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~ Universe of Bagpipes ~  |
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~ Universe of Bagpipes ~ |
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Our man in England, piper Sean "Hawkeye" Stewart, has discovered a charming and important carving of a piper in a church, "Beverley Minster," in the market town of Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire. We use the term "discovered" because while the existence of the carving itself is generally known, the piper was unrecognized. Sean, his eye sharpened by several years of searching for images of bagpipes on postage stamps (an obsession instigated by myself, as discussed on this web site and in the New York Times), spotted the carving virtually in his own back yard. It is one of 68 carvings on an equal number of "misericord" (mercy) seats in the church. (A misericord is a folding chair which has a little shelf on the underside of the seat, so that when standing for long periods, in front of the folded-up seat, one's, um, afterparts have a bit of a place to settle. Seems like cheating, somehow, but perhaps it was either that or put up with the thud of falling bodies during long services...) We also use the term "important" advisedly. There are quite a few wood and stone carvings of bagpipes and pipers to be found in the churches and cathedrals of the British Isles, most dating back hundreds of years. Some are well known and have been used by modern pipemakers in replicating early pipes, because in many cases these carvings are just about the only thing we know about the pipes depicted in them. But in spite of much scholarly work dealing with cathedral and church carvings in general, it seems that some bagpipe carvings, like this one, have been overlooked or misidentified. Curiously, at least two other pipers are found in the misericord carvings of Beverly Minster. That this one was missed is perhaps in part due to the blowpipe being absent - the wood has lost a chip right between the bag and the piper's mouth - and in part because the carving is incorrectly described in an unpublished but circulated reference work, which identifies the figure not as a piper but rather as a woman applying medication to a sheep's hooves.  Piper on misericord carving discovered by Sean Stewart The carving dates to 1520. Photo Copyright 2005 Sean Stewart Two things have conspired to create a persistent fog that obscures the view of early bagpipes. One is that contemporary artists and writers did not often include bagpipes in their works, because in most cultures and times these were secular instruments of the common folk, a group in which the patrons of art and literature, who paid the artists' bills, had little interest. The other factor, to some extent a result of this lack of historical information, is that many modern "experts" in fields that should include formal studies of bagpipes understand neither the instruments nor their former cultural importance. This sort of institutional ignorance is self-perpetrating; without solid and accessible reference works, the safe thing to do when writing about early music and/or early musical instruments has been, and to some extent remains, to ignore bagpipes altogether.  Sean Stewart, who unearthed this carving, writes: While we bemoan the scarcity of organized information about early bagpipes, a pleasant side effect is that anyone who keeps a sharp lookout, as Sean Stewart did in this instance, has a chance of turning up something new. Should you make such a discovery, let us know and we'll toss it in the pot here! ~ Oliver Seeler, December 2005 |