by Chris Tattersall

Created on: November 14, 2008

Highland bagpipes are synonymous with Scotland, and are the most popular type of bagpipe in the world today. The ancient history of the highland bagpipe is however based in central Europe.

FIRST EVIDENCE

The first documented evidence of a bagpipe-type instrument was by the Greek playwright Aristophanes in 425 BC, which of course implies their use before this time, although in the translated work the link to modern bagpipes is a little tenuous:

"By Heracles! my shoulder is quite black and blue. Ismenias, put the penny-royal down there very gently, and all of you, musicians from Thebes, pipe with your bone flutes into a dog's rump".

There is also evidence of Emperor Nero of the Roman Empire (AD37 to AD68) playing a tibia utricularis' which is described as being played by using a pipe with his mouth as well as his arm pit. Whether or how these early instruments spread across Europe or if bagpipe-type instruments developed independently in different cultures is however uncertain.

ANCIENT SCOTTISH HISTORY

In the Canterbury Tales' written by Chaucer in 1380, bagpipes are mentioned for the first time in the British Isles (as baggepype'), although any other literary evidence prior to the 1700's is hard to find. Many pictures as paintings or carvings have shown bagpipes in Scottish heritage throughout the period between the fourth and eighteenth centuries, however it was not until a work by Joseph MacDonald (Compleat Theory') in 1760 that Scottish bagpipes are seriously considered in literature. During the early eighteenth century throughout Europe the bagpipes in whatever form began to reduce in their popularity, except that is in the Scottish Highlands where the bagpipe became a rousing sound for the Scottish clans.

Amongst other things, the bagpipe was a call to arms, with a sound that carried well through the Highlands. The Highland bagpipe was however banned in Scotland after the Jacobite rising of 1745, when Charles Edward Stuart(Bonnie Prince Charlie) invaded England without success. Banning the highland bagpipe was seen as symbolic in the English defeating the Highland clans, however with the inclusion of the Highland regiment (The Black Watch) into the British army in during the eighteenth century the instrument was not forgotten.

MODERN HISTORY

Modern bagpipe playing can be experienced in many Scottish tourist attractions, weddings and other gatherings, as well as all around the world. However, it is in the military where the bagpipe retains some degree of use as well as tradition. With a Highland regiment being part of the British military, and therefore involved in the subsequent British empire building (between 1815 and 1914), the bagpipes again became synonymous with power and warriors as they had previously done in the Highlands of Scotland.

Thanks to this renewed military use, the bagpipes have become an integral part of not only British army ceremony, but also in many areas of the commonwealth such as Canada, New Zealand and even Uganda and Pakistan.

Highland bagpipes continue to be an important aspect of military tradition, with the British army spending over 3 million pounds in 2007 on the Army School of Bagpipe Music and Highland Drumming in Edinburgh.

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