England had bagpipes BEFORE Scotland, say experts — and they’re making a comeback
ENGLAND had bagpipes before Scotland, say experts — and they’re making a comeback.
Early versions of the instrument were played here hundreds of years before they became a favourite north of the border.
In their heyday, regional pipes — believed to be used against witchcraft — were found in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Worcester and Lancashire.
A paper published by a Glasgow University researcher found the word “bagpipes” first appeared in English texts in 1288.
Yet the first evidence of them in Scotland are 15th century carvings in Rosslyn Chapel and Melrose Abbey.
Now 20-year-old folk musician Nicholas Konradsen has turned his family’s living room in Louth, Lincs, into a traditional bagpipe workshop — using long-lost blueprints and images from stained glass windows in local churches.
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He played his first set to shoppers in the town centre and is now working on a second.
He said: “People are often surprised when they hear the Lincolnshire bagpipes.
“They see me blowing up a bagpipe and stick their fingers in their ears. But as soon as I start playing it’s, ‘Wow, I never knew bagpipes could sound like that.’ ”
Lincolnshire pipes seem to have died out by 1850.
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Nicholas said: “I’m very proud to be able to bring them back to Lincolnshire. It’s quite special.
“Producing instruments from scratch makes them even more special.
“You get a deeper understanding of the personality of the instrument.”
Lincolnshire pipes were immortalised by Shakespeare in lines by Falstaff in Henry IV — when he tells the future Henry V he feels as sorrowful as “the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe”.
There is also evidence of bagpipes as an English instrument in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400.