While, as a simple matter of fact, it is true that the bagpipe cannot speak, it is equally true that its music exercises a strangely powerful influence over the Celtic mind. The race are, or at any rate were, of a peculiarly imaginative temperament. This, taken along with the fact that their music always had strong associations, explains a great deal. Many of the pibrochs were composed without premeditation, under the influence of exuberant joy or the wildest sorrow or despair. Consequently, when, under favourable circumstances, they were again played by master hands, they roused up the old memories, and did really, though not literally, speak to the listeners. The construction of the pipe also helps. It is the only instrument since the days of the old Highland harp which represents the Gaelic scale in music, and it is this that makes the pipe appeal so naturally and so intensely to the Gael. To him, especially if from home, it speaks of the past of his own race, and of the days of his youth. In this lies its special charm:— “When he hears the bagpipe sound His heart will bound like steed for battle.” Pipe music has many voices, and it expresses many of the emotions which are given vent to by language that can be printed. Neil Munro, as enthusiastic a Highlander as any man, does not believe in the “speaking” theory, but he believes in the descriptive character of the music. As witness— “The tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous, that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it.” The tune that, as _Paruig Dall_ said, had “the tartan of the clan it.” And— “Playing the tune of the ‘Fairy Harp,’ he can hear his forefolks, plaided in skins, towsy-headed and terrible, grunting at the oars, and snoring in the caves; he has his whittle and club in the ‘Desperate Battle’ (my own tune, my darling!), where the white-haired sea-rovers are on the shore, and a stain’s on the edge of the tide; or trying his art on Laments he can stand by the cairn of Kings, ken the colour of Fingal’s hair, and see the moon-glint on the hook of the Druids.”