In this chapter we would walk warily, knowing that we are on dangerous ground. The question is, Has the bagpipe a language more than any other instrument? Can it speak to the heart of the Highlander more than any other instrument can speak to hearts that know it, and the music which it discourses, and the associations of that music? Through the great bulk of what has been written about the bagpipe there runs this idea of its power, this wild, fanciful notion that it has an actual language and that those who understand that language can converse by its means. Some have even attempted to analyse the music, and to discover the alleged secret, while others have held that _canntaireachd_, fully dealt with in the next chapter, was in reality a language and not merely a very rude system of musical notation. And this notion of the speaking power of the pipes got such a hold on the imaginative people of the Highlands that, although personally each of them did not understand how the thing was possible, many of them accepted it as truth and believed the stories illustrating the subject, which ultimately became part of their traditional literature. It seems like sacrilege to disturb the ideas which have been accepted as absolute truth for centuries, but there is no doubt whatever that of the speaking power of the pipes about seventy- five per cent. exists in the vivid imaginations of the retailers of Highland tradition. It was indeed in the chanter-reed of the pipes that, after a long search, and after great difficulties, Baron von Kempelen, a distinguished Continental mechanic and musician, discovered the nearest approach to the human voice. He believed it was possible to get an approximation of language by some mechanical contrivance, and he was able to convert the reed to the elements of a speaking machine, and through its aid and with many appliances he obtained letters, syllables, words, and even entire sentences. But all the same, the bagpipe cannot speak any more than it can fly. If it has ever in all its history conveyed, by means of an extemporised tune, information to people at a distance definite enough to enable them to alter all their battle tactics, we require better historical proof of the incident than is to be got of any of the stories to be given here.