My letter to the Editor of Chanter (Spring 2009) on the subject of murophobia and the potential damage to bagpipes caused by rats!
Dear John,
I was mildly perturbed by our Presidents letter in the last issue of Chanter with the disturbing photos showing the damage caused to his drone ends by enthusiastic and hungry mice. I caution him, however, not to become too obsessed with this phenomena or he might develop musophobia …... or worse still, murophobia.
Up here in the Scottish borders we have an historical precedent for murophobia in a town piper of the 18th century. Pete Stewart has unearthed this and included in his excellent new book , Welcome Home My Dearie (Piping in the Scottish Lowlands 1690-1900).
This is the sad tale of Robert Hastie (1705-1794?), piper of Jedburgh, who lived in terror of rats attacking his pipes.
‘Piper Hastie wi’ his drones’
Robert Hastie, John’s nephew, and number 6 on Thomas Scott’s list of border pipers, succeeded his uncle as piper of Jedburgh, and remained in office until his death at the age of 89. In his Autobiography, John Younger, shoemaker of St Boswells, gives a remarkably vivid picture of the old man going about his rounds. John’s mother, he says, had taken to going to work for a shilling a day shearing at the harvest. On her second day she wanted to know why only a sixpence of her first day’s wages remained. John’s father explained:
I was this morning sae dowie my lane, an’ sae glad when Piper Hastie drappit in wi’ his drones, an’ his auld haveral stories, which were mair amusin’ than even the din o’ his pipes, that I enticed him to sit a’ day, an’ couldna offer him less than that sixpence. I have aye been fond o’ the pipes sin’ that rascal Jamie Allan, the grand Northumberland piper, used to come about Oxenham when I was ‘prentice there.
John’s mother took the point when his father told her that he had bespoke Hastie’s company for the next day, and agreed to keep him company herself instead. John goes on to give a general description of Hastie’s life:
[He] was obliged to eke out a living by playing at kirns and other country festivals, his salary being only £2 per annum, with livery … He wore a coat with red neck and sleeves, gun-kneed breeches, large brass shoe-buckles nearly the size of your head and a three-cocked hat. Thus, with the pipes, he cut an alarming figure on his sallies out to the country villages. On first sight of him the children screamed with affright, then would sigh themselves down into the quietude of secret suspicion until, catching up some idea of the ludicrous they would almost go wrongheaded with laughter. I can yet almost feel the horrific grunt of his drones when he began to inflate his bag with wind, which seemed like a stuck pig snorting for breath.
Younger goes on to tell the following story:
It was ten at night; [Hastie] had left the Place-House (where good old Mr Scott of bagpipe sympathy used to lodge him), in dudgeon and terror of rats, of which rats he gave us an alarming account … [how he had lain affeared of the rats nibbling at him, and swore he had seen one white ‘Muscovy’ rat run across the room] and that his huge wind-bag must have been eaten to tatters had he remained all night, as it was of leather, and just newly mellowed with best goose grease, the ‘dreepings’ of some election dinner , and no cloth cover at the time.
After he had bolted from the Place-house kitchen, Mr Scott’s lads, who, by means of a white kitten, had raised the rat alarm, followed him down and after an hour of his roaring pipes and clatter at our fireside, entreated him to return, but he would have none of it, so feared by the rats had he been. So John’s mother made up a bed in their house
Laying the old piper in her bed-clothes, which were kept sacred to hospitality, he rolled up his pipes, bag and all in the blankets above him for fear of the rats of his imagination ... which bag imparted that election-dinner stain to her best white unlaids, which never could by any chemical process then in the knowledge of the country practice, be taken out.
One can pity poor old Robert Hastie, well past his piping best, with his horrifically grunting drones...... scaring all the children with his vast brass shoe buckles and living his days in constant terror of rats eating his huge wind-bag bag, which he had sweetened the dreepings of goose grease from some election dinner.
Let all modern day pipers understandable caution about unwarranted attacks from rodents not turn to such a degree of unbridled terror. This terror can only be further fuelled by alarmist talk of the 'third monkey' phenomena. Such ill- considered scaremongering might ultimately have all pipers rushing to the ocean to wash our bagpipes in sea water before playing them. And we don't want that, do we?
Let the example of Robert Hastie be a warning to pipers to remain cautious and calm at all times.
Yours aye,
Julian Goodacre. President of The Lowland and Border Pipers' Society.