Bagpipe Quotes

Any sign of them yet? he asked. Will looked at him. 'Yes', he said. 'A party of fifty Scotti came though just twenty minutes ago'. Really? Horace looked startled. He wasn't fully awake yet. Will rolled his eyes to heaven. 'Oh, my word, yes', he said. 'They were riding on oxen and playing bagpipes and drums. Of course not,' he went on. 'If they had come past, I would have woken you-if only to stop your snoring'. I don't snore', Horace said, with dignity. Will raised his eyebrows. 'Is that so?' he said. 'Then in that case, you'd better chase out that colony of walruses who are in the tent with you...of course you snore.

Where's your kilt?" "How about this," he said in a low voice. "You don't ask me about haggis and bagpipes, and I won't ask you about garlic and Goodfellas.

I'll bet there aren't too many people hooked on crack who can play the bagpipes.

I understand that the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, astatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of sound achieved by the pig.

about as emotional as a bagpipe.

My mouth is a fire escape. The words coming out don't care that they are naked. There is something burning in here. When it burns I hold my own shell to my ear, listen for the parade from when I was seven, when the man who played the bagpipes wore a skirt. He was from Scotland. I wanted to move there. Wanted my spine to be the spine of an unpublished book, my faith the first and last page. The day my ribcage became monkey bars for a girl hanging on my every word they said, "You are not allowed to love her." Tried to take me by the throat to teach me, "You are not a boy." I had to unlearn their prison speak, refusing to make wishes on the star on the sheriff's chest. I started taking to the stars in the sky instead. I said, "Tell me about the big bang." The stars said, "It hurts to become.

Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.

The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover.

THE BAGPIPE WHO DIDN'T SAY NO It was nine o'clock at midnight at a quarter after three When a turtle met a bagpipe on the shoreside by the sea, And the turtle said, "My dearie, May I sit with you? I'm weary." And the bagpipe didn't say no. Said the turtle to the bagpipe, "I have walked this lonely shore, I have talked to waves and pebbles--but I've never loved before. Will you marry me today, dear? Is it 'No' you're going to say dear?" But the bagpipe didn't say no. Said the turtle to his darling, "Please excuse me if I stare, But you have the plaidest skin, dear, And you have the strangest hair. If I begged you pretty please, love, Could I give you just one squeeze, love?" And the bagpipe didn't say no. Said the turtle to the bagpipe, "Ah, you love me. Then confess! Let me whisper in your dainty ear and hold you to my chest." And he cuddled her and teased her And so lovingly he squeezed her. And the bagpipe said, "Aaooga." Said the turtle to the bagpipe, "Did you honk or bray or neigh? For 'Aaooga' when your kissed is such a heartless thing to say. Is it that I have offended? Is it that our love is ended?" And the bagpipe didn't say no. Said the turtle to the bagpipe, "Shall i leave you, darling wife? Shall i waddle off to Woedom? Shall i crawl out of your life? Shall I move, depart and go, dear-- Oh, I beg you tell me 'No' dear!" But the bagpipe didn't say no. So the turtle crept off crying and he ne'er came back no more, And he left the bagpipe lying on that smooth and sandy shore. And some night when tide is low there, Just walk up and say, "Hello, there," And politely ask the bagpipe if this story's really so. I assure you, darling children, the bagpipe won't say "No.

HOrrible. The most horrible sound on earth. The sound of death and torture and the agonies of a burning hell," Lisle said. "Damn them. It's bagpipes.

With bagpipes it’s not the tune, it’s the tone.

If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.

Liam was too Scottish-' 'Oh but so Scottish, Bel! Come on, the bagpipes? The interminable quotations from Braveheart? Anyone who's proud of coming from Scotland obviously has issues-

You've never heard of bagpipes?" Cody asked, sounding aghast. "They're as Scottish as kilts and red armpit hair!" "Um . . . yuck?" I said. "That's it." Cody said. "Steelheart has to fall so we can get back to educating children properly. This is an offense against the dignity of my motherland." "Great," Prof said. "I'm glad we now have proper motivation.

Because each nation has its own history of thieving and lies and broken faith, therefore there can only flourish international suspicion and jealousy, and international moral shame becomes anæmic to a degree of ludicrousness. The nation's bagpipe of righteous indignation has so often changed its tune according to the variation of time and to the altered groupings of the alliances of diplomacy, that it can be enjoyed with amusement as the variety performance of the political music hall.

Memory in these incomparable streets, in mosaics of pain and sweetness, was clear to me now, a unity at last. I remembered small and unimportant things from the past: the whispers of roommates during thunderstorms, the smell of brass polish on my fingertips, the first swim at Folly Beach in April, lightning over the Atlantic, shelling oysters at Bowen's Island during a rare Carolina snowstorm, pigeons strutting across the graveyard at St. Philip's, lawyers moving out of their offices to lunch on Broad Street, the darkness of reveille on cold winter mornings, regattas, the flash of bagpipers' tartans passing in review, blue herons on the marshes, the pressure of the chinstrap on my shako, brotherhood, shad roe at Henry's, camellias floating above water in a porcelain bowl, the scowl of Mark Santoro, and brotherhood again.

