“I have power, high power for freedom, To wake the burning soul; I have sonnets that through the ancient hills, Like a torrent’s voice might roll; I have pealing notes of victory, That might welcome kings from war; I have rich deep tones to send the wail, For a hero’s death afar.” “A Hundred Pipers”—Scotland becoming Cosmopolitan—The War spirit of the Pipes—Regiments, not Clans—Annual Gatherings—Adaptability of Pipes—Scotch folk from Home—An aged Enthusiast—Highlands an Extraordinary Study—Succession of Chiefs—Saxon introduced—Gaelic printed—Highlands in 1603—The Mac Neills of Barra—Highland hospitality. “Wi’ a Hundred Pipers an’ a’ an’ a’” is a song that catches on with Highland people as well now as in the days when the piper was a power in the land. There is a never ending charm about the pipes, and there is a never ending swing about the song of the hundred pipers, that stirs the blood of the true-born Celt, and makes him applaud vigorously in rhythm with the swing of the chorus. But it is because the song harks back to the time when one good piper was a man to be revered, and a hundred in one place a gathering to be dreaded—if they were all there of one accord—that it continues to hold its own. It expresses something of the grandeur that was attached to the national music, when the clan piper was second only to the chief in importance, and the pibroch as much a part of the clan life as the fiery cross, so it is accepted as the one outstanding bit of song that helps to keep alive the traditional glory of the Great Highland Bagpipe. Not that there is any immediate danger of that glory fading. It is but changing in character. Scotland has become cosmopolitan, and the fastnesses of the Highlands are no longer the retreats of wild cateran clans, whose peculiar habits and primitive ideas of social life helped to bind them together with ties of family strength, and at the same time to keep them unspotted from the Lowland and outside world that knew not the Gaelic and the tartan and the pipes. The _Piob Mohr_ is not now an agency to be reckoned with by any one who wishes to explore the hills and glens, neither are there any little wars in Lorn or elsewhere, in which it can have an opportunity of leading Mac against Mac, or clan against clan. As a Highland war spirit, its glory has departed, and he would be a bold man who would say he was sorry for it. True, the Highland regiments who fight Britain’s battles abroad still wear the tartan and march to the same old strains, but they are not now Highland clans. They are British battalions, whose empire, instead of being bounded by the horizon of a Scottish glen, is worldwide, and they march and wheel, and charge the enemy and storm the heights in strict accordance with the orders of a general who has his orders from Westminster.