mentioned in the Lord High Treasurer's accounts seem almost uniformly to have been natives of England. Thus, 10th July 1489, there is a payment of eight pounds eight shillings" to Inglis pyparis that com to the castel yet and playit to the king." Again, in 1505, there is another payment to the Inglis pipar with the drone." It should be added, that, while the " bagpiper" formed part of the musical establishment of the English sovereigns and noblemen, during the sixteenth century, we find no such musician retained at the Scotish court. Our monarchs had probably not much relish for this sort of pipe music, and although the result of our investigation of the word "chorus” has had the effect of clearly convicting our first James of being a performer upon that most unprincely instrument, (for which, the only precedent we can find in history is that of the Emperor Nero,b) we should remember that he had most probably acquired that, as well as his other accomplishments, in England, where he received the rest of his education. We do not conceive, upon the whole, that the bagpipe has ever been a very popular instrument in Scotland, except in the Highland districts; and we may state this with some confidence, as to one part of the country,—a royal burgh, which we have already had occasion to name, and where the magistrates actually prohibited the common piper from going his rounds, in terms by no means complimentary of the instrument. Our readers will be the less surprised at the superior refinement here exhibited, when they are informed that these were the "musical magistrates" of the city of Aberdeen, whose praises have been so loudly trumpeted by Forbes, the publisher of the "Cantus," in his dedication of that work. “26th May 1630. The magistrates discharge the common piper of all going through the toun at nycht, or in the morning, in tyme coming, with his pype,—it being an incivill forme to be usit within sic a famous burghe, and being often fund fault with, als weill be sundrie nichtbouris of the toune as be strangeris."e

A

Burney's Hist. vol. iii. pp. 4, 16; also Ritson's Scotish Songs, p. 114.

It is mentioned by Suetonius, that when the Emperor Nero heard of the revolt by which he lost his empire and his life, he made a solemn vow, that if it should please the gods to extricate him from his difficulties, he would perform in public on the bagpipe.

• Aberdeen Town Council Register. See Analecta Scotica, vol. ii. p. 322.

This instrument must have been the great Highland bagpipe, blown with the mouth; and all who have experienced its deafening effects will concur in the wisdom and good taste of the above regulation. Critically speaking, and holding it in the highest possible estimation for its utility in rousing the energies of the Highland soldiery-the sounds which it emits are certainly of a nature much better calculated to excite alarm and consternation, than to diffuse pleasure—and they are perhaps better illustrated by the following anecdote than any thing else that we could mention :"As a Scotch bagpiper was traversing the mountains of Ulster, he was, one evening, encountered by a hungry starved Irish wolf. In this distress, the poor man could think of nothing better than to open his wallet, and try the effects of his hospitality. He did so, and the savage swallowed all that was thrown him with so improving a voracity, as if his appetite was but just coming to him. The whole stock of provisions, you may be sure, was soon spent: and now his only recourse was to the virtue of the bagpipe, which the monster no sooner heard than he took to the mountains with the same precipitation that he had come down. The poor piper could not so perfectly enjoy his deliverance, but that with an angry look at parting, he shook his head, and said, Ay! are these your tricks? Had I known your humour, you should have had your music before supper?' Whether this was the instrument upon which the English were such eminent performers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or whether their bagpipe had been inflated by a bellows, similar to the Yorkshire, the Northumberland, the Irish, and the Lowland Scotish pipes, we have no data to enable us to decide. It has generally been supposed, that these were of somewhat more recent introduction, and the pilgrim miller of Chaucer, in one of the rude cuts of Caxton's edition, is represented as blowing the pipe with his mouth. Farther, we find it stated by Mr Beauford, that it was at "the close of the sixteenth century, when considerable improvements were made by taking the pipe from the mouth, and

6

• Remarks on several occasions. See Walker's Irish Bards.

b Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, p. 249.

a

causing the bag to be filled by a small pair of bellows on compression by the elbow." Leyden, however, speaks of the instrument of John Hastie, the hereditary town piper of Jedburgh, as being decidedly the Lowland bagpipe; and after mentioning that he himself had seen the original bagpipe in the possession of Hastie's descendant, he adds" The tradition of the family, of the town of Jedburgh, and of the country in its vicinity, strongly avers this to have been the identical bagpipe which his ancestor bore to animate the Borderers at the battle of Flodden." For such an instrument as this, the tune of "The Souters of Selkirk," said to be coeval with this event, seems to be naturally adapted. In the "Skene MS." there are some of a similar character, and among these, "Pitt on your Shirt (i. e. coat of mail) on Monday," which has much the appearance of having been a Border "gathering," or muster-tune. The tradition, therefore, of which Dr Leyden speaks, is not without foundation. Ritson says, that this sort of bagpipe was probably "introduced (into Scotland) out of England, where it is a very ancient, as it was once, a very common instrument." If there were any proof of this assertion as to the antiquity of the instrument in England, we should be inclined to concur in the observation that the Scots might have borrowed it from that country, since it has been principally used in the vicinity of the Borders; but, failing this, the principles of its construction being the same with those of the French musette and the Irish pipes, there are still two other alternatives, and it is quite possible that we may have derived it from one or other of the last mentioned nations.

