Bagpipes Trivia
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49 free Bagpipes trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This bagpipes trivia quiz covers the instrument inside and out: bag, chanter, drones, stocks and reeds, the nine-note Highland scale, bellows-blown 'cauld wind' pipes, the practice chanter and the tiny flea-hole that gives Balkan gaida music its trills. It also covers the history and the people — Nero's bladder pipe, Chaucer's piping Miller, the Battle of Pinkie, the MacCrimmons, the myth of the 1746 ban, Queen Victoria's regimental pipers, Bill Millin playing on Sword Beach, pibroch and pipe bands, the World Championships on Glasgow Green — plus the pipes of Ireland, Northumberland, Brittany, Galicia, Italy and Estonia, and the songs that took bagpipes to the charts, from 'Mull of Kintyre' to AC/DC. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Scotland and Musical Instruments quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01To which family of instruments do bagpipes belong?
Woodwind
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.
Q 02The bagpipe's chanter takes its name from the Latin cantare, meaning what?
To sing
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.
Q 03What is the job of a bagpipe drone?
To sound a constant harmonizing note
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.
Q 04What are the sockets that fasten the pipes to the bag called?
Stocks
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.
Q 05A Great Highland bagpipe's three drones are two tenors and one what?
Bass
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.
Q 06Highland pipers separate two notes of the same pitch with what?
Grace notes
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.
Q 07How is the Highland pipe's chanter voiced, unlike its drones?
With a double reed
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.
Q 08A piper traditionally leads in the haggis at suppers honouring which Scottish writer?
Robert Burns
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.
Q 09Which synthetic fabric is now widely used in place of animal hide for bagpipe bags?
Gore-Tex
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.
Q 10Which nu-metal band's singer plays bagpipes on its song 'Shoots and Ladders'?
Korn
Korn: frontman Jonathan Davis plays the pipes himself, then sings a string of nursery rhymes he chose for their dark hidden meanings.
Q 11The smallest finger hole on a Balkan gaida's chanter is named after which insect?
Flea
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.
Q 12Suetonius wrote that which Roman emperor vowed to perform in public on an early bagpipe?
Nero
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.
Q 13The oldest surviving piece of a bagpipe, a medieval chanter, was dug up in the port of Rostock in which country?
Germany
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.
Q 21Bill Millin was piper to which commando leader, chief of the Highland Frasers?
Lord Lovat
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.
Q 22Which 1962 film portrayed Bill Millin's piping at the Normandy landings?
The Longest Day
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.
Q 23The uilleann pipes are the national bagpipe of which country?
Ireland
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.
Q 14Which 14th-century English work explicitly mentions a character who plays the bagpipe?
The Canterbury Tales
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.
Q 15The first clear reference to Scottish Highland bagpipes concerns which 1547 battle?
Pinkie
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.
Q 16Which family of hereditary pipers to the MacLeod chiefs ran a famed piping college on Skye?
The MacCrimmons
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.
Q 17Which 1746 act is widely said to have banned the Highland bagpipe, though its text never mentions pipes?
Act of Proscription
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.
Q 18Which monarch created the post of royal piper after a stay with a Scottish marquess who kept his own?
Queen Victoria
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.
Q 19About 1,000 pipers were killed or wounded leading Scottish troops into battle in which war?
World War I
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.
Q 20Piper Bill Millin played British commandos ashore under fire on which D-Day beach?
Sword
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.
Q 24How is the bag of the uilleann pipes inflated?
With a bellows strapped to the arm
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.
Q 25Uilleann pipers get staccato notes and a second octave by sealing the chanter's open end against what?
Their leg
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.
Q 26Which film set in Scotland makes heavy use of uilleann pipes on its soundtrack?
Braveheart
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.
Q 27Which English county's smallpipes are known for a crisp, staccato style of playing?
Northumberland
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.
Q 28What is pibroch, or ceòl mòr?
Extended theme-and-variation art music
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.
Q 29A pibroch's first movement is the ùrlar, a Gaelic word that also means what part of a room?
Floor
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.
Q 30Who directs the music of a pipes-and-drums ensemble?
The pipe major
On parade a drum major may march in front with a mace, but the pipe major directs the music.