With over 3000 years of history, and a spread from India to Scotland and from northern Africa to Scandinavia, the bagpipe has picked up an astounding variety of connotations. Some of these have turned into urban legends, without factual basis yet part of an established narrative, and with wide circulation.

One of these is the banning of the bagpipes: the notion that bagpipes were banned in Scotland in the period 1747-82, dealing a serious blow to piping and Gaelic culture in general. A Disarming Act came into force in 1746, on the basis of the previous 1716 Act (itself a response to the Jacobite rising of 1715). To this Act a new passage was added in 1748, “restraining the Use of the Highland Dress”; this included tartan, plaid, philibeg, and similar garments. These Acts and their amendments regarding Highland dress gave rise to the myth that the bagpipe was included in the proscription. There is, however, no actual official documentation declaring the bagpipe (for all that they were often referred to as an “instrument of war”) banned or prohibited. Poets active in Gaelic at the time, such as Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, Iain Mac Codrum, and Rob Donn MacKay, though writing openly against the Disarming Act and its effects, never so much as hint at the possibility of the bagpipe being proscribed, or its use declining at all. (Actual bannings are recorded outside Scotland only: e.g. in German-occupied Poland during World War II.)

The entrenched commonplace of the waning of the piping tradition, and of the banning of bagpipes, was probably strengthened by episodes such as the hanging of piper James Reid, in York. He had been captured in 1745, and was accused of treason for having taken part in the Jacobite rebellions. Also, there were ambiguous statements like those of the early-19th-century Edinburgh piper Donald MacDonald, whose writings mentioned that “after the Battle of Culloden the Bag-Pipe was almost completely laid aside. In this interval much of the Music was neglected or lost.” Part of the myth may also derive from the second introductory article in Patrick MacDonald’s 1784 A collection of Highland vocal airs, by John Ramsay of Ochtertyre. His knowledge of Highland culture came from little more than his readings of Ossian. Consequently, his ill-informed but lastingly influential essay On the influence of poetry and music upon the Highlanders described a supposedly moribund, artless Highland culture and song.

Another common belief is that the bagpipe was employed by the Roman Army, and that this was the precursor to the military aspect of bagpipes which is so prominent in Scottish piping today. It is true that the bagpipe was known to the Romans – the most commonly-accepted theory is that the instrument reached Britain with the Roman invasions – and notable characters in Roman history are known to have been proficient pipers (utricularii). There are however no documents which mention the presence of the bagpipe on the Roman battlefield, or that it was in any way connected with the martial sphere at that time.

The Roman narrative was strong in Scottish patriot history, which often identified with the Republican-Roman values of stoicism, valour, and heroic stalwartness (as opposed to the decadence and frivolity of Imperial Rome). In the bagpipe world, this kind of discourse was picked up in songs such as The garb of old Gaul: the parallel with the “fire of old Rome” celebrates the valour and honour of heroes past and present, as “Our loud-sounding pipe bears the true martial strain, So do we the old Scottish valour retain”. The performative side of piping was also influenced by the Roman discourse, and accounts such as Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond’s in his A journey through England and Scotland in the Hebrides in 1784 show how some of the performances at piping competitions were so clearly war-inspired that even an unaccustomed viewer would understand the intentions of the players. Even the performer as described by Saint-Fond was dressed “in his costume of Roman soldier”.