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About this book
In the early second century CE, someone was described as playing a pipe ‘with a bag tucked under his armpit.’ That man, the first named piper in history, was the Roman Emperor Nero. Since then, this improbable conflation of bag and sticks has become one of the most beloved and contested instruments of all time. When another piping emperor, Tsar Peter the Great, watched his pet bear take its last breath, he decided the creature would live on—as a bagpipe.
This rich and vivid history tells the story of an instrument boasting over 130 varieties, yet commonly associated with just one form and one country: Scotland, and its familiar Great Highland Bagpipe. In fact, the pipes are played across the globe, and their story is a highly diverse one, which illuminates society in remarkable, unexpected ways. Richard McLauchlan charts the rise of women pipers; investigates how class, privilege and capitalism have shaped the world of piping; and explores how the meaning of a ‘national instrument’ can shift with the currents of a people’s identity.
The vibrancy and inventiveness characterising today’s pipers still speak to the potency of this fabled and once-feared instrument, to which McLauchlan is our surefooted guide.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Photos
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: More than an Instrument
- 1. Origins: From the Profane to the Sacred and Back Again
- 2. Getting to Scotland: Resisting National Boundaries
- 3. You’ll Take the High Road and I’ll Take the Low Road: A Diverse and Fluctuating Culture, 1500–1700
- 4. Piping in Jacobite Times: The Sound of Divided Loyalties, 1700–46
- 5. Pipes, Power and Patronage: The Enlightened Reimagining of the Highlands, 1746–1830s
- 6. A Time for Giants: Developing a Tradition of Innovation (and Madness), 1830s–1900s
- 7. Everything Changes: The Great War, Women and the Standardisation of Tradition, 1903–39
- 8. Piping Characters of the Old World on the Cusp of the New: Rousing the Romance from Within, 1939–1970s
- 9. Breaking Free from the Shackles of Convention: The Bagpipes Redefined, 1970s–1994
- 10. Yesterday, Today and Forever: The Health, or Otherwise, of Scotland’s Contemporary Piping Culture, 1994 Onwards
- Conclusion: A Global Instrument Worthy of Mystery
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Back Cover