The Bagpipe Society

The bagpipe as an instrument of protest: early references and recent trends

A short note in the Autumn 2021 edition of Chanter about the detention of a number of people who were playing bagpipes during a mass demonstration in Minsk resonated with me.¹ References also occur in a range of historical sources to the use of the instrument in various types of protest situations in 17th and 18th century Ireland. Collating and reviewing these occurrences leads one to determine that the practice is quite well established. The Great Highland Bagpipe is probably the instrument that most readily springs to mind if one mentions ‘bagpipe’ and ‘protest’ in the same sentence, although that bagpipe is not the only one used in protest situations. As an instrument widely associated, in the first instance, with the Highland clans in Scotland and later with Scottish regiments of the British Army, which then spread to the various colonies, it is frequently associated with war-time, military occasions, official public activities, funerals, parades, celebrations and ceremonies of various kinds wherever it is found across the globe. The Great Highland Bagpipe also has the distinction of being a much louder instrument than most other types of pipe readers of Chanter will know of and play, and therefore lends itself more readily to the public arena and the phenomenon of demonstration and protest. However, as will be seen from various examples mentioned in this article, other types of bagpipe are widely used in the context of protest and have been for some time. Roderick Cannon has shown how widely across England, Scotland and further afield, indeed, the bagpipe was generally known as a ‘pastoral instrument’ and he cites many examples from literature and art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and later) that support this contention.² In many cases, various types of pipe were deemed an ideal instrument for outdoor activity such as herding stags, as well as indoor events such as entertaining guests at court.³ However, given the strength of sound and volume associated with some pipes, their use wasn’t always welcomed by the general populace. Cannon informs us, for instance, that a piper named Humphrey Sydenham appeared before magistrates in West Somerset in 1592 because he had interrupted a religious service taking place at the time by ‘causing dyvers baggepipes to be blown to the grete dishonour of Almighty God’.⁴ As evidence of a more welcoming response in other places, however, he provides several examples of pipers being enlisted to draw attention to public notices made by town criers and the like, although it is not always clear that the term ‘piper’ referred specifically to the playing of a bagpipe rather than some flute-like instrument.⁵ Use of the pipes in similar contexts was a feature of the cultural life of the gentry in early eighteenth-century Ireland where pipers and harpists performed for audiences and patrons in their houses. One example of this describes how the wife of the Church of Ireland bishop of Killala, Robert Clayton, occupied the place of honour at the local sports day, returning home in the evening to ‘dancing, singing … accompanied with an excellent bagpipe, the whole concluded with a ball, bonfire and illuminations’. The event described was held in 1732.⁶

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