bagpipe facts

• No other musical instrument looks or sounds like a bagpipe. When it is played, a queer drone serves as a background for the tune.
• The term bagpipe is equally correct in the singular or plural, although in the English language, pipers most commonly talk of "pipes."
• The bagpipe gets its name because a bag filled with air furnishes air for the pipes that make the sound.
• The most common method of supplying air to the bag is by blowing into a blowpipe, or blowstick.
• The bagpipe is a very old instrument. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all had it. Today the bagpipe is thought of as the instrument of the Scotch Highlanders.
• An innovation, dating from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, is the use of a bellows to supply air.
• A Highland bagpipe has five tubes. The player blows into the bag through one. He plays the tune on another. The other three tubes make the droning sound.
• Bagpipes initially provided music for dancing in most cultures.