49 Fun Facts About Bagpipes

To which family of instruments do bagpipes belong?

Woodwind: the sound comes from reeds, and the bag is simply an air tank that lets the piper take a breath without the music stopping.

The bagpipe's chanter takes its name from the Latin cantare, meaning what?

To sing: the chanter is the pipe the piper fingers to carry the tune, so it does the instrument's singing; chant and cantata share the root.

What is the job of a bagpipe drone?

To sound a constant harmonizing note: a drone isn't fingered, so it holds one pitch under the tune, and the piper tunes it against the chanter by sliding its jointed sections.

What are the sockets that fasten the pipes to the bag called?

Stocks are wooden sockets tied into the bag; when a bag is made from a whole goatskin, they are bound into the openings left by the neck and front legs.

A Great Highland bagpipe's three drones are two tenors and one what?

Bass: it is tuned an octave below the two tenors, and with the chanter that makes four reeds a Highland piper has to power from one bag of air.

Highland pipers separate two notes of the same pitch with what?

Grace notes: with only nine notes, no rests and no volume control, a piper flicks in these split-second notes to break up the sound, and groups of them form the pipes' ornaments.

How is the Highland pipe's chanter voiced, unlike its drones?

With a double reed, like an oboe's, though no lips ever touch it: all four of a Highland pipe's reeds, three of them single, sit sealed inside the instrument.

A piper traditionally leads in the haggis at suppers honouring which Scottish writer?

Robert Burns: at a Burns supper the guests stand and clap in time as the piper leads the haggis to the table, where a speaker recites his 'Address to a Haggis' over it.

Which synthetic fabric is now widely used in place of animal hide for bagpipe bags?

Gore-Tex: the fabric holds the air in while letting moisture from the piper's breath escape, and some synthetic bags have a zip so a moisture trap can be fitted inside.

Which nu-metal band's singer plays bagpipes on its song 'Shoots and Ladders'?

Korn: frontman Jonathan Davis plays the pipes himself, then sings a string of nursery rhymes he chose for their dark hidden meanings.

The smallest finger hole on a Balkan gaida's chanter is named after which insect?

Flea: uncovering the tiny 'flea-hole' lifts whatever note is sounding by about a semitone, and pipers flick it open and shut for the quick ornaments of Balkan music.

Suetonius wrote that which Roman emperor vowed to perform in public on an early bagpipe?

Nero: near the end of his reign he vowed that if he kept his throne he would celebrate with a show on the water organ, the flute and the bagpipes.

The oldest surviving piece of a bagpipe, a medieval chanter, was dug up in the port of Rostock in which country?

Germany: the chanter, dated to around 1400, was found in Rostock in the 1980s; bagpipes from before the 18th century are so rare that their early history rests largely on paintings and carvings.

Which 14th-century English work explicitly mentions a character who plays the bagpipe?

The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's brawny Miller is a fine bagpiper, and with his pipes he leads the whole company of pilgrims out of town.

The first clear reference to Scottish Highland bagpipes concerns which 1547 battle?

Pinkie: a French history of the battle recorded the Highlanders' pipes in use, and scholar George Buchanan claimed the bagpipe had replaced the trumpet on the battlefield.

Which family of hereditary pipers to the MacLeod chiefs ran a famed piping college on Skye?

The MacCrimmons: for generations they piped for the MacLeods of Dunvegan, and chiefs across the Highlands sent their young pipers to the family's college at Borreraig to be trained.

Which 1746 act is widely said to have banned the Highland bagpipe, though its text never mentions pipes?

Act of Proscription: passed after the Jacobite rising, it disarmed the Highlands and outlawed Highland dress, but pipes go unmentioned; the chiefs' lost power and patronage helped drive piping's decline.

Which monarch created the post of royal piper after a stay with a Scottish marquess who kept his own?

Queen Victoria: after an 1842 stay at Taymouth Castle she wrote that she had grown so fond of the pipes she meant to have a piper, and the post's holder plays under the sovereign's window at 9 am.

About 1,000 pipers were killed or wounded leading Scottish troops into battle in which war?

World War I: of some 2,500 pipers who served, about 500 were said to have been killed and 600 wounded, losses so heavy that the War Office reputedly banned them from leading attacks.

Piper Bill Millin played British commandos ashore under fire on which D-Day beach?

Sword: Millin walked up and down the beach piping amid the mortar fire, and captured enemy snipers later said they hadn't shot him because they thought he had gone mad.

Bill Millin was piper to which commando leader, chief of the Highland Frasers?

Lord Lovat: when Millin cited the War Office ban on piping in battle, he recalled, Lovat replied that it was the English War Office's rule and, as they were both Scottish, it didn't apply.

Which 1962 film portrayed Bill Millin's piping at the Normandy landings?

The Longest Day: contrary to a common belief, Millin didn't play himself; a royal piper, Leslie de Laspee, took the part, piping the commandos to Pegasus Bridge.

The uilleann pipes are the national bagpipe of which country?

Ireland: unlike the loud Highland pipes, these are sweet-toned and quiet enough to be played sitting down indoors, and UNESCO listed uilleann piping as cultural heritage in 2017.

How is the bag of the uilleann pipes inflated?

With a bellows strapped to the arm: the piper pumps it with one elbow, the dry air is kinder to the reeds than breath, and with the mouth free some pipers hold a conversation as they play.

Uilleann pipers get staccato notes and a second octave by sealing the chanter's open end against what?

