When the Duke of Cumberland was making preparations to meet Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden, he just escaped making one of the greatest tactical mistakes of his fighting career. Pointing to some of the pipers of the clans supporting him, the duke asked testily what the men were doing with their “bundles of sticks.” “I can get them much better implements of war,” he said.
But his aide-de-camp sprang to the defense of the pipers. “Your Royal Highness,” he protested, “cannot get them better weapons. They are the bag-pipers, the Highlanders’ music in peace and war. Without these all other instruments are of no avail, and the Highland soldiers need not advance another step, for they will be of no service.” Cumberland was too good a tactician not to recognize the psychological value of such “weapons of war” so he agreed to let the pipers join in the fight. Perhaps he had read the lines of the anonymous poet who wrote:
Its martial sounds can fainting troop inspire
With strength unwonted and enthusiasm fire.
The pipes came to enthuse and enhance the natural feelings of the Highlander. Before the battle, he felt a strange nervous excitement, called by ancient writers “crithgaisge” or “quiverings of valour.” This was followed by an overpowering feeling of exhilaration and delight called “mircath” or “joyous frenzy of battle.” It was not pandering to blood-lust but an absorbing idea that both the warrior’s own life and fame and his country’s good depended on his actions.
The harp was originally the natural musical instrument of the Highlanders but its strains were too soft and melting for the noise and clash of battle. The notes of the pipes spoke to the men in a language they recognized—that honored their deeds and those of their ancestors
From ancient times, the Scottish bards helped to inspire the Highland warriors and work them into a frenzy. Before a battle, they would pass from clan to clan, giving exhortation and encouragement, helping to rouse the feelings of the men. But the pipes were more strident and they came to be established as military instruments that could be heard above the noise and tumult—helping to keep the enthusiasm alive. At the end of the battle, bard and piper played their part, both to celebrate the deeds of those who survived and honor the souls of the dead. It was said that by bestowing such honor, death itself was robbed of it terrors.
Historically, the playing of the pipes had begun long before their introduction into Scotland. In fact, it is not too fanciful to say that Caesar’s legions marched to the rhythm of the bagpipes and that the piper was a man of some consequence in the Roman army. There is a statue of an unknown Roman piper—a legionary—that occupies a niche in Hadrian’s Wall between the Tyne and the Solway.
But when were the pipes first heard, rousing the spirits of the Highlanders? By the beginning of the 15th century, they had superseded the war song of the bards. And there is the tradition of the Clan Menzies—though questioned by many authorities—that the pipes played their part in the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, celebrated by the lines:
The Menzies pipers play so gay
They cheered the clan in many a fray.
In 1411, nearly a century after Bannockburn, Alexander Stewart defeated Donald of the Isles with his 10,000 men in a battle described as “the bloodiest every fought in Scotland.” And although there is no direct reference to the presence of pipers, one of the oldest pipe tunes, “The Battle of Harlaw,” was composed around this date.
Sir Walter Scott’s writings are, of course, fiction—but many of his stories are partly based on fact. In his description of the battle on the North Inch of Perth in 1396, pipers are cited as stimulating the clans to desperate feats. They then apparently threw away their instruments and rushed at one another with their daggers. Scott went on to write, “The piper of Clan Quhele was almost instantly slain and he of Clan Chattan mortally wounded.” Scott goes on to say that the Feadan Dubh or Black Chanter, which the piper of Clan Chattan used, was in the possession of Cluny MacPherson, the chief of his clan.
In historical records, the first mention of military bagpipe music is given in accounts of a clan battle in Glenlivet in 1594. However, it was not until about 1699 that serious historians gave pipers the status of warriors. In 1641, the Earl of Lothian wrote to his father that they were “well provided with pipers.” In the following year, there were regular regimental pipers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers being the first to have them.
There is little doubt the pipes were considered instruments of war by both the British and the Scots. When the Hanovarians were suppressing the Jacobite rebellion, a piper by the name of James Reid was captured. In response to his plea that he was not a participant in the battle, the courts decided that he was as guilty of carrying arms as if the pipes had been a claymore—and he received the same punishment.
The march and beat of a Highland regiment has always been peculiar to itself and this, in a greater part, is thanks to the bagpipes. The Scots have always been fiercely proud of their soldiers and the public loyalty always given to local regiments is not unlike that given to a football team today. In modern wars the pipers have continued to play their part. It can now be said with complete confidence that as long as there is a British army, there will be pipers. Throughout the centuries, they have earned the respect of the world in both peace and war.