Where did bagpipes ACTUALLY come from?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ต.ค. 2023
- Bagpipe history, Nero and “The Mad Piper”.
Bagpipes are iconic, and strongly associated with Scotland and Scottish culture.
But what do we really know about where they came from? Why did they become so popular in this part of the world? And how did they save the life of Bill Millin, “The Mad Piper” at the D-Day landings? dday80 #dday #ww2
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As a former Highland soldier, we would always have a piper pipe us in to battle on exercise we would always feel a certain burst of courage. I remember training with the roamainaian army around 20 year's ago and we took our pipe band with us, we did a parade in a local town and as Scotland the brave started to play you could see every jock grow 6 itches and march with a swagger, it was quite an experience.
Brilliant!
Very cool. What an experience. Gives me goosebumps to think of that.
Oddly enough, I have always loved the bagpipes. I have always found them inspiring - I think that "Amazing Grace": should be played on the pipes at every Christian burial. This was a great video! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you! The sound of the tattoo band marching past was immense.
I have been learning and playing Bagpipes for 2 1/2 years now and have played Amazing Grace and Going Home at 5 Funerals now. It never fails to make the mourners cry even more when I hit the High A and hold it.
Seeing a new Scotland Unplugged makes my day. I am a history buff with special interest in British, Scottish, Irish medieval history. Thank you for my Saturday history lesson - you have a fantastic way of imparting information.
Thank you! 🙂
My Scottish Grandfather played the pipes - and I have always loved the sound!
He taught me many things I remember from childhood.
God Loves the Bagpipes!
They are mentioned in His Word - the Holy Bible ... (well, maybe)
The first documented bagpipe is displayed on a Hittite slab at Eyuk, dating to 1,000 BC.
In the Bible, book of Daniel 3:7 (see also Daniel 3:5,10,15) a musical instrument translated "bagpipe"
was used by the ancient Babylonians sometime around 580 BC.
It is said that the music of the bagpipes is the only sound heard in heaven.
The spirits of the fallen follow the notes of the piper as it carries them to the afterlife.
"Through howl of wind and showers of rain, We play for the living, the dead and the slain,
Our notes they are the sound of an angels swoon.
for our enemies the sound of their coming doom
Be you married or buried our pipes sound true
Whenever we're needed we will play there for you"
from Edmonton Fire Rescue Services
Brilliant!
In my little Michigan, USA hometown, the bagpipes are played in every summer festival parade, usually around July 4, to coincide with the US Independence Day celebrations. We only had one parade a year when I was a kid, so I've always associated the bagpipes with good times.
Always struck me how loud pipes are in real life.
Definitely not subtle 🙂
@@scotlandunplugged I remember my girlfriend dancing on a bar playing pipes while her sister played drums. It was wild. People went crazy.
Love the sound of bagpipes especially when taking a boat ride at the lake. We usually stop and listen when a person plays the pipes at sundown. Not sure if I would enjoy them as much if my cabin was right beside him😂
Haha. No!
Thank you for this video, Robert. Love the sound of bagpipes. Excellent content as always 🏴
Thank you! 🙂
One thing that wasn't mentioned in the video is how the pipes became popular in America. During the Scottish and Irish diaspora of the 18th and 19 century those who immigrated to the U.S. one of the most common jobs they found were as policemen and firemen. and to this day, those services still have pipes and drums as part of their tradition.
30 years ago I went on a trip to a celtic festival at Hunter mountain in up state NY. Ono of the pipers told me, if you joined the cops in NY and if you had any Irish connections at all the first thing they did was stick a set of bagpipes under your arm.
Wherever the Highland Regiments deployed around the world (from the Middle East, Asia and North America) they took their Pipes and Drums. This is how they entered other countries. Natural there were also solo pipers, as their were fiddle players, singers and dancers that were either deported or emigrated that took their skill with them that provided fertile ground for the spread of Scotland’s music and song. Wherever I travel my pipes travel with me.
