as for the tartan. The Disarming Act was very stringent, and the pipes came in for almost as strict a banning as did the kilt. The Jacobites were outlawed, the tartan was pronounced a mark of extreme disloyalty to the House of Hanover, and the life of a professed piper was hardly worth living. The Celt was crushed by the severity of his defeat and broken by the inrush of innovation that followed. Clanship, as such, ceased, and the chiefs, from being the fathers of their people, became the landlords. The Highlander lost his reckless passions, but he also lost his rude chivalry and his absorbing love for the old customs. Traditional history and native poetry were neglected, and theological disputes of interminable duration occupied much of the time formerly devoted to poetic recitals and social meetings. Poverty and civilisation did their work; taste for music declined, and piping died away. Absentee landlordism took the place of resident chieftainism, and Gaelic seemed likely to become a dead language, for the people seemed willing to let it die. The destruction of the crofter system completed the work of ruin begun by the destruction of the clan system. What this meant for Highland feelings and customs is vividly shown by the following extract from the writings of the elder Dr. Norman Macleod, _Caraid nan Gaidheal_, as he was called. The speaker is “Finlay the Piper.”