The harp was originally the national musical instrument of the Highlands, but its strains were too soft and melting for the clash of arms, and the utmost efforts of the harper would fail to rouse the vengeful fervour of the Gaelic heroes. The pibroch’s shrill summons, telling the sad tale of devastated straths and homeless friends, with notes that had often led them to victory aforetime, was needed to gather them to the fray; it drowned with its piercing tones the wailings of the bereaved, and called in maddened ardour for revenge on the enemy. It was perhaps a descent when the pipes had to be substituted for the voice of the bard, and it was certainly a descent when the pipes as a domestic instrument superseded the soft and soothing harp. But the two changes were inevitable, and the first is not so great as it seems. The pipes almost spoke to the people, and their music was but another language in which their deeds and those of their ancestors were being preserved. The bards, who preceded the pipers as an inspiring military force, seemed themselves not only susceptible to the influence of the _mir- cath_, but capable of imparting it to others. Before the battle they passed from clan to clan, giving exhortation and encouragement in wild recitative strains, and rousing the feelings of the warriors to the highest pitch of frenzy. When the noise of fighting drowned their voices, the pipes, after they became general as military instruments, kept the enthusiasm alive. Both bard and piper helped when the battle was over to celebrate the deeds of those who had survived and the honour of the brave who had fallen, the piper’s part of the work being more often the playing of laments for the departed. By these means, death was robbed of its terrors, for the honouring of the dead who died nobly naturally produced a magnanimous contempt for the last enemy. The pipes, from their first introduction, had no rival as an instrument of war. That they were used as such in ancient times we have historical proof. Among the Highlanders the bagpipe is supposed to have superseded the war-song of the bards about the beginning of the fifteenth century. We have the tradition of the Clan Menzies that it was used at Bannockburn, but though we grant that on many occasions “The Menzies’ pipers played so gay, They cheered the clan in many a fray,”