CELTS DID NOT ORIGINATE BAGPIPES

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 74, 29 March 1938, Page 4

CELTS DID NOT ORIGINATE BAGPIPES

'J'HE pipes are not the invention of

the Celtic race, they are not even now exclusively played by them alone, but is was in their hands that pipe music reached the peak of its development, writes His Serene Highness Prince Leonid Lieven in Great Thoughts. A small bronze object, representing a Roman soldier playing the pipes, which was unearthed at Rochborough proves that Romans knew the pipes and that they played them in Britain. It was the Roman habit not to employ troops native to the country of their colonisation, and it is known that most of the legions stationed in Britain were recruited from Spain, the Rhine, and the Danube. As the bagpipes seem to have been known from very early times in the Iberian peninsula and in Italy, it is more than likely that it is from there that they reached Britain through the medium of the Roman army of occupation. After Rome was forced by adverse circumstances to withdraw its military protection from Britain, the pipes, together with so much else left by these agents of civilisation, lived on among the people of Southern Britain throughout the turmoils of Germanic incursions. The Romans called the bagpipes “Tibiae utriculares” or “Symphonia”; the latter name is used in the Vulgate and is rendered into English in the English texts of the Holy Writ as “Dulcimer.” In the translation of the Vulgate, the Latin “symphonia” is translated as ‘sackpfeife,” a bagpipe. The word “symphonia,” in spite of its Greek form, is a corruption of a Chaldean word “sumpoia,” and a “sumpoia,” according to most authorities, was a bagpipe in shape and sound, probably very similar to

those still to be met with occasion ally in the Near East.

The date of the books of Daniel is about the end of the sixth century 8.C., when the Babylonian Empire was merged with the new Persian and Mede state of Darius. That the bagpipe was known in the East at that time is proved by a bas-relief, representing a piper with his instrument, among the ruins of the ancient Persian capital of Susa. It may, then, safely be supposed that the bagpipe’s origin is among the very ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia. It was originally a very primitive affair; it has survived in its realiest form in the Caucasian mountains and in Northern India. In the Caucasus it consists of the skin of a pig with a cow’s horn for a chaunter, and in the North of India it is even more primitive still for there is consists of a pig’s bladder with a reed annexed to it.

With the northward and westward flow of civilisation the bagpipes reached the Mediterranean countries probably in very early times. The heyday of this instrument was the Middle Ages, when it occupied a position of pre-eminence everywhere. It may come as a disappointment to the Scots and Irish to be told that the instrument regarded with such pride by them as peculiar to their countries was, in fact, introduced to them from Southern Britain, where it was played until the end of the 18th century.

FIRST IN MESOPOTAMIA

Hypnotic Influence of Music

Shakespeare refers to the “drone of the Lincoln pipes,” and during Tudor times it was one of the most popular English instruments. Henry VIII. had a piper of his own, and in this he was no exception among the crov/ned heads of 16th century Europe.

With the French Revolution and the “progressive enlightenment” of Europe, the pipes began their retreat with so much else that became considered as medieval and barbarous, until in our time they have almost entirely disappeared from the continent of Europe, save in the more remote parts They have succeeded in maintaining themselves securely only in Brittany, Scotland and Ireland, and possibly in Northumberland as well, so that now they can be considered as the instrument most favoured by the Celtic peoples, in whose hands, as nowhere else, they have reached an uncommon excellency of music. The pipes have survived in the British Isles more securely than elsewhere because they have been adopted officially by the army ever since the 1745 Rebellion, and now it seems that they have even penetrated to the Royal Air Force. It is the curious hypnotic effect of bagpipe music upon both beings and certain animals which places this instrument in a class entirely by itself. This effect is, no doubt, due to the monotonous and unchanging tone of the drones and the sharp but sweet melody of the chaunter, producing together a har-

mony very unusual for musical instruments, comparable only to a choir of voices. This is no doubt the reason why in medieval times the bagpipe was known as the chorus, and there is ample evidence to the effect that it was the ancestor of church organs, which are fundamentally based on a similar principle. Before these became the usual instrument for religious music, the bagpipe supplied the accompaniment for singing in churches, as it still, indeed, plays this part in Portuguese folk singing. There is a remote corner of Jugoslavia, quite near the Roumanian frontier, which seems to have been left almost untouched by the influence of passing centuries, and where pagan rites have survived to this day. It is the custom there on Whit-Sunday to put into a state of trance women who are believed to have second sight and from whom the elders of the village extract prophecies, while in the subconscious state. The putting into the trance and the bringing back to life is done by pipers playing bagpipes. Pipe music is the great traditional music of the Highlands c»: Sec Pond and reached the peak of beauty in the hands of such masters as the McCrimmon pipers of Syke. They were the hereditary pipers to the chiefs of the Clan MacLeod. it is a magical music, with magical results. . . . The storm end the sadness of the Celtic twilight and the lament of the “things of long ago” . . and a door opening, giving a momentary view into the land of eternal youth. . . Its appeal lies to the soul and the heart of man. The words of Renan are filled with truth: “Laugh not at us Celts, we have no Parthenons and no marble, but we know how to grip and to hold the souls and the hearts of men.”