42 BULLETIN 136, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



familiarly associated with Scotland. Many times have the bagpipes 

 led the Scottish troops to victory. It is said that " the last funeral 

 at which a piper officiated in the highlands of Perthshire was that 

 of the famous Rob Roy, who died in 1736." The highest form of 

 bagpipe music is the pibroch, a series of variations founded on a 

 theme called the "urlas" and very difficult to play properly. 



The highland bagpipe, which is a typical instrument, consists of 

 a valved tube leading from the mouth to a leather air-tight bag 

 which has five orifices into which are bound five short tubes or 

 "stocks." Into these five stocks are fitted the blowpipe, three long 

 drones, and the melody pipe, which is also called the " chaunter." 

 The player inflates the windbag through the blowpipe, which is the 

 only pipe not fitted with a reed. The three drones have single reeds 

 and the chaunter has a double reed. Each drone is tuned by a slider 

 on the pipe, and they usually give the keynote and its fifth and 

 octave. They, of course, sound continuously while the melody is 

 being played on the chaunter, and are of lengths corresponding to 

 their pitch, the longest being about 3 feet. When the instrument is 

 played these project above the shoulder of the player and diverge 

 from each other like a fan. The chaunter is a conical wooden tube 

 about 14 inches long, pierced with 8 sounding holes, 7 in front for 

 the fingers and 1 at the top, behind, for the thumb of the right 

 hand. The compass is only 9 tones, from G (second line treble 

 staff) to A above the treble staff. It is said that the tones do not 

 form a "scale," but represent (as nearly as can be described) the 

 major chords of G and A with an extra tone " in the neighborhood 

 of F or F sharp." 



The Northumbrian or border pipe. is a far more accurate instru- 

 ment than the highland pipe, but all bagpipe music is distinctive and 

 any attempt to adapt it to a musical system is unfortunate. " There 

 is good ground to believe that any attempt to accommodate the 

 bagpipe to modern scale notation would only result in a total loss 

 of its archaic, semibarbarous, and stimulating character/' Until 

 recently the music for the bagpipe was taught by a language of its 

 own, each note having a name, such as "hodroho," "hanin," "hie- 

 chin," "hachin," etc. The Irish bagpipe (according to Glen) was 

 entirely different from the Scotch. 



The Museum owns a remarkable group of six bagpipes, being 

 one each of the Scotch, French, Italian, Tunisian, Syrian, and 

 modern Greek, four of which are exhibited in this section. 



A "Great highland bagpipe" (94891, pi. 17c) was probably 

 made about 1745. The bag is of leather, covered with green plaid 

 cloth. The French instrument (204152) has a bag of tanned leather 

 covered with an outer case of maroon velvet trimmed with yellow 



