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When I was a young lad growing up in Aberdeenshire, you know, just after the ice had rolled back and man made the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer, I was entered as my class representative in the annual Rabbie Burns recital competition. As I was only wee, I was given a shorter poem to read, but I remember listening enthralled as an adult member of the Burn’s society read out Tam O’ Shanter. I doubt if an assembly hall of 300 or so children would sit in silence throughout a poetry reading nowadays, but this was the 1960’s, and children still used their imaginations.

The tension grew and grew, bairns fidgeted restlessly, and tweed encrusted teachers feigned interest as their drouths grew and their minds wandered to the Deeside Tavern at opening time. Suddenly I was struck by a crisis of faith. The poem had reached the part where Tam sees and hears the Devil, Auld Nick himself. I was stunned, the deil’ was a piper! He was belting out “hornpipes, jigs strathspeys and reels”. Was I hearing right? Yes, for next, “He screwed the pipes and gart them skirl, til roof and rafters a’ did dirl”. My first thought was, if the devil is a piper, then he can’t be as bad as folk make out, which was pretty blasphemous for an attendee of Sunday School and a proud member of the Boy’s Brigade. I kept my confusion and excitement to myself, and felt no unexplained urges to join any Satanic cult upon reaching adulthood.

This summer one of my children received a book of “Traditional Stories of the Celtic Lands”, as a gift. When it came to reading a bedtime story it was my turn, and, flicking through the book, I was amused to see the story of “The Black Lad MacCrimmon”. The “Black Lad”, the youngest of three, is the worst piper in the MacCrimmon family. One day a Banshee appears before him and asks if he would prefer skill without success or success without skill. This was before the days of Pop Idol or corporate sponsorship, so the Black Lad says skill is what he wants, success is not important to him. The Banshee pulls a hair from her head, wraps it around the chanter reed, (maybe it was a strong reed), and the Black Lad plays with a magical skill. The other MacCrimmons return, hear how he has improved, and name him King of the Pipers.

This was an amusing tale, but it got me wondering about other stories and myths about the bagpipe. Why was it associated so firmly with the supernatural? At last, the line about the Devil having all the best tunes made sense. I thought I’d have a delve into some fanciful piping history, just for a bit of fun. I like to do a bit of walking out in the wilds when I can, so I knew from looking at many OS maps over the years, that there were several places throughout Britain, not just Scotland, called Piper’s Hole, or Piper’s Pool. All of these place names have at their root a rather silly story about a piper who discovers a cave, sometimes under a rock, sometimes underwater. The cave turns out to be the entrance to a tunnel. The locals suspect that there must be treasure along the tunnel, and so the piper is persuaded to enter the tunnel and march along it’s length, playing the pipes so that the people above can follow the sound and know where he is. Abruptly the piping ceases, and the piobaire is never seen or heard again. It’s a rather common story, similar to one about a piper beneath the streets of Edinburgh. In some variations a dog is involved. In the Scilly isle’s the island of Tresco has a Piper’s Hole, as does the neighbouring island of Peninnis. An underground passage beneath the sea is said to connect the two of them, and once again a piper met his unknown fate in the subterranean dark. People who enter are never seen again, but interestingly enough, dogs who enter on one island turn up days later on the next, although emaciated and hairless. My wife has the cheek to ask if this is what happened to me, but although I am devoid of foliage, emaciated is not something I could be described as.

Pipers turned to stone for playing on the Sabbath are also very common. On the Land’s End peninsula in Cornwall, there is the Merry Maidens stone circle. In the field over the road there are two massive upright standing stones called the Pipers. A local saint came by and saw a group of maidens dancing a reel, so he turned them to stone. He then did likewise for the pipers, who were really evil spirits. As the Pipers are a field away, I can only assume that they had the good sense to try and leg it before their metamorphosis into masonry. The same tale is told of the Piper’s Stones in Hollywood, County Wicklow. In other Scottish versions the Piper in fact the Devil in disguise. It has been suggested by anthropologists that the word Sabbath has been corrupted over time, and it originally referred to Sabbat, a witches gathering, which does explain why the Devil and his pipes would be in attendance. This gets nearer the Auld Nick of Rabbie Burns, but if he was turned to stone, why is the world still such a tough place? Overlooking the Clyde Estuary near Gourock there is a large stone called Granny Kempock, or the Kempock Stane. In the 1600’s people danced around it to the sound of the pipes in order to influence the weather, so as to guarantee good fishing. Strathclyders; bear this in mind next time the Glasgow Fair is coming up.

Near Ednam in Roxburgh there is a mound called the Piper’s Grave. It was previously known as the Pict’s Knowe, and was locally a well known fairy dwelling. One day a piper, wanting to learn some new tunes, entered the mound, as was never seen again. There is a similar story in Ayrshire, but this time the piper is forced to pipe for days for the wee folk. When he is finished, they reward him with a magnificent set of pipes, but when he gets home, they have turned to dust and straw. Always get a guarantee folks...........

Well, entertaining as some of these stories are, I can come to no real conclusions. The stories are not ancient, if you try and trace them back very far, you merely find that the word “piper” is being used instead of the previous one, “druid”. Most of these tales have their roots in Celtic myth, and, as far as I know, bagpipes were not around Scotland then. I am only supposing this by the way that Pictish stonemasons went to elaborate lengths to carve detailed representations of harps, 9 highly visible strings andall, but I have not yet seen any ancient carvings of a Scottish bagpipe.

It seems that there was one point in history when the bagpipes became associated with death and darker forces. Many medieval woodcuts and paintings show corpses and skeletons dancing to the sound of the pipes. Some of the dead wear priest’s tonsures. This was around the time that the Black Death was sweeping Europe. Could this association have become perverted, as in Chinese Whispers, by the time it reached Northern Europe? The bagpipe does seem to have gone out of fashion in a fairly rapid time in mainland Europe, with only the remoter regions keeping and, indeed, developing them. If the church, local burghs or people saw the pipes as somehow bringing ill luck with them, it might explain a bit. In case you think that people had more sense, as recently as 1871 the Reverend James Rust, Minister of the Parish of Slains, Aberdeenshire, was involved in steps taken by the Church of Scotland to, “uproot the remains of druidical superstition and sorcery”. Marry this to the natural suspicion of strangers, either gypsies, tinkers, or Highlanders, speaking a different language to the recognised church, living outside society, and playing the pipes, and you can see why the bagpipe may have taken on a sinister air to some, but the real reasons for the much maligned bagpipes links with the Devil are, just like Aberdeen FC’s glory days of the 1980’s, sadly obscured by time.