by Brandi Naragon

Created on: November 22, 2008   Last Updated: February 03, 2009

It is 64 A.D. on a hill overlooking Rome. A haunting music fills the air as flames from the burning city light the night sky. The source of the sound? The Emperor Nero playing one of the earliest versions of what we know today as the great highland bagpipe.

Far-fetched? Maybe. Historians disagree about Nero's contribution to the great fire of Rome, but there is no argument that a variation of the bagpipe known as the "tibia utriculiaris" was used by the Romans in the first century. The expanse of the Roman Empire allowed ideas to travel throughout the Western world, and one of these ideas may have been the use of a reed pipe with an attached bag for continuous sound.

Was the idea originally theirs? Hardly. Like Cleopatra and papyrus, the bagpipes found their way from Egypt into the Roman world. Archaeologists in 1888 found a set of pipes dated at 1500 B.C. in the city of Panopolis, and the reed portion of the instrument is known to have existed much earlier. The Egyptians did not carve their pipes from solid wood, but chose bamboo and other naturally hollow materials. Without the Romans, however, the bagpipe would likely never have found its way to Scotland. The Roman influence in Europe carried the pipes across the continent and into Britannia. The popular instrument arrived in Scotland around the 14th century.

The first pipes to arrive in Scotland had only one drone, the pipe attached to the bag which produces the continuous note. In the 16th century, the second drone was added. By the 18th century, the third drone appeared, creating the contemporary image of the bagpipe.

During the Reformation, the Calvinists thought musical instruments were sinful and the bagpipes became almost extinct in the Lowlands. In the Highlands, however, pipers were hired by the clan chieftains and used to wake the clan and to play for any special occasions. In wartime, the pipes were used by the clans in much the same way as the British used a drum-a call to action. Not only in contests between warring clans, but also when fighting together against a common enemy, the sound of the pipes carried over the battlefield much farther than any drum ever could. The English were constantly trying to dominate the Scots, and managed to do so in 1745, but the sound of Scottish bagpipes mustering the highlanders had been enough to frighten even the most battle-hardened British soldier.

As an instrument of war, the bagpipes were outlawed by the Jacobites during the rebellion of 1746, and the clan system began to end. Like most government contraband, the bagpipe and those who played it continued to survive. The history of the bagpipe has likewise been preserved for the world, just as the clans have survived in a ceremonial form to this day.

Learn more about this author, Brandi Naragon.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.