But they hushed, all at once and quite abruptly, when he stood still at center stage, his arms straight out from his shoulders, and went rigid, and began to tremble with a massive inner dynamism. Nobody present had ever seen anyone stand so still and yet so strangely mobile. He laid his head back until his scalp contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrifying, rumbling up from the ground beneath the floor, and it gathered into a roar that sucked at the hearing itself, and coalesced into a voice that penetrated into the sinuses and finally into the very minds of those hearing it, taking itself higher and higher, more and more awful and beautiful, the originating ideal of all such sounds ever made, of the foghorn and the ship’s horn, the locomotive’s lonesome whistle, of opera singing and the music of flutes and the continuous moanmusic of bagpipes. And suddenly it all went black. And that time was gone forever.

But flirting does not come easily to someone brought up in a remote castle with tartan wallpaper in the bathrooms, bagpipes at dawn and men who wear kilts.

New Rule: Stop calling bagpipes a musical instrument. They're actually a Scottish Breathalyzer test. You blow into one end, and if the sound that comes out the other end doesn't make you want to kill yourself--you're not drunk enough.

Coodcoodak, on his knees, was strangling Draig Bon-Dhu's bagpipes with his hands, while, with his head thrown back, he shouted over the monstrous sounds emerging from the bag, wailed and roared, cackled and croaked, bawled and squawked in a cacophony of sounds made by all known, unknown, domestic, wild and mythical animals.

I pride myself on being able to put up with a lot,” Nellie said. “But bagpipers are pretty much my limit.

Why Scottish people would bother to live on rainy yet rocky land with all of your bagpipes, tartan kilts and shortbreads?”.

Playing the bagpipes – as everyone knows – is the best remedy for depression

I somberly reflected that the history of the Highlands is five hundred years of cruelty and bloodshed followed by two hundred years of way too much bagpipe music.

The piper never knew we were watchers.....Sounds echoed - sounds of a Scottish love song. They echoed through the silence, soft and melancholy, as he kept time with his foot, and the metal of the bagpipes glinted, through faint moonshine, and lifting fog

I love people who play guitars on roofs!" said Rose, hopping along the pavement in one of her sudden happy moods. "Don't you?" "Never knew anyone else who did it!" "Don't you like Tom?" "Of course I do. But I don't know about all the other guitar-on-roof players! They might be really awful people, with just that one good thing about them. Playing guitars on roofs... or bagpipes... Or drums... Sarah would like that, and Saffy could have the bagpipes! Caddy could have a harp.... What about Mum?" "One of those gourds filled with beans!" said Rose at once. "And Daddy could have a grand piano. On a flat roof. With a balcony and pink flowers in pots around the edge! And I'll have a very loud trumpet! What about you?" "I'll just listen," said Indigo.

An old man plays the bagpipes In a gold and silver wood; Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, Are dancing in a crowd.

Cody said. “And David…” “Yeah?” “Y’all ever stick your tongue in my ear, and I’ll shoot ya in yer bagpipes.

bagpipes and electric guitars usually end in tears

Harry heard the final, quavering note from the bagpipe with relief.

Pump up your bagpipes and delight our ears with decent martial music. With your permission, noble Calanthe!” “Oh mother of mine,” whispered the queen to Geralt, raising her eyes to the vault for a moment in silent resignation. But she nodded her permission, smiling openly and kindly.

I passed the time browsing in the windows of the many tourists shops that stand along it, reflecting on what a lot of things the Scots have given the world—kilts, bagpipes, tam-o’-shanters, tins of oatcakes, bright yellow sweaters with big diamond patterns, sacks of haggis—and how little anyone but a Scot would want them. Let

Wildland firefighters do not enjoy the cultural prestige that structural firefighters do. They do not wax their fire engines and cruise down the local parade route, lights flashing; they are not the subject of countless popular books and movies; major politicians do not honor their sacrifices on the Senate floor or from the Rose Garden; they do not have bagpipe bands, fancy equipment, enduring icons, or other signifiers of honor verifying the importance of their activity.

It was long past time to change the subject. “The boy playing the bagpipes is really good,” Prudie said. If only she’d said it in French! Trey made a delighted noise. “Nessa Trussler. A girl. Or something.” Prudie looked at Nessa again. There was, she could see now, a certain plump ambiguity. Maybe Trey wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d said. Maybe Nessa was perfectly comfortable with who she was. Maybe she was admired throughout the school for her musical ability. Maybe pigs could jig.

