BAGPIPES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1168, 5 August 1885, Page 3

BAGPIPES.

- It appears that it is all a mistake to assume that oatmeal is the cause of the national Scotch dyspepsia. The national interpretation of the facts that the Scotch eat oatmeal and suffer from dyspepsia is that oatmeal produces dyspepsia. When the "Times" expressed this opinion it did so in perfect good faith, but now that a real Scotchman who is an expert in dyspepsia, not only denies that oatmeal is indigestible, but explains in a perfectly satisfactory way the true cause of Scotch dyspepsia, it would be dishonest not to proclaim the innocence of oatmeal. Dyspepsia among Scotchmen is the result of listening to the bagpipes, and the moment this assertion is made its truth becomes self-evident.

It is a well attested fact that the bagpipes, when heard by persons who are not accustomed to "them give rise to violent griping pains in the stomach . which greatly resemble the pains of Asiatic cholera. During the Sepoy Mutiny the Scotch regiments more than once placed large bodies of Sepoys hoiM de combat by the use of the bagpipes alone. Had not Havelock's little army included a strong corps of pipers it could never have made its way into Lucknow through, the vast besieging force. Mr Whittier speaks of the pipes at Lucknow as " stinging all the plain to life." The Sepoys would hardly have described in that way the effect of pipe-playing. As a matter of fact the rebels as soon as they heard the bagpipes clasped their hands to their abdominal regions and rolled on the plain in agony. Even those whose stomachs withstood the sound imagined that the Sepoy caup had suddenly been smitten with cholera, and became so demoralised that Havelock forced his way through the midst of them almost unmolested, and reached the Eesidency without other casualties than the death of two wounded Englishmen, who were officially reported to have died with joy at seeing the relieving force, but who were really too weak to withstand the bagpipes. { No man, not even a Scotchman, can suffer for years from colic without having his digestive organs impaired. When a young Scotchman has accustomed his stomach to bear bagpipes without pain it may be safely assumed that his stomach is so weakened as to be totally unfit to digest ordinary food. In these circumstances it is possiblo that oatmeal is well adapted to the abnormal state of his digestive organs. At any rate, oatmeal can no longer be held to be the cause o£ Scotch dyspepsia, and there is good reason to believe that Carlyle owed his dyspepsia to his early exposure to bagpipes. — " New York Times."