Book dossier

Traditional Gaelic bagpiping, 1745-1945

by John G. Gibson

John Gibson pieces together the history of eighteenth-century West Highland pipers and piping and documents their changing social conditions after the suppression of the last Jacobite rebellion. Challenging the conventional view that the decline of piping was caused by the ban of Culloden pipes and pipers by the Disarming Act in 1746, Gibson reveals that traditional dance and bagpiping continued to exist in the Highlands until at least the mid-nineteenth century. He argues that the dramatic depopulation of the Highlands in the nineteenth century was one of the main reasons for the decline of Gaelic piping. Gibson follows the emigration of the Highland Scots from the Old World to the New - to where an echo of traditional Gaelic music can still be heard.