In the early second century CE, someone was described as playing a pipe ‘with a bag tucked under his armpit.’ That man, the first named piper in history, was the Roman Emperor Nero. Since then, this improbable conflation of bag and sticks has become one of the most beloved and contested instruments of all time. When another piping emperor, Tsar Peter the Great, watched his pet bear take its last breath, he decided the creature would live on—as a bagpipe.
This rich and vivid history tells the story of an instrument boasting over 130 varieties, yet commonly associated with just one form and one country: Scotland, and its familiar Great Highland Bagpipe. In fact, the pipes are played across the globe, and their story is a highly diverse one, which illuminates society in remarkable, unexpected ways. Richard Mc Lauchlan charts the rise of women pipers; investigates how class, privilege and capitalism have shaped the world of piping; and explores how the meaning of a ‘national instrument’ can shift with the currents of a people’s identity.
The vibrancy and inventiveness characterising today’s pipers still speak to the potency of this fabled and once-feared instrument, to which Mc Lauchlan is our surefooted guide.
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Richard Mc Lauchlan is a Scottish writer, educated at the Universities of St Andrews and Cambridge, and a former pipe major, taught by the renowned instructor Colin Mac Lellan. The author of
Serious Minds
, and John Campbell’s collaborator on
Haldane
(both published by Hurst), Richard co-founded the educational charity Light Up Learning.
