CRIVENS AND HELP MA BOAB! According to the Sunday Times, the Eurocrats have told Scottish pipers they must restrict the sound of the bagpipes to 85 decibels or wear earplugs so they dinnae damage their health.
As Rupert pointed out in a comment yesterday, there is a whole lot of rubbish talked about the kilts, the clans, the sporrans and the dirks, but the boffins in the article he pointed to did say that piping was extremely popular until after Culloden and the defeat of the so-called “Bonnie” Prince Charlie.
Have a dekko, here at the Omniglot web site, at its page on Scottish Gaelic. My daddy was stationed on the Isle of Skye during the Second World War, working on radar. He reported to me when I was just a bairn that on the island very few folk indeed spoke English. Instead, they spoke the Gaelic tongue.
Which poses another mystery – the place of religion in this strange mix. This page talks of the Wee Frees, and how they helped to preserve Scottish Gaelic. Gaelic, of course, came from Ireland. There’s some stuff about the Picts, here and here. Some nice illustrations from Pictish symbol stones, here. Here’s a map of stone circles and symbol stones near my home town, Aberdeen. §
Better still, ban bagpipes altogether. My late father, a jazz musician, described their sound as “a heathen racket” and that’s quite something coming from a jazz musician.