The Athletes and Athletic Sports of Scotland

BAGPIPE PLAYING. 99 lose to the drone of the Scottish bagpipe, addsin the usual tyle, " Some might say that the ear which was capable of bear- ngsuch exquisite torture could not be a musical one." Now this writer, like a good many others, inhis eagerness to echo a popular notion, was simply showing his own ignorance. The rones of the bagpipe have reeds similar to those ofthe organ, and simply sound the note A, the large drone being an octave ower than the two small ones. Dr. Johnson, therefore, liked simply to hear the note A, sounded as a bass through a reed in wind instrument. If the hypercritical writer in the Graphic were to hear, and not see, the big drone ofa bagpipe sounding from a church, and was told to listen to the bass note Aon the organ, he would say it was grand ;were he to hear the same note from a small organ placed in the barracks of a Highland regiment, and told to listen to the big drone ofthe bagpipe, he would at once put his fingers in his ears and beg to be relieved from such " exquisite torture." The people of Scotland who findpleasure In listening to the music of the bagpipes are a far more gifted race asregards poetry and music thanthe peopleof England, both taken collectively. While the refined and edu­ cated classes in England are as gifted poetically and musically asthe same classes in Scotland, when we come to the bulk of the people in each nation Scotland is far ahead of England. England has neither national songs, music, nor instruments of music. POPULAR SICOTTISH MUSIC .—What song has England that Englishmen can join in all over the world,as Scotsmen can in "Auld Lang Syne,"and " Scots WhaHae?" "Britannia Rules the Waves ? " Britain is not England, and the songwas written by a Scotsman. The fiddle is a cosmopolitan instrument of music, but the Scottish people, not the refined and educated part of them, but what in Engtand would be called the lower classes, composed distinctly national music for it—the strathspeys and reels which, unequalled as dance music, warm the hearts and bring tears of pleasure to the eyes of Scottish men and