are so cool. there is this kid at my school who plays the bagpipes everynight at 10pm. its so soothing and cool. when hes done, the campus claps for him. its fucking awesome.
whenever i think of bagpipes i think of scotland which makes me think of braveheart which makes me think of the bagpipe song in it thats so sad and beautiful which makes me want to watch the movie which makes me cry
It used to be a hangable offence to play the bagpipes apparently... I have a neighbour who plays his alot.. It sounds peaceful!!
I love bagpipes! From the time I was a small kid I always wanted to have one. Oddly enough, I have a lot of exotic and interesting instruments, but I do not have a set of bagpipes. As a young kid, my mom and dad had a bottle of drambuie which always fascinated me. Between that and an old Scottish-themed diner that had several locations back in the 60's (girls on roller skates would bring you food if you parked outside and their menu read like a Mad Magazine), I had a very early love for Scotland. It was shared with a love of India as my grandfather served in India during World War II and had lots of souvenirs from there. The very first bagpipe I ever saw was hanging on the wall at that restaurant. I loved the smell of drambuie, and at a young age I would occasionally take a sip. I started a game with my sister where we would take a gulp, and the first one that had tears run from their eyes lost. When I was about 12 and my sister 11, we had a babysitter who was about 16. She was hot, and I had a crush on her. We invited her to play this drambuie drinking game with us. I took a swig, no problem. My sister took a swig, no problem. She took a swig, and coughed and tears ran down her face---"My god! How can you drink that!" She was shocked. (Of course we had a few years practice, it was her first drambuie!) We also used it for cough medicine, which I still swear by if I get an itchy cough that won't go away. It clears your nose and your throat, warms your belly, soothes the cough, and helps you sleep! I read the story of its origins----the recipe was given to Prince Bonnie Charlie by a family on the Island of Skye as he was returning from France (was it? Its been a few years and I forget)----so many times that I knew it by heart in High School. I love Scottish poetry. It is full of sex, death, adultery, broadswords and battles, ghosts and death, the rebellion of Prince Bonnie----all subjects I enjoy! I once had a Scottish friend in the Philippines, and every time he got drunk, he would pull out Burns and read it in a thick Scottish brogue! (He has never tasted drambuie until I introduced him to it---he said it was all made for export and never drunk in Scotland.) I have a number of CD's of bagpipe music. I have also enjoyed exploring the bagpipe music of other cultures as well, as the instrument is very old, probably going back to the Hittites. I envy people that can play the pipes. It is absolutely the coolest thing to have playing in the distance on a cold foggy evening. One of my favorite fictional pipers is the piper character in the book, The Throwback, by Thomas Sharpe. He is a Scottish fellow, but he tends to an old Northumbrian rich fellow in an old mansion, so in the evening he goes into the tower and plays Northumbrian songs. It is an incredibly funny novel by one of the funniest authors to come out of England. During COVID, there was a young man in my neighborhood that played the pipes every evening for a while---and you know how the pipes carry. One of the first nights he did this, it was an overcast evening, not quite foggy, but it had that feel to it. I was reading The Throwback, for probably the 10th time, and he started playing. The world was in complete that evening...
It seems they originated in Greece or possibly Anatolia in 1,000 BCE. The Roman tibia utricularis supposedly added the air reservoir. Nero may have played one.