The mass of pipes played at that Edinburgh festival gives me goosebumps and I can barely hold back tears, I am so moved by the sound. And I can't explain why.
I've seen pipes been played at the Royal Mile and reenactment events (a band calling themselves Sassenachs).
Thank you for this. I always wondered about the bagpipes since I had seen pictures in other cultures. I've had the privilege of visiting Scotland four times and one day maybe, I'll get back there. Thank you. I look forward to your videos. I'm still laughing at your last comment about pipes being played at weddings for courage. Good stuff.
Thank you! Here’s hoping you get back soon!
I attended a Scottish themed high school as the land for the school was donated by a Scottish family. We always had multiple bagpipes in our band. We got to hear them played multiple times a year. It was amazing. I still love them.
It's funny how band pipes keep getting tuned sharper and sharper so that they sound just that bit "brighter" than their competitors. A set of highland pipesmade 20 years ago just can't hold the same tuning as a set of pipes made last year, and neither sound quite the same notes as a set of parlor pipes. X)
Yeah, I read they sound very different now than they would have done in the past.
Very well done! I enjoyed learning about the history of the pipes. I had no idea so many different places had their own pipes, like Greece, Germany, and Rome. Thank you for the video and history!
Thank you!
Thank you for this fascinating history of bagpipes. It truly is the world's most unique musical instrument. 😄🤗😗
They’re quite something. I had to turn the volume down in the edits. 😂
I LOVE the bagpipes!! ❤️ I admire anyone that can play them as they seem very difficult.
Yeah, I don’t think I’d do well with them. Seems like a lot of multi tasking 🙂
@@scotlandunplugged 👍🏼😂😂
I love, love,love listening to Scottish speech. It is my favorite. I LOVE bagpipe music!❤️
I lovecthe sound of bagpipes and the drums in the background
👍😎🇺🇸! I’am half Scottish and I like the sound of bagpipes ! My sister had a gemologist/ Historian trace our Heritage back to the McTosh Clam ? On my mother’s family side !
Great video. My father loved hearing the pipes & I enjoyed listening to them with him. The history of them is very interesting.
Thank you. The noise when I listened to the recording from the tattoo was immense. I had to turn it down when I edited it. Quite something!
I enjoy the sound of bagpipes... I always thought bagpipes originated in Scotland. ... Proving you can still learn when you get old..haha
🍁 the pipes were brought over and a tradition here still with our military veterans. We even have an active regiment that performs and a tiny museum. 🇨🇦 love's the pipes.
I heard a Scotsman say that yes, the pipes were not invented in Scotland. But it took the Scott's to conquer the instrument!
The bagpipes was an ancient Celtic war instrument...
I am a lady from Liverpool, I love to her the Bagpipes.
I love ❤️ piping My husband is a firefighter and many funeral homes have a popper! Love ❤️ them.
Piping seems to be big with firefighters throughout the world as well. Great to see!
I watched again. Paid more attention to the museum bits
Your pronunciation of Saskatchewan was correct. Canada 🤪
Hello from Canada 🇨🇦
You said “Saskatchewan” better than a lot of non-Saskatchewan Canadians.
I'm not Scottish I'm an American and my grandmother was of Irish descent. But when we'd go to the St. Patricks day parade she would get so happy to hear the bag pipes. Now that shes gone when i hear bag pipes i instantly start crying💔. I still do love hearing it though brings back great memories 🤗
So glad and thankful to see your subscriber base growing! You are a breath of fresh air while providing us with some great history and entertaining content!!! ❤
Thank you! 🙂
It was the wedding joke for me lol
😂
I was attending the University of Arizona in Tucson AZ in the mid 80s. My fiance and I were walking around campus when we heard the pipes in the distance. Following the sound, we found one of our professors practicing. He belonged to a group that played pipes for fun and festivals. At the time, there were highland games every year. Haven't checked to see if they are still going.
Love it!
