The Athletes and Athletic Sports of Scotland

BAGPIPE PLAYING. 97 CHAPTER X. BAGPIPE PLAYING. bagpipe as a musical instrument was known to the Hebrews, Greeks, andRomans. At the presenttime itis in use in China, India, Persia,Italy, France, Ireland, and Scot­ land. It is only in comparatively recent times thatit has ceased to be played in England by Englishmen. The poets, Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare,mention it, and there arecarvings of it in churches at Boston, Great Yarmouth, and Hull. Fuller, the celebrated English divine, in his work, "The Worthies of England," publishedin 1662, the year afterhis death, describes the Lincolnshire bagpipe, andit was played at Manton in that county until nearlythe middle of the present century. Its first introduction into Scotland is unknown. Messrs. Glen, Edin­ burgh, have a bagpipe of date 1409, which is similar to the present bagpipe, except he large drone, which iscomparatively a recent introduction, having been addedabout the beginning of last century. A payment of 40 shillings to the King's pipers is mentioned in 1362. The bagpipe is mentioned also in James I.'s poem of " Peblis tothe Play." It is narrated of James VI. that he returned on a Sunday from the church at Dalkeith in 1581 with two pipers playing before him. Her Majesty Queen Victoria in keeping a piper aspart of the royalestablishment at Balmoral is thereby maintaining the custom of her Scottish ancestors of the Stuartdynasty. LOWLAND BAGPIPE, OR BELLOWS BAGPIPE.— Althoughthe great Highland bagpipe, the windfor which is supplied from the mouth of the player, has superseded the Lowland bagpipe, the wind for which is supplied by a bellows, the latter is not alto­ gether extinct. In Aberdeenshire there arestill to the fore two performers on the bellows bagpipe—Francis Jamieson, King Edward, a celebrated athlete in his young days, and Peter