Quite a few vampires, especially the elders, regarded those who creep through graveyard shadows in batwing capes and fingerless black gloves as an Edinburgh gentleman might look upon a Yankee with a single Scots grandparent who swathes himself in kilts and tartan sashes, prefaces every remark with quotes from Burns or Scott and affects a fondness for bagpipes and haggis.

To tell you the truth,’ said Lady Hardcastle, ‘I’ve never quite understood the attraction of snow. It’s beautiful for the first hour or so, but it soon degenerates into a filthy grey slush. Then it grimes up the hem of one’s dress or freezes overnight and turns even the shortest walk into a treacherous expedition across an arctic hell.’ ‘Hell has ice now?’ I said. ‘Mine does,’ she replied. ‘And bagpipes.

I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the bagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to contend with. Why, not even from the members of his own family did he receive what you could call active encouragement. His father was dead against the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the subject. My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, but he had to give that plan up, because of his sister. She was somewhat religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin the day like that. So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name. People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr. Jefferson's the night before; and would describe how they had heard the victim's shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the corpse. So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchen with all the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect his mother almost to tears. She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea - where the connection came in, she could not explain). Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of the garden, about quarter of a mile from the house, and made him take the machine down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would come to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to tell him all about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes, without being prepared for it, or knowing what it was. If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.

What I was sure of was that the bagpipes had begun to play “Fairytale of New York”—which is basically the best Christmas song ever written.

Wail, wail, screech, wail, honk, honk, squeak went the bagpipes, increasing the captain's already considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop.

A harmonica is easy to carry. Take it out of your hip pocket, knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of tobacco. Now it’s ready. You can do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or chords or melody with rhythm chords. You can mold the music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it full and rounds like an organ, making it as sharp and bitter as the reed pipes of the hills. And you can play it and put it back in your pocket. It is always with you, always in your pocket. And as you play, you learn new tricks, to pinch the tone with your lips, and no one teaches you. You feel around—sometimes in the tent door after supper when the women are washing up. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm. And if you lose it or break it, why, it’s no great loss. You can buy another for a quarter.

He had laid his head back until his scalp had contacted his spine, that far back, and opened his throat, and a sound rose in the auditorium like a wind coming from all four directions, low and terrifying, rumbling up from the ground beneath the floor, and it gathered into a roar that sucked at the hearing itself, and coalesced into a voice that penetrated into the sinuses, and finally into the very minds of those hearing it, taking itself higher and higher, more and more awful and beautiful, the originating ideal of all such sounds ever made, of the foghorn and the ship's horn, the locomotive's lonesome whistle, of opera singing and the music of flutes and the continuous moaning of bagpipes. And suddenly it all went black. And the time was gone forever.

When she found herself alone in the house, she had a record of Highland reels and marches that she played very loud, because for unknown reasons the sound of bagpipes kept the creature at bay.

Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations—whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes—without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.

These things matter to me, Daniel, says the man with six days to live. They are sitting on the porch in the last light. These things matter to me, son. The way the hawks huddle their shoulders angrily against hissing snow. Wrens whirring in the bare bones of bushes in winter. The way swallows and swifts veer and whirl and swim and slice and carve and curve and swerve. The way that frozen dew outlines every blade of grass. Salmonberries thimbleberries cloudberries snowberries elderberries salalberries gooseberries. My children learning to read. My wife's voice velvet in my ear at night in the dark under the covers. Her hair in my nose as we slept curled like spoons. The sinuous pace of rivers and minks and cats. Fresh bread with too much butter. My children's hands when they cup my face in their hands. Toys. Exuberance. Mowing the lawn. Tiny wrenches and screwdrivers. Tears of sorrow, which are the salt sea of the heart. Sleep in every form from doze to bone-weary. Pay stubs. Trains. The shivering ache of a saxophone and the yearning of a soprano. Folding laundry hot from the dryer. A spotless kitchen floor. The sound of bagpipes. The way horses smell in spring. Red wines. Furnaces. Stone walls. Sweat. Postcards on which the sender has written so much that he or she can barely squeeze in the signature. Opera on the radio. Bathrobes, back rubs. Potatoes. Mink oil on boots. The bands at wedding receptions. Box-elder bugs. The postman's grin. Linen table napkins. Tent flaps. The green sifting powdery snow of cedar pollen on my porch every year. Raccoons. The way a heron labors through the sky with such a vast elderly dignity. The cheerful ears of dogs. Smoked fish and the smokehouses where fish are smoked. The way barbers sweep up circles of hair after a haircut. Handkerchiefs. Poems read aloud by poets. Cigar-scissors. Book marginalia written with the lightest possible pencil as if the reader is whispering to the writer. People who keep dead languages alive. Fresh-mown lawns. First-basemen's mitts. Dish-racks. My wife's breasts. Lumber. Newspapers folded under arms. Hats. The way my children smelled after their baths when they were little. Sneakers. The way my father's face shone right after he shaved. Pants that fit. Soap half gone. Weeds forcing their way through sidewalks. Worms. The sound of ice shaken in drinks. Nutcrackers. Boxing matches. Diapers. Rain in every form from mist to sluice. The sound of my daughters typing their papers for school. My wife's eyes, as blue and green and gray as the sea. The sea, as blue and green and gray as her eyes. Her eyes. Her.