I am Spanish, and ,humbly, play GHB and Galician bagpipes( Gaita).
In Spain we have a very long bagpipe’s tradition( we can found evidences in XIIIth Century manuscripts and books as “ Las Cantigas de Santa María “.
The Atlantic bagpipes ( Scottish, Galician and Asturian) are our soul and identity.
Glad you mentioned the living legend that was Piper Bill Millen.
Another great video Robbie, very interesting to learn that the pipes didn’t actually come from Scotland. And like you said we had them at our wedding not for courage I may add
Haha. So did we. Wouldn’t be a Scottish wedding without them 🙂
I saw some researches, where the oldest iconography of a bagpiper in Scotland, is a person who looks like a Portuguese soldier from centuries ago, playing with a single drone, wich was our bagpipes from that time (I'm Portuguese). It was from the times of "Armada invencivel" where we lost and get to Scotish land. We had bagpiper in every ship. It was played to entertainment and for religious purposes. By the way, you close the right hand to higher notes. In Portugal, the older persons said to play like that, to "round and smooth" the note. Some similarities indeed.
Brilliant coverage on this subject! Although I find it hard to understand how the bagpipes could strike fear into the hearts and minds of enemy warriors…. Honestly, the sounds of the bagpipes bring tears to my eyes and tugs at my own heart. Are there examples of sounds coming from the pipes that might have sounded warlike?
Thank you!
~Sharon from Florida
Backpipes are forbidden in some regions/countries. So that must be something in the sound. But I love the sound.
If you live somewhere on the planet where they are not common, I totally get how they could scare someone. Combine that with what highland soldiers are wearing. It's not hard. Even people who have heard them from time to time and are not fans, compare them to cats screaming! LOL
They definitely do something to you. The sound of the band going past made me feel strangely proud. It was insanely loud.
Well, if they are out of tune, especially with other players, or when warming up, they make awful sounds - discord and such. Maybe that's what they do in battle 😂
It is known that there are certain sounds which can cause a fear response in people. There are some of the large pipe organs used in churches and in the early movie theaters which were capable of that, and part of the music score in horror movies is also designed to do that. So I suppose it is possible that the pipes might also be able to do that if certain notes/tunes are played. Regardless, music played in battle has a long history going back millennia. Among other things the music was used to help soldiers keep time and step while marching, as well as certain tunes being used to communicate orders to troops on a noisy battlefield when shouted commands couldn't be heard.
Now, I don't know if this was actually done, but as Scottish units liked to have the pipes playing while they marched then it would at least be theoretically possible to have a few pipers detailed off somewhere to play and thus cause an enemy to think that there may be more Scottish forces approaching from more directions than the enemy expected. That could definitely cause fear and panic if the enemy unit all of a sudden heard pipes being played on one of their flanks or rear when they were preparing to engage a force on their front.
Stirs up courage and maybe that's why people have them played at their weddings??? Lol! Perfect! Had I only known that and what was to come I would have had them played at mine!! I've always loved them and found them to be stirring and exhilarating. Thanks once again for the good information. I always look forward to your videos.
Thank you! 🙂
Pipes and kilts make me swoon
Haha, me too ♥️💙
😂
Make this a popular trend lol
YES! BEEN WAITING FOR THIS EPISODE! THANK YOU!
Wonderful video and history telling!! Love the bagpipes. I bought a set of pipes last time I was in Scotland. I can't play them, but I can freak the dogs out.
😂
There's an old joke that says the Romans introduced the bagpipes to the Scots as a gag, but the Scots haven't caught on yet.
Yes, the pipes were played at my wedding, four clans attended!
I jus5 love listening to the Scottish Bag Pipes! ❤️🇦🇺🏴
Loved this program! PIPE ON!!!
Mr. Parker, I love the bagpipes. There is something almost spiritual about the sound. To me, anyway. Saying hello from the Panhandle of Nebraska, USA.
