While an occasional few don’t fully appreciate the musical qualities of the bagpipes, I was amazed to discover that the bagpipes are the only musical instrument to have been considered a weapon of war.

April 16, 1746 was a watershed date in Scottish history. At the Battle of Culloden, seven thousand Jacobites armed with swords and daggers faced the muskets and cannons of the King of England’s  eight thousand man Hanoverian  army. On that day, one thousand Scots and three hundred Hanoverians died on Drummossie Moor.

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With the defeat of the Highland Army, the English proclaimed the Act of Proscription, which forbade wearing Tartan, speaking Gaelic, and playing bagpipes. Punishment could include lashes with the cat of nine tails and then imprisonment or worse, death.” http://www.canadaatwar.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=729

James Reid was among the many arrested. His lawyer argued that Reid had carried no weapon into battle  – only his pipes,but the judge disagreed, ruling that “a Highland regiment never marched without a piper, and therefore Reid’s bagpipes were an instrument of war.” Reid was hanged drawn and quartered.”http://www.citylab.com/design/2012/04/war-bagpipes-wiping-single-instrument-urban-map/1754/

But attempts to silence the pipes didn’t end with Culloden.The following are summarized from John Metcalfe’s April 13, 2012 article in CityLab. (http://www.citylab.com)

1999: An Edinburgh man launched a Campaign Against Bagpipes. Clive Hibberts and his friends police the city’s famed Royal Mile, picketing pipers.  The campaign ultimately fails. (His other campaign against kilts dies, too.)

2007: Ciaran Murtagh and Andrew Jones start the second Campaign Against Bagpipe, arguing: “They all sound the same. These tunes that bagpipers profess to play all sound equally bad. Where is the talent in that? Isn’t it time to make Scotland a quieter place?”  This campaign seems to have failed, too.

2008: In Oxford, piper Heath Richardson is banned from busking  after four hundred of the area’s shop owners signed a petition calling for his exile.

2008: Edinburgh’s ‘Bloody Bagpipe Crackdown’ Any bagpiper  blowing on the Royal Mile is threatened with arrest, and  buskers are forced to sign “acceptable behaviour contracts” Piper Shaun Cartwright, was arrested for causing “distress” to bystanders.

2011: Edinburgh passes another law forbidding business from playing bagpipe music from their sidewalk speakers.

2011: In New Zealand, Rugby World Cup officials declare the bagpipe unwelcome at future games. The instrument joins a list of banned items that includes flares and air horns. Sports broadcaster Miles Davis goes on record to say he’s behind the prohibition, because bagpipes sound like “a hyena caught in a gin trap” and are “as bad as the vuvuzela.”

2012, Vancouver, British Columbia.  The latest salvo in the War Against Bagpipes landed in Vancouver where the municipal code prohibited busking with drums or bagpipes. The city’s engineering department claimed pipers were interfering with its work.But on April 12, 2012 Mayor Gregor Robertson threw out the anti-pipe ordinance. “The clans won’t stand for it!”‬ he said.

 

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