After my father’s death, my children were destined to find all Thanksgivings anticlimactic. No holiday meal could compete with a cast of thousands, a kilted bagpiper, and cheese sticks on silver platters.

His head tilted to the side and humor twinkled in his dark eyes. "Turn yer back." 'Are you shy? What's wrong, big guy? Afraid to show me your Scottish bagpipe? Are ye built like a moose and hung like a mouse?

Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the bagpipes, increasing the Captain’s already considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop. That was something he looked forward to as well.

I was in a Highland Regiment, as you know — the Scots Guards — and I’ll tell you something: there is nothing in the world like the sound of the bagpipes to raise a man’s morale, to lift his spirits, and give him strength. However tired and thirsty we were, the bagpipes at the front of the column only had to strike up and within seconds you felt your feet lift off the ground, your step lighten, your spirits rise, and every man-Jack was marching strong, in rhythm to the pipes.

Well, sometimes Reginald tries to ride Waya, and his pipe sticks out when he does it.” In the doorway behind him Rebecca made a choking sound. “His pipe?” she asked faintly. “That’s what Pogue says it’s called. A pipe and bags. Like a bagpipe. All boys have them.

Bagpipe Music' It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw, All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow. Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python, Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison. John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa, Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker, Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey, Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty. It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky, All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi. Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather, Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna. It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture, All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture. The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober, Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over. Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion, Said to the midwife 'Take it away; I'm through with overproduction'. It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh, All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby. Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage, Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage. His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish, Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish. It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible, All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle. It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium, It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums, It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections, Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension. It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet; Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit. The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever, But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

A thin whine filled the air. It whirled and howled through the trees, upsetting the squirrels. A few birds flew off in disgust. The noise danced and skittered round the clearing. It whooped, it rasped, it generally offended. The Captain, however, regarded the lone bagpiper with an indulgent eye.

Accident, agree, bagpipe, blunder, box, chant, desk, digestion, dishonest, examination, femininity, finally, funeral, horizon, increase, infect, obscure, observe, princess, scissors, superstitious, universe, village: those are just some of the everyday words that Chaucer introduced to the language through his poetry.

Sheesh, so melodramatic. He was boring, both in and out of bed. He, what, played the bagpipes, or something? Just because he fulfilled your dream of dating a Scottish lad does not mean you can’t find someone new, who can fulfill other fantasies of yours. Other men will be begging for you to play their pipes in no time.

Thousands of years old, bagpipes are built to amplify what’s already in the heart. If you’re feeling silly, bagpipes make you sillier. If you’re angry, bagpipes bring your blood to a higher boil. And if you’re in grief, even if you’re twelve years old and don’t know you’re in grief, maybe especially if you don’t know, bagpipes can drive you mad.

We piled into the back of his big red Sun-Times truck: Robertson, McHugh, a bagpipe player, assorted other regulars, and Good Sydney Harris. Good Sydney Harris was a Spanish Civil War veteran, not to be confused with the Bad Sydney Harris, the Daily News columnist. Good Sydney had fallen into conversation with a dominatrix named Jake, who joined us.

For a moment or two before the spell took effect, he was aware of all the sounds around him: rain splashing on metal and leather, and running down canvas; horses shuffling and snorting; Englishmen singing and Scotsmen playing bagpipes; two Welsh soldiers arguing over the proper interpretation of a Bible passage; the Scottish captain, John Kincaid, entertaining the American savages and teaching them to drink tea (presumably with the idea that once a man had learnt to drink tea, the other habits and qualities that make up a Briton would naturally follow). Then silence. Men and horses began to disappear, few by few at first, and then more quickly – hundreds, thousands of them vanishing from sight. Great gaps appeared among the close-packed soldiers. A little further to the east an entire regiment was gone, leaving a hole the size of Hanover-square. Where, moments before, all had been life, conversation and activity, there was now nothing but the rain and the twilight and the waving stalks of rye. Strange wiped his mouth because he felt sick.

I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the bagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to contend with.  Why, not even from the members of his own family did he receive what you could call active encouragement.  His father was dead against the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the subject. My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, but he had to give that plan up, because of his sister.  She was somewhat religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin the day like that. So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name.  People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr. Jefferson’s the night before; and would describe how they had heard the victim’s shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the corpse.