Before concluding our remarks on the musical instruments, a few words are still necessary as to those which prevailed among the Scotish peasantry; though less will require to be said on this subject, after the full consideration which we have given to the more ingenious and artificial description of instruments which were used by the higher classes, and the inhabitants of the towns. In fact, when we come to speak of the former, it is like resolving the latter into their primitive elements.

• Introduction to Complaynt of Scotland, p. 142.

Ritson's Scotish Songs, p. 114.

R

Pastoral life is necessarily much the same in all ages and in all countries. The gaan or xañas of the Greeks-the calamus, stipula, or tenuis avena of the Latins-the zampogna of the modern Italians-the chalumeau of the French-the pipes "maid of grene corne" of Chaucer's shepherd boys-and the "corne-pipe,” mentioned in the "Complaynt of Scotland," are all one and the same instrument—the first untaught effort of pastoral invention. The "quhissel," or whistle, "formed of different substances, from the perforated elder, (or borit bour-tree,) to the green willow bough, part of the bark of which is skilfully taken off, and afterwards superinduced, when the ligneous part of the instrument is prepared," and the goat's or cow's horn, are others of equal simplicity.

The genius of the rustic now goes a degree farther, and endeavours to improve the tone and effect of these rude instruments by combination. He discovers that a fuller and mellower expression of sound is produced by inserting the reed or pipe into a horn, and by this means he creates what is called the "stock and horn," or "buck-horne," the instrument alluded to by Ramsay in the Gentle Shepherd.

"When I begin to tune my stock and horn,

With a' her face she shaws a cauldrife scorn."

And this is, probably, the same with the "pipe maid of ane gait horne," mentioned in the "Complaynt." The "horn-pipe," called by the Welsh the "pib-corn," and said to be played by the shepherds of Anglesey, is a degree more complicated. It has a horn at both extremities, and a concealed reed in that into which the air is blown.

Another of these combinations is that of the reed and the bladder, a process so simple that it admits of being accomplished by the shepherd boys themselves, without even the aid of the village artizan. From this springs the bagpipe with its chord of drones, and all those other appur

tenances which demand the skill and the turning-loom of the finished mechanic.

What we have stated in this place, and in the preceding pages, may serve to render intelligible the following description, with which, as it contains in itself a tolerably correct enumeration of the pastoral instruments in use in this country, we shall conclude what we have felt it necessary to submit to our readers on this branch of our subject. Of the eight shepherds mentioned in the work last referred to, (the learned and curious illustrations of which, by the late Dr Leyden, have been of much advantage to us in the conduct of this enquiry,) "the fyrst hed ane drone bag-pipe, the nyxt hed ane pipe maid of ane bleddir and of ane reid, the thrid playit on ane trump, the feyrd on ane corne pipe, the fyft playit on ane pipe maid of ane gait horne, the sext playt on ane recordar, the sevint plait on ane fiddil, and the last plait on ane quhissel.”

One word as to the "trump," i. e. the Jew's harp. This is said to have been the only musical instrument of the inhabitants of St Kilda, and to be still used by the peasantry in some parts of Scotland, though, we fear, with a success very inferior to that of the celebrated "Eulenstein," whose triumph over its imperfections shews what may be done by the hand of genius, even when destitute of those "means and appliances" which only exist in an age of mechanical invention and a highly improved state of the art. And ought not the same consideration to lead us to pause, before we condemn, by wholesale, the wild and undisciplined efforts of our ancestors? Though art, which is confined to certain periods and

Having mentioned the name of "Eulenstein," it is right that we should not altogether pass over that of "Geilles Duncane," the only noted performer on the Jew's harp who figures in Scotish story, and whose performance seems not only to have met the approval of a numerous audience of witches, but to have been repeated in the august presence of royalty, by command of his most gracious Majesty King James VI.-Agnes Sampson being brought before the King's Majesty and his council, confessed that upon the night of All-Holloweven last, shee was accompanied as well with the persons aforesaide, as also with a great many other witches, to the number of two hundreth; and that all they together went to sea, each one in a riddle or cive, and went into the same very substantially, with flaggons of wine, making merrie, and drinking by the way, in the same riddles or cives to the kirke of North Barrick, in Lowthian; and that after they had