The Reconstruction of Historic British Bagpipes

Based on a transcription of a talk given I gave to The Piobaireachd Society on March 19th 2005.

I was born in south Leicestershire. I have never been academic in my approach to anything so I did not do too well at any schools and I never went to University. I spent as much as possible of my time at school in the metal and woodwork department making things and also at the Music School. I never learnt to read music. This left me with the idea that I was not `musical^'. Well I still cannot read music- I must get around to it some day. This does not stop me learning music and playing music, both solo and in hands. I should say that a lot of the music I now play on my pipes are my own tunes. As I do not read or write music I never claim to have `written^' tunes. The word `composing^' sounds far too grand. My tunes pop into my head at odd moments and as they seem to be well in a tradition I like to describe myself as a 'tunesmith'.

I came up to live in Edinburgh in 1970 and did a variety of jobs for a few years until I took a six month Government Retraining Course in Irvine, Ayrshire, which resulted in me getting a job as an agricultural engineer in Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire. I was living in an old showman's caravan in the community of Laurieston Hall commune. During this time I taught myself to play the penny whistle by ear.

After nearly 5 years I handed in my work notice and shortly afterwards set out on a two year backpacking trip to Africa and the Far East. During this time I taught myself to make penny whistles out of tin cans and Araldite and returned home with a burning ambition to recreate an English bagpipe.

My brother John had been inspired by the two articles about the history of English bagpipes that Roderick Cannon had written for The Folk Music Journal in 1971 & 1972. These were seminal articles for many people- they drew attention to the fact that bagpipes had had a long tradition in England, but all that had survived to the present was the Northumbrian smallpipe. We were interested in a bagpipe that was less 'refined'.

Before Roderick^'s articles most people knew as little about bagpipes in England as you do about Morris dancing in Scotland! Recently I have been encouraging Pete Stewart with his forthcoming book about the History of piping in Lowland Scotland (The Day It Daws) and it is quite clear from historical records that the Morris dance was very popular in Scotland in the 16th century- but that is another story for another day!

In my mid twenties I had developed a deep love of English traditional dance music and on returning from my travels I fell under the spell of the English band `Blowzabella^' . They were championing the use of English bagpipes and hurdy gurdies and drew much of their own inspiration from the music of central France. The band was born out of musicians who were studying instrument making at the London College of Furniture.

I was inspired by their music and rushed out and bought a new, but appalling `English medieval bagpipe^', which I eventually managed to get playing (sort of). I should mention that this pipe was not made by a member of Blowzabella! I taught myself to play. 1 bought chunks of wood and an ancient machine lathe and started turning my own replacement parts for this set of pipes. And John and I began to play duets together. I moved back to Edinburgh, started up in business as a pipemaker in Leith and got married in 1985. It was around this time that I first went to a meeting of the recently formed Lowland and Border Pipers' Society in Edinburgh.

I became aware that there were plenty of old bagpipes in museum collections in Scotland. None were very old- there is very little that we can be sure is older than 240 years. In England, however, no actual bagpipes at all have survived, apart from the Northumbrian pipes. However in Scotland there are very few early images of pipes and yet in England we have an abundance of carvings and pictures.

Today I will be talking about and demonstrating some of the wide variety of pipes that I make. I have a broad spectrum of approaches to making my instruments. Some of my pipes are based loosely on a pictures or carvings. Others are as exact copies as I can make and based on my detailed measurements of a surviving set of pipes. In between these approaches are pipes that I have developed, based on a surviving example, but making modifications to alter the key or other characteristics of the pipes.

I also have been working on making copies of the Iain Dail (? 1650-? 1740) highland chanter; copying it in as much detail as possible. This is another story and I hope to be given the opportunity to talk about this in greater detail to The Piobaireachd Society at a future date.

I have also used the Talbot manuscripts in England that dates from the 1690^'s, which gives the measurements of some pipes. I will talk about this later, but I mention it now as making a pipe using these measurements lies somewhere between basing a pipe on a simple pictorial illustration and copying an actual surviving bagpipe.

