The pipes

(13th century Spain)

Bagpipes are a class of musical instrument called aerophones, using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. Though the Scottish Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility with paintings and literary references  from the 1300’s, (referenced in Canterbury Tales) bagpipes have been played for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, the Caucasus, around the Persian Gulf and in Northern Africa. The term "bagpipe" is the common term, Scots and the Irish more commonly refer to them as pipes.

The evidence for Roman and pre-Roman era bagpipes is not clear but several clues suggest a much earlier history for the ‘pipes.’  A sculpture of bagpipes has been found on a slab in the Middle East dated to 1000 BC.  Suetonius described the Roman Emperor Nero as a player of the tibia utricularis  (Latin for reed pipes) in the second century BC.   A 1st century Roman historian wrote of a contemporary sovereign who could play a pipe with his mouth as well as with his "armpit".  Evidence of the world wide use of bagpipes, contemporary and historical is found in the fact that Pakistan is the world leader in bagpipe production.  

The contemporary bagpipe can be found in everything from classical to contemporary music.  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQFAli1-OLA)  My love of the pipes stems from my belief that it is the sound of the wailing mothers of the lost, even God’s wailing at the loss of the innocent.   I have buried too many colleagues to the sound of the pipes, and as I listened to them today, while the names of the sons of several of my mates were called out at 9-11 remembrances, I am reminded of my mortality and of man’s responsibility to his fellow man.  I drink myself to sleep tonight to the ‘sound of the pipes’ and to the voices of my fallen.