Scottish Highland Bagpipes
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In Full Highland Dress
or Highland Evening Dress
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Fàilte - Welcome
Thank you for visiting this piping website, where the aim is to provide the very best music of the Scottish bagpipes for entertainment and ceremonial occasions.
The ancient haunting sound of the highland bagpipes played by bagpipers in the Scottish traditional style, is amongst the few universally recognisable musical idioms the world over. Wherever Scots have travelled throughout the world, the bagpipes have generally been a hallmark of the music of the Scottish nation which has endeared itself to many other cultures around the world. The bagpipes represent the deep resonance of the fiercely defended traditions of a nation that has a proud history and an abiding sense of ceremony and aesthetics.
From foot tapping hornpipes, reels and jigs, through lilting strathspeys and the poignant airs, set against the military marches for which the pipes know no equal; the music of the highlands of Scotland strike a chord in the hearts of many who value the same sense of tradition and continuity in a life that is ever changing
The Bagpipe, or “Piob Mhor” as it is known in Gaelic, has enthralled listeners for centuries. The wild and exciting skirl has spurred men into battle as far back as the days when the bible first made mention of it in the Old Testament, Book of Genesis, “Jubal was Father of the Fiddlers and Pipers.” The pipes were certainly known in ancient Rome, as an historian of the first century relates, that Emperor Nero “knew how to play the pipe with the bag thrust under his arm”. Indeed, evidence via ‘Tacitus’ himself, also points to the fact that although the Romans at the time of the invasion of Britain, brought a form of bagpipe called the ‘Tibia Utricularis’ (the chanter section being made from the shinbone of an animal), such instruments were already known in the British Isles.
The likelihood is that the bagpipes, in primitive form, were known to the natives of what is now known as Scotland more than 2000 years ago. Although it figures prominently at the English courts of Edward II and III, as well as Henry VIII, who established court pipers and collected all sorts of bagpipes. However, it’s real popularity grew in the rugged highlands. Ideally suited to the outdoors, it was the perfect instrument with which to record clan victories, histories and laments.
The Great Highland Bagpipe of the Scottish Highlands evolved with its valved blowstem, three drones and a reed chanter from the simplest form of bagpipe. Some are instruments of astonishing beauty with silver embellishments and carvings. Many pipers have been taught their skills by their fathers and grandfathers and are able to trace the family tradition back to days when their ancestors piped the clans into battle. “To the making of a piper go seven generations of his own learning and seven generations before,” wrote the historian Neil Munro some centuries ago.
Perhaps the most famous of all formal bagpipe teaching centres originated in the 16th century at Boraraig on the Isle of Skye under the legendary MacCrimmons who were hereditory bagpipers to the Chief of Clan MacLeod. Such traditional schools of piping in the highlands of Scotland are now sadly gone. There are, however, three main schools for Pipers in the United Kingdom; the Army School of Piping located in Edinburgh, affiliated with the Royal Military School of Music, the College of Piping located in Glasgow (a civilian organization which began in 1947 and is now known throughout the world) and the Piping Centre, also located in Glasgow.