I look at a historical picture of a bagpipe and I wonder what it sounded like? What music were they playing? What was their standard of musicianship? What tunings did they use?

Before I started this talk I was playing you a recording of a Sardinian Launeddas player. The Launeddas is a very basic looking instrument‑

essentially a bagpipe without the bag. A friend described it as a `hedgerow -

instrument'. Three pipes with single reeds at the top all made of cane (arundo donax- grows everywhere in Sardinia). The two chanters are pierced with finger holes and the third pipe is a drone. The reeds are placed directly in the mouth of the player who blows them continuously using `circular breathing'. This is a technique where you continue to maintain air pressure by using the elasticity of your cheeks to squeeze out air whilst simultaneously breathing in through the nose. The sound of this instrument is based on the physical & acoustic properties of arundo donax.

The player was Anton Lara, who I believe was in his 70^'s when it was recorded in the late 1950^'s. The piece I played was 12 minutes long- a simple dance tune played with variations. The Launeddas players never repeat a variation in one tune when they are playing it- each performance is the tune followed by more and more variations. As I understand it each player uses variations they have either been taught by their teacher, but they are free to add other variations- either their own or ones that they have heard others playing.

Slide 1. This is a photo of a bronze statue of someone playing what appears to be a launeddas. The statue is about 3 inches high and was discovered in Sardinia in the 19th century and is believed to date from about 2000 BC. The player has both male and female attributes which are outstandingly visible!

We can never know what music the player was playing, but we can be sure that if this instrument was made of arundo donax, then the sound would be exactly the same as the sound you have just heard on that recording.

The music that has been handed down and is played on the Launeddas is extremely intricate. The musicianship of the players is astounding- virtuoso music played for dances and at religious festivals.

In 1957 Andreas Bentzon, a young Danish Jazz musician, first visited Sardinia. I believe he was on holiday and arrived with no intention of researching music, but he fell under the spell of the Launeddas. There were only a few of the older players surviving and they were jealous and secretive about their music.Their fears were often that others would `steal' their music. It was competitive- an atmosphere of rivalry, non-cooperation and a lot of `backstabbing. Somehow Bentzen gained the confidence of these players and did a vast amount of recording of the music, took photographs and interviewed many of the players. I think he was only 32 years old when he died. Much of his research was published in English in 1969 in a two-volume book. All his recordings are held in a museum archive in Copenhagen.

In Bentzens brief life he played a vital role is preserving for the modern player a tradition that can trace itself back 4000 years. His book has become a virtual `bible' for the Launeddas players of today as they now have access to his wonderful archive. The music affects me very deeply.

There are several carvings in Ireland and Scotland of triple pipes being played-these date from ^8thto 12^th century. There are also manuscript illustrations from 12^th century England and Spain that show similar instruments.

Slide 2. Here is a carving from Lethanby in Perthshire of a triple pipe and a harp player both being played by monks.

Slide 3. This is a drawing taken from the "Malmesbury Luxuria^". It shows two musician- one playing a triple pipe and the other playing a lyre. The artist who did the drawing has since died and I have not managed vet to trace the original manuscript that he took it from. He dates it as 13^th century.

Slide 4. This is a carving of a piper from the door of a wardrobe that is now housed in the new Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. I is thought originally to have been part of a bedhead; made into a bookcase in the 19^th century. It is believed to have originated around 1600 somewhere in the Dumfries/ Galloway area and been at a number of castles during its life time) The pipe has one chanter and one drone and is of the type that is depicted throughout England and Northern Europe.

Inspired by Blowzabella I was enthusiastic about playing pipes for dancing. My brother John wanted a smallpipe, but not one as refined as the Northumbrian smallpipe- he wanted to return to a more basic bagpipe to resemble some of the depictions of bagpipes in England prior to the sixteenth century. A pipe with a swan necked bag, a single drone, a single chanter both with big flared ends. In fact I now know that depictions survive of these pipes throughout Britain and much of Europe western up until the start of the 16th century.