Blaine: WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE MUSIC? I HAVE OVER SEVEN THOUSAND CONCERTI IN MY LIBRARY--A SAMPLING OF OVER THREE HUNDRED LEVELS. THE CONCERTI ARE MY FAVORITES, BUT I CAN ALSO OFFER SYMPHONIES, OPERAS, AND A NEARLY ENDLESS SELECTION OF POPULAR MUSIC. YOU MIGHT ENJOY SOME WAY-GOG MUSIC. THE WAY-GOG IS AN INSTRUMENT SOMETHING LIKE THE BAGPIPE. IT IS PLAYED ON ONE OF THE UPPER LEVELS OF THE TOWER. Eddie: Have you got any Z.Z. Top? Blaine: YES INDEED. HOW ABOUT A LITTLE 'TUBE-SNAKE BOOGIE,' EDDIE OF NEW YORK? Eddie: On second, thought, I'll pass.

He held his crotch, his knees bent and his kilt showing he wore nothing beneath it. She shuffled from one foot to the other as she stared at his Scottish bagpipe. Bet he could hit a lot of high notes with that thing. "You...you startled me when you grabbed me like that." "Well, ye needna be afraid now. I couldna molest ya, even if I wanted to, which I dinna.I'm betting foreplay with ye would be like grabbing hold of an electrical wire while sitting in a tub of water." He groaned and cussed some more. "Hell, I bet yer vagina is lined with shark's teeth.

Vain would be the attempt to describe Lady Juliana's horror and amazement at the hideous sounds that for the first time assailed her ear.... "It's impossible the bagpipe could frighten anybody," said Miss Jacky, in a high key; "nobody with common sense could be frightened at a bagpipe."... Mrs. Douglas here mildly interposed, and soothed down the offended pride of the Highlanders by attributing Lady Juliana's agitation entirely to surprise. The word operated like a charm; all were ready to admit that it was a surprising thing when heard for the first time.

He raced the motor, urging the car to decide which way to turn onto the street. “Come on, man . . . be serious.” Gearshift hot as a poker, and ears ringing . . . finally, palm to face to somehow press away the ringing—I seemed to feel a tendoned hand playfully squeezing my knee, and a bagpipe’s whirling skirl wheezing in my throat—and discovers that he is weeping again; squeezing, wheezing and rattling the scene . . . and it is then—“Or if you can’t be serious,” I scolded, “at least be rational; who could possibly in this wasted world . . . ?”—that he remembers the postcard lying on the porch.

Chris and I talked about the ceremony on the way home. “There were a lot of people there,” I said. “I would like a small ceremony.” “For a funeral?” “Well, yeah.” “I want a big funeral,” he said. “I’m gone, right? Blow it out.” He wanted bagpipes, music, and a large crowd. We talked a bit more. “Do you still want to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery?” I asked. We’d discussed the possibility several times; it had been among his dearest wishes. “I don’t know if I feel that way anymore,” he confessed. “Why is that?” “I just want to be wherever is best for y’all.” I was so taken aback by that. But it stayed with me.

NOTHING was as discouraging as seeing the buff guy in the kilt coming toward me along the top of that hotel bar. His skin was spray-tanned to a shade of orange that matched the leather of his sporran. He’d leapt onto the bar like it was nothing, and strode the full length in a cloud of baby oil scent so thick it even cut through the smell of beer in the air. He wore nothing but a tiny kilt that I’m quite sure no self-respecting Scotsman would blow his nose into, and a plaid tam atop a vivid orange wig. I think my heart broke a little at the sight of that wig. The stripper pranced down the bar, jig-stepping over glasses to the sound of an electro-bagpipe drone.

The first home I remember in Copper Cliff was 11 Evans Road, a tiny place: kitchen, bathroom off of that, a “front room” or parlor with two bedrooms squeezed onto the side. It was here, at the kitchen table, that I had my first lessons on the bagpipe. My dad was teaching my brother Ranald, who, at the time was eleven, and I was four. The two of them would sit at the kitchen table, music book opened, sounding away on the practice chanters. Family lore has it that I was a most annoying kid at these times, wanting to get in on the strange but enticing action. Apparently as a result of being repeatedly rebuffed or ignored, I would crawl under the table and from this ideally placed launching pad, would deliver a “lower punch,” as it came to be known, to the delicate regions of dad and brother. This finally led to their capitulation and I was allowed to join them at the table. I was ultimately outfitted with a very small child’s practice chanter, a family heirloom passed down through dad’s sister Betty, a piper herself who had died many years before in childbirth.

