Dance to the Piper: The Highland Bagpipe in Nova Scotia (review)

Think of Scotland, and what do you see? It just might be the Highland bagpiper with his flashy tartan kilt and large decorated bagpipes on his shoulder. This iconic image was widely disseminated in the early Victorian era by textile and manufacturing industries and ignited by the immense popularity of Robbie Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Scott’s historical novels in particular were so influential that by the time of King George IV’s arrival in Edinburgh in 1822, the romanticized symbol of the Highland bagpiper was enshrined as part of Scotland’s national identity.

To encounter ‘authentic’ Highland bagpiping, writes Barry Shears, look to the Gaelic communities of Nova Scotia. There survive vestiges of a much older musical tradition brought by the tens of thousands of Gaelic-speaking immigrants from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. These traditions were rapidly dwindling when Shears was a young apprentice on the bagpipe in the late 1960s. Dance to the Piper is a work of music history that is the culmination of four decades of playing and researching the bagpipe in Nova Scotia.

The book is organized chronologically and traces the Highland bagpipe’s changing role in Nova Scotian society. Believed to have originated as a simple reed instrument in ancient Egypt, by Roman times an air reservoir was attached (Emperor Nero reportedly owned a bagpipe), and by the Middle Ages the bagpipe was popular across Europe and often replaced the harp as instrument of choice for bards. Eventually, additional ‘drone’ pipes (which produce constant notes and harmonies) were added to the ‘chanter’ (the fingered pipe that plays the melody).

Once established in the Scottish Highlands by the fifteenth century, pipers found employment through patronage appointments in the clan system, eventually forming a distinct component of the middleclass group known as the ‘tacksmen.’ Scattered throughout the book are biographies, pictures, and family histories of prominent middleclass pipers who established themselves in the Gàidhealtachd (Gaelic-speaking communities) of Nova Scotia. Shears argues that these individuals were major forces in propagating a ‘rich and authentic traditional Gaelic piping style which survived in the province much longer than in Scotland.’

The role and music of the piper changed in the New World. Shaped by his new position as part-time community musician, he provided music for weddings, funerals, and social dances. Although the Ceòl Mór, the classical or ‘high’ form of piping that resembled the Italian rondo, survived until the late nineteenth century, it was the Ceòl Beag, the ‘low’ or dance music forms such as strathspeys, jigs, and reels that proliferated in Nova Scotia. Social dances were a central component of Gaelic community life, with the bagpipe (and occasionally the fiddle) providing the music for various kinds of step-dances, such as Scotch fours and eight-hand reels. There were even land-clearing dance parties called ‘chopping frolics.’ Pipers learned their techniques from older musicians who performed, taught, and apprenticed within the community. Shears emphasizes that this music was propagated ‘by ear,’ unlike the new literate styles and compositions of Scotland, thus representing an older Gaelic form of oral arts and traditions.

The last three chapters of the book examine the disruption of the rural Gaelic communities and the decline of the traditional piping tradition. Shears pinpoints the late nineteenth century as the period when socio-economic changes drastically affected the rural way of life. There was migration to cities in pursuit of industrial opportunities, and many thousands permanently emigrated to the United States or Western Canada. Rural communities were integrated into new communication and transportation networks. By the early twentieth century, these forces had disrupted rural community life, and new pressures would result from the onset of war.

Young men from the Maritimes signed up in large numbers for military service from the Boer Wars to the Second World War. The British army had been using bagpipers for marching and military purposes throughout...