This was the basis for the first pipe I began to make- The Leicestershire smallpipe- after being given these brief specifications by John. He is a musician and historian who was researching the history of piping in Leicestershire. I have now been making this pipe for over 20 years and it sells consistently well over the years to pipers who play solo, or in early music or dance groups, morris dancers, as well as people who take part in historical re-enactments.

I make them both mouth and bellows blown and in a variety of keys. I will now play my polka ^`Mariettes Jacket^' on a mouth blown Leicestershire smallpipe in D.

(Julian plays The Leicestershire smallpipe)

When I first designed it I was not clear about the purpose of making a bag with a swan neck, but I soon found out that a bag this shape `holds^' the chanter exactly where you want it. Similarly I did not understand the purpose of the big flared bell on the chanter. We soon discovered that it amplifies the bottom notes- notes that are usually weak on a cylindrically bored smallpipe chanter- and we could take advantage of the loud bottom note by playing the pipes with covered fingering.

Covered fingering is where you cover all six finger holes, plus the thumbhole, and only one finger is ever lifted off the chanter at any time. The articulation is produced by returning briefly to the bottom note, D- on the pipe I have just played. This D blends in with the drone, which is also playing in D. This gives the impression of `space' between the notes and the playing has a distinctive percussive character.

This pipe is the one that got John and I going as pipers. It has been a very successful pipe. Not too big and not too loud, yet it packs a punch. John plays for Morris dancers and as well as both of us playing solo we also started playing his duets.

Slide 5 .Here is a manuscript illumination from The Ellesmere Manuscript (about 1440?) of The Miller from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The original illustration is only postage stamp sized; however it shows a considerable amount of detail. You can see the long single drone and the short chanter, both with flared ends. Of the Miller Chaucer wrote

`A baggepype wel coude he blowe and sowne and ther-with-al he brought us out of town.^'

We wer not allowed to even read The Millers Tale at school! Of course we did- it is bawdy tale which left nothing to the imagination. And Chaucer used the word 'fare- perhaps this is what subconsciously led me to start making bagpipes 20 years later!?

The Miller is shown playing his pipes while mounted on horseback. From this illustration and from what Chaucer wrote we can deduce that his pipes were a loud outdoor instrument. In 1987 1 was encouraged by Pete Stewart to make a reconstruction of such a pipe. The long drone and short chanter intrigued Pete. We named it The English Great Pipe. It is an obvious name, because it is English and it is great!

(Julian plays The English Great Pipe in D to illustrate the loud bright chanter against the very low drone.)

The single drone can be seen on bagpipes throughout Britain and Western Europe until the very start of the 16th century, when there appears to be a sudden fashion for a second, higher drone. Some of the early depictions show a pipe with a much longer chanter and I have also developed a D chanter that plays an octave lower

(Julian plays ^`The Rochdale Coconut Dance^' on The English Great Pipe with a low D chanter and the same low D drone.)

Slide 6.This is the piping angel from Roslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh. If you go to Roslyn you can see two stone carvings of pipers playing pipes with similarities to the Miller^'s pipe. These carvings date from between 1460 when the chapel was begun and 1490 when work ceased. Carvers often take advantage of angel^'s wings as they could position the drone lying on the wing and supporting its structure. You can see the chanter terminates with quite a large hole, so one might assume it was not a smallpipe. The drone is much shorter than The Millers^' pipe drone. This may possibly be because of the constraints of carving in stone and the practicalities of the position of the carving. There is a gargoyle at Melrose Abbey of a pig playing a pipe with one drone which was probably carved about the same era as Roslyn. It is a similar type of pipe. At this abbey there was another stone carving of a piper playing a bagpipe with a single drone. A 19th century drawing of it survives, but it had disappeared or perished by 1885.

There are numerous church carvings in England of bagpipes from the 14th and 15th centuries. About a third of these have double chanters.

Slide 7. This is a stone carving of a piper playing pipes with a thick conical chanter and one drone. It is from Beverly Minster in Yorkshire. The Minster features dozens of stone carvings of musicians which are believed to date from 1330- 1340. There are numerous carvings of pipers, playing a range of different types of pipes- I am told that there is one high up that is situated under an angel, and the angel has its fingers in its ears!

