The Bagpipe Society

Letters

Gorhemmynadow dhiworth Kernow! We have at last made our CD of

pipes and drums (gaita and bombarde - not the reconstructed Cornish pipes, gav dhymm!) and thought that our Celtic cousins might be interested…

Tracks

Cor Elath
Wondrous Works/ Daniel Cooper/ Silver Buttons/ Woolly Monkey
An Culyek Hos
Joel’s Tune/ An Ahwesyth
An Morladron/ Nancledra/ Tom Bawcock’s
Fly Cellar/ Hevva
Turning of the Tide/ Pencarrow/ We all Stepped Out/ Carmela
Bodmin Riding/ Quay Fair/ Jim Stacey/ Calstock May Revel 9. The Bellringing/ Wassail/ Gwinear/ Rogue’s Muineira
Tansys Golowan/ An Vug

£8 + £2 p&p

Post; Radjel, c/o Colin Seddon, Polvue, Brentfields, Polperro, Kernow PL13 2JJ Cheques payable to; Colin Seddon.

http://www.myspace.com/Radjel

Email; colinseddon_4@hotmail.com

NADELIK LOWEN!

Jim Carey, Roger Luxton, Colin Seddon, Will Coleman, John Webb, Frances Webb

Hi John,

Here’s something for you to consider. Visit this:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/11620324/-Bonner-The-Christian-Hell-From-the-First-to-the -

Twentieth-Century-1913-Complete

and download entire book (you can scroll on the screen, but it’s worth it). Then go to Fig. 16 (p. 100) and Fig. 21 (p. 106).

[P. 29 has the Ludlow misericord: http://www.paradoxplace.com/Photo% 20Pages/UK/Britain_Centre/Ludlow/Misericord_Images/800/N3-Dishonest-Alewife- Aug07-D2695sAR900.jpg]

It seems that the worst human practices are drinking, card playing and of course music, represented by the bagpipe! The authoress - daughter of the remarkable John Bradlaugh M.P. (Nottingham) whose own story is a cracker - unfortunately, has a very conventional, unenlightened attitude to our instrument (p. 103).

“Below are the temptations to sin: the mirror, bagpipes, cards and wine. [It is to be presumed that the bagpipes sometimes induce “profane cursing and swearing”, otherwise one wonders why they should have preference over the lute or the zither!]”

The illustration used in these 19th c pictures of wicked souls (based I infer on 16th c pictures) is familiar, but I can’t remember the 16-17th c (?) source from which they’re obviously copied (did they reuse old plates?). Maybe the bagpipe’s design came along with copying. If the 19th c illustrator had wanted a bagpipe he’d have given us the Highland species (or yet another version of the Bloemaert).

Unless you’re a hellfire and brimstone Christian - I do hope not - you’ll enjoy this. For my part, I’m booked in to descend to Satan’s lair, so it’s nice to know there will be renaissance bagpipes there to play while I’m roasting for eternity. According to this you don’t get ’em if you wind up in heaven.

James Merryweather

Dear Editor,

The weird description of the pipes in the Brugghen painting (Chanter, Winter

2009, page 9) reminds me that I saw the opposite error in an art gallery in the summer. I’d gone with an arty friend to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle Upon Tyne to see an exhibition of a couple of Nineteenth Century local artists who did a lot of marine studies, as we’re into old boats.

I was vastly amused to see a sketch of a Cullercoats fisherman labelled as showing him “playing a version of the local bagpipes”. Indeed, he did have a long stick over his shoulder, something like a bag under his arm, and something slightly like a chanter in his hands. But the object was obviously, to anyone familiar with the fishing trade, a ‘dan buoy’. You have a stick - a piece of bamboo, perhaps, a flag at the top, a bladder (or nowadays polystyrene foam) lashed together in the middle, and a weight at the bottom to keep it upright. You then put one at each end of your nets, long lines or lobster pots so that you can find them again after you’ve left them to fish for a while.

Given that such things as well as various Northumbrian pipes are to be seen at no distance from Newcastle, perhaps art gallery types should spend a bit of time looking at the real world as well as at pictures!

Yours sincerely,

George R. Featherston

Hello John,

Happy New Year!

On that subject I received the enclosed from a customer, Philippe Gallioz, and thought perhaps you might like to share it with our readers, if you think it appropriate.

all the best,

Jon Swayne