Their leg: with the chanter's end sealed on the knee, closing every hole stops the sound dead, and the same trick helps flip the reed into a second octave, about twice a Highland chanter's range.

Which film set in Scotland makes heavy use of uilleann pipes on its soundtrack?

Braveheart: James Horner's score leans on uilleann pipes played by Eric Rigler, not the Highland pipes of William Wallace's homeland, and Rigler piped for Horner again on Titanic.

Which English county's smallpipes are known for a crisp, staccato style of playing?

Northumberland: the Northumbrian smallpipes have a chanter closed at the bottom, so shutting every hole silences it and each note can be cut off cleanly, which open-ended Highland pipes can't do.

What is pibroch, or ceòl mòr?

Extended theme-and-variation art music: a pibroch states a slow theme, runs it through ever more ornate variations, then returns to the plain theme; many are laments, salutes or gathering tunes.

A pibroch's first movement is the ùrlar, a Gaelic word that also means what part of a room?

Floor: pipers call the ùrlar the 'ground' in English, and the rest of the tune is built on it before the piper comes back to it at the end.

Who directs the music of a pipes-and-drums ensemble?

On parade a drum major may march in front with a mace, but the pipe major directs the music.

Where is the World Pipe Band Championships held?

Glasgow: the Worlds fill Glasgow Green for two days each August, and the city wraps a festival, Piping Live!, around them in what it bills as the world's biggest week of piping.

The 78th Fraser Highlanders, the first band from outside Scotland to win the world pipe band title, came from which country?

Canada: until the Ontario band's 1987 win the Grade One title had never left Scotland; it has gone overseas many times since, once as far as Australia.

The band with a record 20 world pipe band titles, the last in 1991, was run by what?

A police force: Strathclyde Police, which began in 1883 as the Burgh of Govan Police Pipe Band, won 20 world titles from 1920 to 1991, six of them in a row before an overseas band broke the run in 1987.

Which 1977 Wings hit featured the Campbeltown Pipe Band?

Mull of Kintyre: McCartney wrote it as a tribute to the Scottish peninsula where he owns a farm, and with the local pipe band it became the first single to sell two million copies in the UK.

Which AC/DC singer, once a pipe-band member, played bagpipes on 'It's a Long Way to the Top'?

Bon Scott: it became his signature song, and after his death AC/DC retired it from their live set out of respect for him.

Which hymn gave the pipes and drums of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards a UK number-one single in 1972?

Amazing Grace: modelled on Judy Collins's hit version, the army band's recording spent five weeks at number one and became Britain's best-selling single of the year.

Which pipe tune, proposed as a Scottish anthem, was written by two Germans in 1982?

Highland Cathedral: Ulrich Roever and Michael Korb wrote it in 1982, and by 2004 Scottish rugby was offering fans a vote between it and Flower of Scotland as the pre-match anthem.

Journalist Cliff Hanley wrote the now-standard lyrics to which famous pipe tune?

Scotland the Brave: Hanley wrote the words around 1950 for the tenor Robert Wilson, and the song came to be treated as one of Scotland's unofficial national anthems.

The bagpipes thought to be the first played in space, in 2015, were specially made of what material?

Plastic: a Scottish maker built astronaut Kjell Lindgren a plastic set because it is easier to keep clean, and he played it on the International Space Station as a tribute to a colleague who had died.

Outside Scotland, which country was the world's biggest bagpipe producer as of 2012?

Pakistan: its makers sell the instrument around the world, and it is more than an export, since pipe and drum bands are a common sight in the country itself.

Pipers of Scotland's Black Watch, on tour in America at the time, marched in the funeral procession of which US president?

John F. Kennedy: the regiment's band was touring the United States in November 1963 and was invited to send pipers, who played on the march from the White House to St Matthew's Cathedral.

A bagad is which French region's answer to the Scottish pipe band?

Brittany: Bretons took up the pipe-band idea from Scotland in the mid-20th century, and their bagadoù now decide a national championship each August at the Interceltic Festival in Lorient.

The gaita is the traditional bagpipe of which region of Spain?

Galicia: the gaita also belongs to northern Portugal just over the border, and Galician pipers have borrowed Scotland's pipe-band format to play it in massed ranks.

The Italian zampogna is mostly associated with which season?

The carol 'Tu scendi dalle stelle' derives from traditional zampogna music.

Which small, quiet bagpipe became fashionable among French aristocrats in the Baroque era?

Musette: with its soft, oboe-like tone, the musette de cour suited the court's taste for rustic, folk-flavoured music, and composers wrote pieces for it for professionals and amateurs alike.

The torupill is the bagpipe of which country, Finland's close linguistic cousin?

Estonia: Estonian is a Finnic language, a close cousin of Finnish and unrelated to Latvian and Lithuanian next door, and torupill joins toru, 'pipe', to pill, 'instrument'.

Massed pipes and drums parade across a castle esplanade each August at which city's Royal Military Tattoo?

Edinburgh: the word 'tattoo' comes from a Dutch call to 'turn off the taps', the nightly signal that sent soldiers from the taverns back to their quarters.

Strakonice, a town that hosts an International Bagpipe Festival every two years, lies in which country?

Czechia: the South Bohemian town owes its piping fame to Josef Kajetán Tyl's play 'The Bagpiper of Strakonice', one of his best-known works, and has hosted the festival since 1967.

Which Friends character takes up the bagpipes to play at Monica and Chandler's wedding?

Ross: he secretly learns the pipes as a surprise for his sister Monica's wedding, but his playing is so dreadful that she and Chandler tell him he can't.