Slide 8. This is a wood carving from York Minster- I don^'t have a date for it. It seems a very convincing depiction. The posture of the both the piper and the hurdy gurdy player suggest that the carver was copying actual players, rather than creating something figurative.The pipe has one drone.

The earliest written records of piping in Scotland are from the Lowlands. Pete Stewart^'s book about the history of the English bagpipe `Robin With The Bagpipe^'highlights the fact that we have a multitude of early depictions of pipers in England, but not a lot of evidence about their repertoire before the 18^th century. However, in his latest book `The Day It Daws^'on piping in the Scottish Lowlands between 1400 and 1715 he remarks that, whilst we have only a six depictions of pipers in Scotland before the late 17^th century, including the lost Melrose one, we do have many valuable references to the music that they were playing.

The earliest written reference to a bagpipe in England is in the Edward I, King of England's' Household Accounts for the year 1285/86.

`To a certain young man with a bagpipe piping before the King, the king himself gave 2s'.

The original is in Latin and uses the word 'bagepipe', so we can be sure that he was playing a bagpipe. We have to be careful about any references to `pipers' or `pipes' as these often can refer to flutes, whistles or shawms. The word bagpipe does not appear in Scotland until the late 15th century. (`Clarys the lang clype playit on a bagpyp' from the anonymous poem `Colkelbie's Sow^' included in the Bannatyne manuscript in 1568 but probably dating from around 1480. The oft-quoted reference to James I playing the bagpipe now seems to be a mistranslation; the instrument referred to was probably the medieval fiddle).

Slide 8.

By the way, that young piper who played before Edward I was very well paid. I played my pipers on Radio 3 last year and didn't get anything like that much, even not accounting for inflation! Maybe the young man was a better piper than me!

Slide 9. If you go to North Spain or Portugal, that is the kind of pipes that they are still playing- the Gaita- A pipe with a conical chanter and one drone-compare it to the medieval pictures I have already shown you. It's the archetypical medieval bagpipe and possibly the second-best-known bagpipe in the world after The Great Highland Bagpipe. Many of you will have heard Gaita players in their early 20's playing at Celtic Connections- real `whiz kid' playing. Here, however, is a recording from 1985 of an old traditional player, Julio Prada. He is playing a tune- an Alborada, which is an early morning tune. A daybreak wake up call. It is interesting to note that the two earliest Scottish pipe tunes we know of are also daybreak tunes- `The Day It Daws^' and `Hunts Up', both well-established by the beginning of the 16^th century.

(Plays recording of Julio Prada playing Gaita with a drummer)

Slide 10.This is another stone carving from Beverley and shows a double chantered bagpipe with no drone. The chanter is flat at the front and appears to be fretted, like a guitar fingerboard. It is hard to surmise whether these frets have any function apart from as decorations. There is a surviving Polish bagpipe with a similar chanter with `frets' as decorations. In this carving the chanter stock is a carving of an animals head and the bag is clearly seen to have a sewn seam.

Slide 13. Illustration from Mersennes Harmonic Universelle of 1636.

Here I am jumping forward to the 17th century. This is an illustration that comes with a description of various bagpipe chanters that can also be played with a windcap over the reeds- a bit like a practice chanter. What makes this illustration invaluable to me is that there survives an English manuscript with measurements of a bagpipe with a similar chanter. In the 1690's James Talbot was making notes and measurements for an ambitious book on music that he never completed. However some of his manuscripts survive and are now housed in the Christchurch Library, Oxford. My brother John, who is an historian, did an interpretation of the description of the double pipe and gave me the measurements, as he understood them. There are no drawings and the measurements are not exactly clear and include two that appear to contradict each other. From these measurements I have developed a range of these bellows blown English Double pipes in various pitches. They are smallpipes in that the chanters have cylindrical bores. Talbot names it as a `Scotch Pipe' but one must remember that at that time anything from the north of England could be described as 'Scotch'.