The area around the fifty-yard line had been set up with a stage and seating. The kids held my hands as we went to the elevator, ready to go out. "Can you believe we're in Cowboys Stadium for Daddy?" I asked them, trying to rally my spirits as well as theirs. "He would be so blown away." I think they nodded. The elevator opened. We got in. The car went down, and suddenly we were walking onto the runway that led to the field. Pay attention to what’s around you. This is unbelievable! The bagpipers began to move, the tap of their shoes on the concrete apron echoing loudly. The cadence centered me. The pipes began to mourn and my spirit swelled, the music propelling me forward. The casket was marched out and placed front and center. The pallbearers and Navy honor guard stood at attention. I was moving in a cocoon of numbing grief and overwhelming awe. There was a prayer, speeches--each moment moved me in a different way. The easy jokes, the devotional hymns, each had its own effect. I began to float. When I’d asked people to talk about Chris at the ceremony, I’d made a point of reminding them of his humor and asking if possible to add some lighter touches to their speeches, roasting him, even; it was all so Chris. But now some of the light jokes tripped a wire: Don’t talk bad about him! Don’t you dare! Then in the next moment I’d realize he would have been leading the laughs, and it was all good again. I couldn’t force a smile, though.

Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops. When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by. As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop. I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, "Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbs" Deep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea.

Iain MacGregor,” she whispered longingly, looking up. The woods were quiet. Strips of moonlight shone through tree limbs that reached like surreal black fingertips across her vision. A single tear slid down her cheek. She touched her mouth, imagining his kiss. Taking a small pocket knife out of her cargo pants, she looked about. A mystic had once told her that if she left pieces of herself around while she lived, it would expand her haunting territory when she died. Jane wasn’t sure she believed in sideshow magic tricks—or the Old Magick as the mystic had spelled it on her sign. She had no idea what had possessed her to talk to the palm reader and ask about ghosts. Still, just in case, she was leaving her stamp all over the woods. She cut her palm and pressed it to a nearby tree under a branch. Holding the wound to the rough bark stung at first, but then it made her feel better. This forest wouldn’t be a bad eternity. The sound of running feet erupted behind her and she stiffened. No one ever came out here at night. She’d walked the woods hundreds of times. Her mind instantly went to the creepy girl ghosts chanting by the stream. “Whoohoo!” Jane whipped around, startled as a streak of naked flesh sprinted past her. The Scottish voice was met with loud cheers from those who followed him. “Water’s this way, lads, or my name isn’t Raibeart MacGregor, King of the Highlands!” Another naked man dashed through the forest after him. “It smells of freedom.” Jane stayed hidden in the branches, undetected, with her hand pressed to the bark. “Aye, freedom from your proper Cait,” Raibeart answered, his voice coming through the dark where he’d disappeared into the trees. “Murdoch, stop him before he reaches town. Cait will not teleport ya out of jail again,” a third man yelled, not running quite so fast. “Raibeart, ya are goin’ the wrong way!” “Och, Angus, my Cait canna live without me,” Murdoch, the second streaker, answered. “She’ll always come to my rescue.” “I said stop him, Murdoch, we’re new to this place.” Angus skidded to a stop and lifted his jaw, as if sensing he was being watched. He looked in her direction and instantly covered his manhood as his eyes caught Jane’s shocked face in the tree limbs. “Oh, lassie.” “Oh, naked man,” Jane teased before she could stop herself. “That I am,” Angus answered, “but there is an explanation for it.” “I don’t think some things need explained,” Jane said.

It must be disheartening work learning a musical instrument. You would think that Society, for its own sake, would do all it could to assist a man to acquire the art of playing a musical instrument. But it doesn’t! I knew a young fellow once, who was studying to play the bagpipes, and you would be surprised at the amount of opposition he had to contend with. Why, not even from the members of his own family did he receive what you could call active encouragement. His father was dead against the business from the beginning, and spoke quite unfeelingly on the subject. My friend used to get up early in the morning to practise, but he had to give that plan up, because of his sister. She was somewhat religiously inclined, and she said it seemed such an awful thing to begin the day like that. So he sat up at night instead, and played after the family had gone to bed, but that did not do, as it got the house such a bad name. People, going home late, would stop outside to listen, and then put it about all over the town, the next morning, that a fearful murder had been committed at Mr. Jefferson’s the night before; and would describe how they had heard the victim’s shrieks and the brutal oaths and curses of the murderer, followed by the prayer for mercy, and the last dying gurgle of the corpse. So they let him practise in the day-time, in the back-kitchen with all the doors shut; but his more successful passages could generally be heard in the sitting-room, in spite of these precautions, and would affect his mother almost to tears. She said it put her in mind of her poor father (he had been swallowed by a shark, poor man, while bathing off the coast of New Guinea — where the connection came in, she could not explain). Then they knocked up a little place for him at the bottom of the garden, about quarter of a mile from the house, and made him take the machine down there when he wanted to work it; and sometimes a visitor would come to the house who knew nothing of the matter, and they would forget to tell him all about it, and caution him, and he would go out for a stroll round the garden and suddenly get within earshot of those bagpipes, without being prepared for it, or knowing what it was. If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad. There is, it must be confessed, something very sad about the early efforts of an amateur in bagpipes.