They are quite something 🙂
Well researched, paced and presented and honest punchline - but Canaidia.... hahaha - ever the comedic wordsmith & charmer - well done - pop goes the cork and there you are - the Spirit of Scotland Unplugged. Ah the Pipes really are the best - soulful, arresting, honest, authentic, wild, dominant and gentle, statements of intent and like the Mountains and Glens - own their own truly uplifting magnificence to quote W.S.Gilbert - "There is beauty in the bellow of the beast". Happy days to you all up there amidst the turbulent weather and all else going on in the world. Hey, could an inspired piper find and fine tune a tune to the poem Love by Emmet Fox please ? that would be a combo indeed - maybe even prove to be a tune / words to lead Scotland into the self-awareness of the need for Independence X
Thanks, Charles! Hope you’re doing well.
I absolutely love bagpipes.
My family name (originally Dudas in Hungarian) means "bagpipe player." My great-grandparents and grandfather (who was a child at the time) immigrated to the U.S. a few years before WWI, so I don't know anything about more distant ancestors who actually played the pipes.
Look up "Piper to the End"by Mark Knopfler. Cool song, written for his mother's brother that was killed in battle before Mark was born...
Funny how my dad told me this past week that he bought a chanter, then along comes Robert with a video about bagpipes! Are you sure you're not Google listening to my conversations???? 🤨🤨🤨 lol!!!
I’m really an AI 😂
@@scotlandunplugged HA!!! I knew it!!!😠🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Former curater at the National Museums of Scotland, Hugh Cheape, a leading Gaelic historian and expert piper, argues that the origins of the Great Highland Bagpipe are actually a creation of the early 1800's expatriate Scottish middle class 'Highland Society of London' - their aim being in 'Preserving the martial spirits, language, dress, music and antiquities of the ancient Caledonians".
The society sponsored piping competitions and offered pipes as prizes. These were made by Edinburgh pipe makers Hugh Robertson and Donald Mcdonald and Cheape contends it was they who developed the Great Pipes in the early 1800's.
The bagpipes played at the Battle of Pinkie and those Charles Stuart (perhaps) heard would have been, therefore, much simpler affairs.
Yes, the bagpipes as we know them today are a development of at most the last 250 years or so.
The earliest Scottish record of Pipers accompanying troops into battle is to be found in the archives of the Chiefs of Menzies. Mention is made there of the hereditary Pipers of the clan, the McIntyres at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Pipers have always accompanied their clans into battle, there being little mention of this as it was always taken for granted that they be there. Ergo, It is very likely that Pipers were in battle prior to Bannockburn and that no mention has been made of this.
There were many forms of bagpipe (still are) throughout Europe, but the most recognised form as carried and played in the Highland Regiments is very much Scottish.
Fascinating, thank you
Good job on Saskatchewan, CanAdia. From an auld Scot in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. :-)
6:40, says "Saskatchewan" correctly, says "Canada" wrong. This made me happy.
Oh we love those pipes! ❤❤
The thing that makes me confused is how and why are the heck are the Scottish/Irish bagpipes so ubiquitous in american law enforcement, defence forces, fire station and squads? Its mind boggling.
Hello from Canadia!
😂 Hello!
Funny, just as my throat works. As one half of it can't contract because of damaged nerve. I'm living bagpipes. A bit different sound but has those thrills either.
I love the sound of the pipes.
Love the Canadia joke😅
Couldn't resist!
I would say that last line was "tongue in cheek", but I think you really meant it!!! K.
😂
American police bands always have bagpipes. We Frazier descendants are a little eccentric 😊🏴🇺🇲
Did *you* have pipes at your own wedding, Robert?
I must say that I'm partial to the uilleann pipes myself. Having been in an Irish band, I find them much softer and don't have that Q sharp note barreling throughout the instrument from the moment it hits the lips to the second someone yells, "last call!" (I like them fine but they are a bit imposing)
We did indeed! But at the ceremony but when we got to the reception. 🙂
I heard it was a gift from the Irish, but Scot haven't figured out it was a joke.
