IN continuation of the Bagpipes, this Plate shows, in the instrument with a crimson bag, the modern Northumbrian Bagpipe. The four drones, proceeding from one stock, are mounted with brass and ivory. The chanter, or melody pipe, has seven finger-holes in front and one behind; also, seven brass keys. As there is only one hole open at a time when the instrument is played, this manner of playing is called close fingering. The chanter and drones are furnished with stops at the ends. The instrument with a blue bag is the ancient Northumbrian bagpipe. It has three drones, mounted with silver and ivory, of different sizes; the longest being tuned an octave and the middle one a fourth lower than the shortest. The chanter is of ivory, with seven holes in front and one behind. The large bagpipe with a green bag is the Lowland Scotch. It is of boxwood, with three drones placed in one stock. The two shorter drones sound in unison, the long one an octave lower, the same as in the Highland Bagpipe. They are mounted with carved horn. The chanter has seven finger-holes and a vent-hole, also the same as in the Highland Bagpipe, with which the Lowland agrees in fingering and other particulars, except that it is inflated by bellows attached to the bag by a short blow-pipe, a peculiarity that it has in common with the other Bagpipes in this Plate. The bellows of the modern Northumbrian Bagpipe are also drawn.

The Bagpipe is, as Mr. Henri Lavoix has justly said in his La Musique au SiÈcle de Saint Louis, the organ reduced to its most simple expression. It is of great antiquity, and in the Middle Ages was generally popular in Europe. It was as well known in England as in Scotland, in France as in Italy and Germany. Shakspeare makes out Falstaff in Part I. of Henry IV. to be as melancholy as a lover's lute or the drone of a Lincolnshire Bagpipe. If we may judge by the peculiar scale of the Scotch Bagpipe, it would appear almost certain that the instrument, in its modern forms, has come from the East, and was most likely brought by the Crusaders. This would not of course apply to the ancient principle of a pipe and air reservoir, which is traced back to the Romans, but to the boring of the finger-holes of the chanter, the reed pipe by which the melody is played. By their position and size the intervals are so regulated that the thirds are neither major nor minor, but give a neutral or mean interval that is neither the one nor the other. This mean third, of a tone and three-quarters, has not been elsewhere observed in Europe, but in the East, in Syria and Egypt, and in other parts, it is of common occurrence, and gives a peculiar character to the music, not to be explained, but felt. An historical origin of the mean third is to be found in Mr. A.J. Ellis's paper "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations" (p. 498), published in the Journal of the Society of Arts, London, March, 1885. Modern Bagpipes that have keys are, of course, different.

As to the antiquity of existing Bagpipes, Messrs. Glen of Edinburgh own one, carved with the initials R. Mc.D., and the Hebridean galley, that bears the date of 1409. But this is not considered to be the oldest existing, as the M'Intyre pipe, belonging to N. Robertson M'Donald, Esq., of Kinlochmoidart, is reputed to have been played at Bannockburn. Possessing one drone only, it has the peculiarity of two vent-holes, instead of one, on each side of the chanter to accommodate a right or left handed player; in either case one hole is temporarily stopped. Messrs. Glen's pipe has two drones set in one stock. The name M'Intyre, by which Mr. Robertson M'Donald's pipe is distinguished, is derived from the hereditary pipers of the Chiefs of Menzies and Clanranald. Both these ancient Bagpipes are figured in Mr. M'Intyre North's Book of the Club of True Highlanders. The Bagpipes here drawn are from specimens belonging to Messrs. J. & R. Glen, Edinburgh.

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