When you think about it, playing the bagpipes is a lot like wrestling an octopus.

When a note stays unchanged for an eternity, it's unexpected, suggesting either plainchant, willful modernist contrarianism, or bagpipes.

The instrument, which had a name that sounded like someone trying to dislodge a chicken bone from their throat, apparently filled the same role in space as bagpipes did on Earth—a sound everyone hated to love and loved to hate. It didn’t manage quite the edge bagpipes did, though, more like a hurdy-gurdy crossed with a zither. It was the kind of instrument that Ren-Faire people would adopt and tote from festival to festival with an air of inscrutable elitism.

This here is Irish whiskey. Like the bagpipes, the Irish invented it but the Scots stole the idea and got rich on the back of it.

official instrument of the Half Kingdom. The bombard was a double-reeded relative of the oboe, but lacked the warmth and smoothness of its cousin. Listening to a group of them made you yearn for the joyful pleasure of being slammed in the head by a dozen bagpipes.

Half an hour later we picked up the first sounds of the adults beginning their evening migration downstairs, then the first bleaty notes of the accompanying bagpipes. For the next two hours the adults would be held captive in the Dinner Dungeon, forced to sit around that long table, forced to

The Castle Of Fear by Stewart Stafford The ghost sweated out from battlements, Appeared bleeding into full-bodied shape, The riddle of this phantom's raison d'être, Opaque as the spectre walked transparently. The armour that clad the body blinded eyes, The bagpipes it carried underarm deafened, The steely gaze froze the viewer on the spot, The sour odour it emitted made all nauseous. The wraith's left foot piteously dragged behind, Shuffling moans of pain, trailing the footsteps, Banshee shrieks, harrowing to all that heard, Dawn drained the strength, and it took flight. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

To be fair, my whale song did sound a bit like one was mating with a bagpipe.

calliope downstairs in the rotunda started up, running the carousel. It sounded like a dragon that had swallowed a corps of bagpipers and was now trying to throw them back up, in no particular order to no particular tune.

Then, as I was waiting, I saw a kite come up over the valley, and I followed it with my eyes as it passed above me into the sunlight high overhead, and I asked myself why, after all, the world was not A Thousand and One Nights, the way it was when I was seven. I heard bagpipes, the goats bells, and voices carrying across the slope of roofs and the valley, and I asked myself this question many times over as I watched the kite in the air. We call them flying dragons in Sicily, as somehow they embody China or Persia in the Sicilian sky, with their sapphire and opal colors and their geometry, and watching it I couldn`t help but ask myself why, really, the faith one has at seven doesn`t last forever.

Saturday was the day of preparation for the funeral. Jackie had issued personal instructions that everyone was to walk behind the casket on the way to the funeral. She also wanted bagpipers to be at the graves and play over the hills—Air Force bagpipers. Arrangements were made to bring the Black Watch bagpipers. The Irish Guard was to come over.

A Jewish Native American half-breed orphan playing bagpipes wasn't the sort of impression I ever wanted to make

So there is nothing inherently subversive about pleasure. On the contrary, as Karl Marx recognized, it is a thoroughly aristocratic creed. The traditional English gentleman was so averse to unpleasurable labour that he could not even be bothered to articulate properly. Hence the patrician slur and drawl, Aristotle believed that being human was something you had to get good at through constant practice, like learning Catalan or playing the bagpipes; whereas if the English gentleman was virtuous, as he occasionally deigned to be, his goodness was purely spontaneous. Moral effort was for merchants and clerks

Following Big Boss Lady’s dictate to write about offbeat places in Edinburgh—I found Arkangel and Felon, an eclectic clothing boutique, the Voodoo Rooms, a chic fringe bar with a burlesque show, and Angels with Bagpipes, a bijou wine bar on the Royal Mile.

Draconic singing can best be compared to a concert of bagpipe drones (no chanter, just the drones), occasionally interrupted by a solo from a lighthouse foghorn. At

Captain Harald Biscay rubbed his graying temples, staring deep in thought at the vast star field showing on the large navigation display on the bridge. It had been a pretty rough few days for him. Of all the things he’d seen in his travels through the universe, not many rated worthy of being remembered. Of the few examples of items Captain Biscay rated that highly, when he was a young man, his uncle would often play the bagpipes at strange hours of the night – shortly before being put in a ‘home’. That rated a mention.

I would actually go the funeral of a stranger just to hear a bagpiper play.

He sounded like a set of bagpipes that had just been stabbed. His

Raindrops, thunder, crickets and monkeys, footsteps, heartbeats, birdsong, trains. There’s the sound of a mother kissing her child, saying, “Be a good boy,” and all manner of songs: classical, drums, bagpipes, yelling, Pygmy girls chanting, Chuck Berry. The vinyl pops. The songs pile up. It keeps snowing. Mr. Bell announces each new track. Russian, Bulgarian, pan pipes, Mexican, Azerbaijani. Stravinsky. One song, just a man with a guitar. The man hums and moans. “Blind Willie Johnson. ‘Dark Was the Night.

