It is alleged that the chanting of Druidical precepts in Pagan times was imitated by the early Christians, and some remains of Druidical songs, with music attached, were said to have been in existence so late as 1830, but there is now nothing to show what were the qualities of Highland music prior to the dates of tunes which are well authenticated. The music of the pipes is ancient, without a doubt; it passed through a long evolution process, and it has changed but little since we have known it committed to paper. That is about all that can safely be said on the point. Before people learned to express their thoughts by marks on paper, they carried the music in their heads. The music teacher nowadays gathers his books and his scales and his instruments around him; then he gathers his pupils; then he expounds the theories on which the system of music is based; then he shows how these theories work out in actual practice, and then he proceeds to learn his pupils how to practice them. All of which makes the learning of music a “special subject,” and goes to instil into the heads of the non-musical the idea that they, too, by reason of having passed through all the courses, must needs understand music. Whereas all the time it is only the theory of music, as taught in the text-books, they understand. This in itself is not a bad thing, if people incapable of anything higher would be content with it, and not pose as authorities. But the tendency of our educational system is, or at least was very recently, towards the production of a race of pedants, and the creation of a dead level of mediocrity in which the common person thinks he is as clever as the genius, and the genius is too modest to hold his head higher than that of the common person. In the old days, when the difficulties were insurmountable to the common person, genius shone forth all the brighter. There was little of the literature of the pipes in these days, and a piper’s ear was his best teacher. Consequently the great pipers stood head and shoulders above the common crowd—giants because of their genius and lifelong study. It is quite likely that the raising of the level of the mass, even at the expense of genius, may be a good thing, but that is another matter.