CIGARETTE PAPERS.

Southland Times, Issue 22296, 11 April 1934, Page 8

CIGARETTE PAPERS.

POINTS ABOUT PIPES. Where do pipes come from? No, not the smoking utensil; the musical instrument of which the poets sang. The word has its origin in the note of a bird. The Romans had pipare or pipiare, to pipe, ox- cheep like a young bird, evidently an onomatopoeic word, like the English peep, G ex-man piepson and the French pepier. From this came the word fox- the instrument designed to imitate the bird’s call; in French it was pipeau, while piper was . the verb to allure or swindle, and pipee was the art of deceiving birds by artificial calls. Shrill sounds of the pipe are known in the boatswain’s pipe and Chaucer had “piping hot,” that attractive sizzling sound, in his day; He sent hire pyment, meeth and spiced And wafres, pipyng hoot out of the gleede. The gleede referred to the hot, embers. In “piping tunes of peace” however, brings us back to the musical instrument, and Chaucer’s mention of the “Horne pipes of Comewaxle xn the “Romance of the Rose” was a pipe with a horn mouthpiece. This pipe was used for dancing and later the name was taken for dances associated with sailor’s merry-making. Strangely enough the association of the word bagpipe with Scotland is comparatively modern. When the Gaels borrowed the word “pipe” from the English they made it piob, from which came piobair, piper and piobaireachd, the art of playing the pipes, which becomes intelligible to English people as pibroch. The bagpipe was an old instrument in England. It is believed that the Miller used a bagpipe when he “piped” the Canterbury Pilgrims, and in 1. Henry- IV., Act, 1, Sc. 2., Falstaff is described as being as melancholy as the drone, of a. Lincolnshire bagpipe.” The “pied piper who dealt effectively with the rats, municipal and otherwise, of Hamelin, used a pfeifer, which was the German pipe. The word came back to English as fife for an instrument which was also sometimes called the “Almain (German( whistle.” —CRITICUS.