by EMDEE » Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:43 am
Aye, I would agree with you Lochend, but the Highland Bagpipe has a huge repertoire which is appropriate to any situation. As anyone can see from my avatar picture I am a fiddle player, which is my principal vocation. I am also a piper, which was my first vocation, so I have a fair idea of what I am talking about.
Just as an aside, I think I would like to relate a small anecdote to demonstrate how the influence of the bagpipe is not universally understood.
As part of my duties as an "entertainer" (not a description that I particularly like, I see myself more as a tradition bearer), I carry out the ceremony of both piping in and addressing the haggis. At the interval, on one particular occasion, when I went outside for a cigarette (which I don't do now), someone from south of the border said that it must be good to be keeping up something that is a dying tradition. Of course I put them right on this, and advised them that piping throughout the world has never been stronger, but this just goes to show how the current status of the bagpipe is misunderstood.
In a similar vein, it is surely relevant that the Highland Dress i.e. the kilt, in its various forms, is appropriate for any event. It can be worn at Weddings, Funerals, Highland Games, Piping Competitions, Burns Suppers, St Andrews Events, or any other events, which don't even need to be Scottish. It is a universal dress. It is significant that the Cornish (another Celtic people) have re-adopted the kilt as a National Dress. I wholeheartedly approve of this and wear a Cornish sporran and kilt pin as a token of Celtic solidarity.
Do you have a kilt Rodger?
Merda taurorum animas conturbit. Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur