Sounds like another Marmite subject.
Perhaps it is, but why that should be the case has intrigued me for years because it is almost uniquely confined to England. I know, so is Marmite, but I am talking about bagpipes.
There are plenty of instruments the world over that rely on a reservoir of air to operate. There are such beasts as Northumbrian pipes and accordions to mention just a few. There are also other instruments that make a sound through vibrating reeds.
My adoptive mother would tell anyone who hung around long enough that she hated bagpipes; ?just like wailing cats? she would say. It struck me at a very young age that a badly played violin sounds a lot more like wailing cats than bagpipes as does, to my ears at least, most of the output from Bela Bartok. Symphony for three Belfast sinks and a tin can often springs to mind but perhaps I am just a Philistine...
Anyway, I digress. There is a popular myth that bagpipes were banned after the Battle of Culloden in 1745 under the Dress Act of 1747. Some limited research before I posted this suggested that that is probably not the case, but there was certainly much anti-Scottish feeling around in England at the time. I wonder whether one of that feeling?s consequences was the English learning to dislike bagpipes, and that learned, possibly Pavlovian behaviour, has been passed down the generations to this day.
I accept his has got very little to do with a documentary on the Fort William to Mallaig line in Gaelic, but this just seemed an interesting digression!
