Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745-1945.

by John G. Gibson. xviii + 406 pp.

Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745-1945. By John G. Gibson. Edinburgh: NMS Publishing Limited; Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 406. Index, bibliography, photos, four appendices. $49.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Does the modern "high culture" of solo bagpipe competitions stand in a direct line of descent from the piping that was practiced in Gaelic-speaking regions in the years before the 1745 Jacobite rebellion and the subsequent depopulation of the Highlands? Or does it represent yet another example of the invention of tradition?

While showing that there is evidence for an unbroken tradition of Gaelic bagpiping to the mid-twentieth century, the historian John G. Gibson argues that there is little point in trying to trace this tradition in Scotland itself, which over the last two centuries has been so thoroughly Anglicized as to be largely purged of its native Gaelic culture. Instead, he directs attention to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, a region to which whole communities of Highlanders immigrated during the period 1746-1850. There, he argues, these Scottish immigrants and their descendants have long cultivated a transplanted musical art. Unlike the elite forms of piping that are practiced on today's competition boards, Cape Breton piping was largely learned by ear in an informal manner. Like fiddle music, it was a lively form of communal entertainment and often accompanied local dances. It was freely recreative in its techniques rather than being bound by strict standards of musical decorum. The New World pipers who have carried this tradition forward, therefore, "were and are our last, quickly vanishing window on the music and dance culture of the late-eighteenth-century Highlands," and they are justly regarded as "the most important and the most overlooked of Highland pipers anywhere" (257).

Gibson's provocative claims are supported by a mass of historical detail drawn from archival work, personal correspondence, and interviews, as well as by some surmise and inference. In Part One, "Piping in the Eighteenth Century: An Unbroken Tradition," Gibson disputes the accepted opinion that the acts of pacification that ensued upon the defeat of the 1745 rebellion included the forceful suppression of the bagpipes. He notes that the Disarming Act of 1746 (the text of which he includes as an Appendix) makes no mention of the pipes whatsoever. In Part Two, "Military Piping, 1746-83," he documents the presence of military-style pipers in famous regiments, such as the Black Watch, that assumed a key role in the British imperial expansion. He shows that military pipers were not restricted to set repertories but rather played a variety of tunes, including lively marches and dance music. At the same time, military service, like the programs of the Highland Society of London, tended to deracinate the Gaels and render their culture into a heroic caricature of itself. In Part Three, "Repertoire of Civilian and Military Pipers, c. 1750-1820," Gibson argues that by the mid-nineteenth century, classical pipe music began to rigidify into an increasingly non-Gaelic museum piece, while "folk" piping continued largely unnoticed in conjunction with harvesting, road work, and the like. In Part Four, "Tradition and Change in the Old World and the New," Gibson disputes the view that Gaelic culture was essentially destroyed by 1745 and its aftermath, showing that it was not Culloden but rather the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the collapse of the kelp industry in the 1820s that chiefly caused the depopulation of the Highlands. He then reviews the pattern of immigration whereby whole Highland communities migrated to Nova Scotia largely intact, preserving much of their culture—including piping, set dancing, and the Gaelic language itself.

Even though Gibson declines to engage with recent discussions among folklorists concerning such issues as tradition, folk revivals, and authenticity, he makes a significant contribution to Scottish Studies and, more particularly, to the cultural history of the great Highland bagpipes—surely one of the most remarkable musical instruments ever devised, and to this day perhaps the leading symbol of Scottish identity.

John D. Niles
University of Wisconsin, Madison