Because of the way the finger holes are configured on this chanter you have possibilities for playing different chords and counter melodies. There survives a wonderfully vivid description of a pub session in Penrith on Sept 8th 1729 where a piper- James Bell- is playing a set of double pipes with three drones.

(Julian plays ^`The Mill, The Mill Oh' on the English Double pipes demonstrating its ability to play chords and counter melodies).

Slide 14. This is another double chantered bagpipe with a single drone that comes from Beverly Minster. The bag appears to have a seam. (The archetypal bag for a bagpipe is a whole animal skin- often goat or sheep. The blowpipe is tied into one fore leg, the drone (if there is one) is tied into the other leg and the chanter is fitted where the animal's head was.)

Slide 15.This is a carving of piper playing a double chantered bagpipe from Hexham. He is an ugly little fellow! His fingers seem to be rather on top of each other. There is a drone- I am not sure if it was originally longer and the end has snapped off. The carving is claimed to be 13th century, but we have not verified this.

Slide 16.This is wooden miserichord from Rippon Cathedral and shows a pig playing the double pipes- a common image at this period. The pipes have one drone. He is rather sweet! I like the way he is ^`trottering^' the individual chanters (as opposed to `fingering^' them).

Slide 17.James Merryweather spotted this wooden bench end in April 1998 in Marwood, north Devon. It's a clear depiction of a bagpipe with double conical chanters and a fairly short drone. His guess is that it may date from around the first half of the 1500's. I am currently developing a copy of this. My copy has a loud bright sound- definitely an outdoor instrument.

Slide 18.This is a stone carving from the church at Broadchalk in Wiltshire and shows an angel playing a bagpipe with a double chanter and a drone. The fingering style appears similar to the piper at Hexham Abbey.

So you can see there were a wide variety of bagpipes being played throughout England from the 14th to the 16th centuries. By the 19th century however the bagpipes were a rare feature in England. By then bagpipes would be mostly known as a Scottish or an Italian instrument.

Slide 20.This is a wonderful photograph of an Italian Zampogna player- it is an enormous instrument. As you can see it has two chanters. This photo appears to have been taken in France in the 19th century, but even in the early 20th century Italian Zampogna players were still travelling over to England to busk. The set that he is playing is an accompanying instrument- the melody was played by the boy on a bombard type shawm called a Ciaramella.

(Julian played a few blasts on a Zampogna to illustrate its sound and then played a recording of one being played).

Slide 21. This is a wood carving of a piper from the roof beams in the church at Elm, Suffolk. As you can see the pipes have two chanters and a drone. The piper has bells on his leg and wears a hat with pointed ears!

Slide 22. This is a carving of a double chantered pipe- this time from Norwich Cathedral. I am not sure of the date for this. It does not appear to have a drone.

Slide 23. This is a wooden carving now situated in a church in Tavistock, but was originally from Tavistock Abbey. It is hard to make out from this photo, but it is a double pipe with a drone. Phil Williams only spotted this in 2004.

Slide 24. This a wooden church bench end of a piper playing pipes with a double chanter from Davidstow in North Cornwall. The striking feature of this is the very wide drone- the rest of the carving seems in proportion, but the drone looks more like a phonograph horn!

Slide 25. Here is a picture of a bench end carving that has had an enormous effect on me and my pipe making. Once I started making pipes several people suggested that I copy this carving, but it was not until a Cornish Nationalist ordered one and actually gave me a £35 deposit that I started work on a design. It took a long time and he never went ahead with his order- I still have his deposit! However it has been a very successful design of pipe- the one I sent out to Austria last week was the 70th I have made over a period of 13 years. One of my customers in the USA, Steve Bliven, has compiled a 90 page Handbook for the pipes, containing playing instructions, historical details and music for these pipes.

This carving is from the church in the Cornish village of Alternon by Bodmin Moor and is one of the 79 bench ends that were carved between 1510 & 1530 by one Robart Daye. It is a beautiful carving of a piper playing a very large double chantered pipe. There is something protruding behind his shoulder and some people like to think that this is a drone- I think it is more likely to be a carrying case. Certainly I do not fit a drone to my design.

Here is my reconstruction of a Cornish pipe. Technically it is a `smallpipe^' in that it has cylindrical bores which play in low D. Had I known how common double chantered pipes appear to have been in England during the period from about 1450- 1550 I might not have named it a Cornish pipe. I will now play a traditional English tune, well known for Morris dances, called `Constant Billy'. I will start by playing the version in John Gay^'s Beggars Opera of 1729 and then a set of my variations based on the dance tune. The feature of a double pipe is that you can play two notes at once so harmonies and countennelodies are possible.

(Julian plays ^`Constant Billy' on the Cornish double pipes).

I would love to spend a few months going around all these churches in England and actually see all these carvings.

I have not brought my Border pipes with me today. They are a set of bellows pipes, copied from an 18th century set of pipes now in the National Bagpipe Centre Museum. A family with Peebles connections gave it to the National Scottish Museum in the 1920^'s. The original is bagged up to play left-handed. There survives a good account of James Ritchie, who was the last Toun Piper of Peebles and died in 1807. He played the pipes left handed, so I like to believe that the pipes I copied were originally his. His house was in Biggiesknowe, which is a street that runs next to my workshop. He was an interesting character in that he became Peebles Toun piper in 1741, when pipes still seemed in fashion and survived 67 years in office through to a time when they must have appeared anachronistic. The bellows blown pipes that we now call `border bagpipes' were a loud outdoor instrument that appear to have been introduced to the Lowlands of Scotland in the late 17th or early 18th century.

In the last 20 years there has been a big revival of the Scottish bellows pipes largely encouraged by The Lowland and Border Pipers^' Society, which was formed in 1982. I joined a couple of years afterwards and went on to serve on the committee for 15 years, the last three of which was as the Chairman. As well as encouraging the revival of the Border pipes the LBPS has also encouraged the revival of The Scottish Smallpipes. Both these bellows pipes fell out of use in the 19th and early 20th century, but have now been welcomed back into the Scottish musical scene.

The smallpipes that have been most important to me are now known as The Montgomery Smallpipes and are currently housed in the new Scottish National Museum in Chamber Street, Edinburgh. They are mouth blown with three drones set in a common stock. Inscribed on the ivory mount on this stock is "HONL. COLL. MONTGOMERY 1ST BATTN. JANY 4 1757". This is the earliest surviving dated set of smallpipes. Other similar undated smallpipes have survived from the 18th century. They all seem to be pitched around E- some are mouth blown, some are bellows blown.

(Julian plays the Montgomery smallpipes demonstrating their sweet tone)

It was these surviving sets of pipes that inspired the Northumbrian pipe makers Colin Ross and Robbie Greensitt to develop modern Scottish smallpipes in lower pitches for Scottish piper. I made my first set in 1986. However I have continued to make exact copies of the Montgomery Smallpipes, which have a charming sweet sound and a different scale to the modern pipes and are popular with pipers interested in playing the 18th century repertoire.

There is so much more to say- how can I compress 20 years of pipe making enthusiasm into a talk of just one hour? I have had to leave out a lot. It has been a privilege to have been asked to speak here today. Attitudes have changed and are still changing so much in these last 20 years.... This Society would not have invited me to give this talk 20 years ago... I doubt even 5 years ago. This new attitude of acceptance is a breath of fresh air.

When I started making Scottish bellows blown bagpipes Highland pipers would insist that their instrument was called `The Bagpipes' and would deny that the instruments 1 was making was even called bagpipe! Now the Smallpipes and Border pipes have been welcomed back alongside the Highland pipes. It has been a privilege to be part of this great cultural change in Scotland.

Thank you forgiving me this opportunity to show you some of what I have been doing.

Are there any questions?

Bagpipe Research

This basis of this article was originally a paper that I delivered to The Piobaireachd Society Conference, Pitlochry, in March 2006.
THE IAIN DALL CHANTER LINKS THE PAST TO THE FUTURE

The Iain Dall Chanter

Bagpipes: Tradition and Innovation

My Welsh Bagpipes- My Dead End Revisited!

Musing on the Musa