Would you please make a video about Scottish accents? I recently heard Dankula say that he tones down his accent for TH-cam, and to my (American from the Deep South) ears, he has quite a thick accent as it is. Now I am curious as to what a very heavy Scottish accent sounds like, and also how the accents differ around Scotland. I am sure they do, because not all Southern accents are the same, even though many people not from here will insist they are.
Thanks!
There is a crazy amount of variation in accents, yeah. Sometimes 5 miles makes all the difference. 😂
Bagpipes are amazing
I was once told that bag pipes were a joke that the English tried to play on the Irish, but the Scottish took seriously
What chronical that there were bagpipes at Pinkie.
many countries with pipes were mentioned except Spain where arguably is the largest populations of bagpipers in the Atlantic nations.
the oldest chanter in Galicia, Spain is 550 to 600 years old. How old is the oldest Scottish bagpipes?
Canadia. A well delivered joke. I've always pronounced it Can ah duh. Though recently I've heard it pronounced Canadastan.
Colombia has its own bagpipe called ‘gaita’.
it is the Spanish bagpipes and name.
Im ancient Greece they had auloi attached to a bag.
Remember Bannockburn!
It is an acquired taste but so is single malt!
So psychological torture... There you go with the Scottish gore again... 😉 You need to do a collab with Allie the Piper. 😁
The original bagpipes were created by the ancient Greeks who invented the first wind instruments and then added some to sheep stomachs, which were (like everything else) adoptedby the Romans which took them with them when they conquered Britain. These original Greek bagpipes are still used in their original form in Greece today. They are called the gayda.
there is an ancient Egyptian connection In Scotland which I think you know of
Hitittes? Interesting. It's also, interesting you guys still have the tartan as well which is old and found as far away as Ancient China (tarim basin). Scotland's like an ancient Indo-european time capsule 😂
😂
I love the pipes! Always have, my partner not so much. ❤
Haha. I love them as well. The site and sheer volume of the tattoo band as they marched past was quite something.
@@scotlandunplugged I am always blown away when I hear them up close. I bet they were quite the experience 😁
"Canadia?"
Terrible joke. Couldn’t resist! 🙂
Didn't scientist find something that looked like parts to a bagpipe next to some Neanderthal bones?
Even in the US
Pronounces Saskatchewan right
Pronounces Canada: CAAHNAAYYDEEAAA
Easy answer, the fifth level of 'ell!
😂
got Saskatchewan well, not so for Canaedia?👍
They always remind me of funerals.
I’ve never seen them played at a funeral here but that would be quite something!
In Chicago they are always played at firemen and police funerals as well.@@scotlandunplugged
A lot of talk about pipes but no weed!
egypt
They may have come from the continent, but the Scots and Irish took them big time!
Weddings and funerals!
Crikey:
I'm now the 666th Like.
Anyone out there fer Executing Order 667?
Anyone?
Anyone?
Balfour?
Balfour?
Balfour?
Balfour?
[ ... ]
Thank you, Shona.
Frye?
Frye?
Frye?
Frye?
Och, Aye:
Shite, then.
🤪🤪🤪
The bagpipes were invented by an English farmer to scare wolves away from his cows and when all the wolves were gone he threw them in his dung pile and a Scot’s man fished them out and has been trying to blow the shit out of them ever since 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🏴🏴🏴🏴🏴🏴
The bagpipes were given to the Scottish as a joke by the Irish. Unfortunately the Scottish didn't get the punchline and only the Irish thought it was funny.
😂
Kilts aren't actually Scots either
The great highland pipes are Scottish and I dislike the cheesy thumbnail that this creator uses to generate clicks.
Another one I heard. The only people wearing kilts during Roman times were the Romans.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill
Ah, yes! I think Thoughty2 might have done a video on him recently.
Canadia - like Scotsland I suppose?