THE PIPE AND TABOR 99 



the Provencal performer on the two instruments 

 was (according to Daudet), and I hope still is, 

 known as the tabourinaire. 



Morris dancing, for which the tabor and pipe 

 once supplied the music, is now an ever\'day 

 accomplishment. At Cambridge one may see 

 Fellows of Colleges dancing, waving handkerchiefs 

 and knocking sticks in the old manner, and I hope 

 the same is true of Oxford. 



But piping is not so common. Some of us have 

 heard Mr. Sharp at a lecture, or Mr. Haydn Coffin 

 on the stage. But it is not an art likely to spread 

 rapidly, because the old English is pipe rare and 

 hard to come by, and copies are not common 

 either, 



I began to learn the taborer's art on a French 

 or Basque galoubet obtained in Oxford from that 

 kind friend of many musicians, the late Mr. Tap- 

 house. But it was only quite recently, when Mr. 

 Manning lent me an old Oxfordshire instrument 

 and allowed me to have it copied, that I made any 

 kind of progress. 



I do not know when plajnng the "whittle and 

 dub" (as they were called) became extinct as a 

 village art. It certainly existed thirty years ago, 

 and for all I know there are still some living who 

 could hand on the grand manner of taboring. 

 Mr. Taphouse remembered ver^" well the days 

 when the pipe and drum were heard all round 

 Oxford at fairs and village festivals. I remember 

 his showing me a whittle with a crack in it where 

 it had been broken over the head of a reveller by a 

 drunken taborer. 