Beware the ideas of March... just one little letter changes the whole meaning. I love the way worms can do that.

Her hand fell away, along with her smile. After a final wistful glance at his men, she turned back to her food. And he fled like an Englishman at the first blast of Highland bagpipes.

Aegean Islands 1940-41 Where white stares, smokes or breaks, Thread white, white of plaster and of foam, Where sea like a wall falls; Ribbed, lionish coast, The stony islands which blow into my mind More often than I imagine my grassy home; To sun one's bones beside the Explosive, crushed-blue, nostril-opening sea (The weaving sea, splintered with sails and foam, Familiar of famous and deserted harbours, Of coins with dolphins on and fallen pillars.) To know the gear and skill of sailing, The drenching race for home and the sail-white houses, Stories of Turks and smoky ikons, Cry of the bagpipe, treading Of the peasant dancers; The dark bread The island wine and the sweet dishes; All these were elements in a happiness More distant now than any date like '40, A. D. or B. C., ever can express.

I wanted to be an Author...Now I'm an Author, Marketing apprentice, Jack of all trades and master of none!

Modern representations often depict pirates playing the accordion or some variant of it (also featured in Sea of Thieves), but those instruments did not exist until the 1820s. Much more likely, if they played anything at all, would be contemporary European instruments such as lutes or early guitars, viols, recorders, flutes, hurdy-gurdies, and bagpipes, among many others.

The pipe-music filled the room with sound, until it seemed that the throbbing walls must burst asunder- or the very roof of the inn fly off, to release the pressure. The candle-light pranced around the room in a crazy reel of will-o’-the-wisps, distorted by the clouds of dust melting down from the ceiling like Hebridean mist. The Highlanders looked at each other in wild surmise, then started smashing tankards against the walls in time with the swirling strains of music, sending ale cascading up into the air, spattering the ceiling and soaking the revellers’ hair and plaids.

There is a species of taverns of a lower denomination, which, however, are sometimes resorted to by good company, when disposed to enjoy a frolic. These are the oyster-cellars, a sort of ale-houses, where the proper entertainment of the house is oysters, punch and porter. Most of the oyster-houses have a sort of long room, where a small party may enjoy the exercise of a country dance, to the music of a fiddle, harp, or bag-pipe. But the equivocal character of these houses of resort prevents them from being visited by any of the fair sex who seek the praise of delicacy, or pique themselves on propriety of conduct.

I obsessed over which Ani DiFranco song to add to Lainie’s tape. When we first started dating, I had no idea who Ani DiFranco was. Lainie, shocked to baby-dyke hell, made it her mission to convert me. And yo, it took a lot of work. Ani was crazy white girl shit. Her music evoked images of Irish bagpipes and stray cats howling in heat. Her garbled singing voice made my eyes water, and I couldn’t ever be sure of what she was singing about. But with enough practice and encouragement from Lainie, I broke down Ani’s gay girl code and understood that I too was just a little girl in a training bra trying to figure shit out.

Inexplicable by Stewart Stafford I ran into Bigfoot, Or John Paul Yeti, Told me of aliens, Found by SETI. E.T.s kidnapped me, And I lost two hours, Hurts to sit down now, They never sent flowers. Nessie gives the hump, Or is it a boat’s wake? So proud to be Scottish, Bagpipes in the loch/lake. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

I wasn’t sure what any of this meant. What I was sure of was that the bagpipes had begun to play “Fairytale of New York” – which is basically the best Christmas song ever written.

When storm-clouds rumble in the sky and June showers come down, the moist east wind comes marching over the heath to blow its bagpipes amongst the bamboos. The crowds of flowers come out of a sudden, from nobody knows where, and dance upon the grass in wild glee.

Carlos liked the Somalis. “Men in skirts killing each other over matters of clan,” he said. “People call it barbaric savagery. Add bagpipes and a golf course, and they call it Scotland.” And, like good Scots Presbyterians, the Somalis can be religious fanatics when they feel like it. Sayyid Muhammad ‘Abdille Hassan, known as the “Mad Mullah,” fought the British Empire to a standstill in northern Somalia in the Dervish Wars of 1900 to 1920. The British were forced to withdraw to coastal garrisons, causing famine among the Somali clans who were not allied with the Mullah. An estimated one-third of the population of British Somaliland died during the Dervish Wars, a period that Somalis call “the Time of Eating Filth.” The

I have no doubt that you're as Scottish as... as a leprechaun playing bagpipes while riding a unicorn thought a field of thistle." Keir looked up long enough to tell her dourly, "Leprechauns are Irish.