Article: Meet the English musician whose bagpipes are a vital part of his Leicester family tree

THE bagpipes of merry England ... it doesn't quite have the right ring, does it, to our ears and assumptions attuned to pipes played by men in tartan? Yet England once resounded with its own bagpipes - in fact, the earliest written record of bagpipes in Britain comes from English court records in 1334, around a century before their appearance in written accounts north of the Border.

In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer wrote of his Miller that "a baggepipe well coude he blowe and sowne". Shakespeare referred to "the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe", while Henry VIII, when not decapitating wives or dissolving monasteries, was a piping adept. As late as 1732, one chronicler recorded "a very ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles:

 
 
Newsweek Harper's Magazine The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Crain's Chicago Business PRNewswire Pediatric News The Nation Advertising Age The Economist (US) A FREE trial gives you access to over 80 million articles! Access over 6,500 publications with a FREE trial!