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November 2000 - Bagpipes BAGPIPESCool evening air drifts down the bluff carrying the scent of pines. A few clouds play out across the western sky - chiffon in shades of apricot and pink. The lake is stained gold, placid as gilded glass. Agate and quartz, gneiss and chert gleam at water's edge - reds, pinks, orange, the blue-greens of iron. I hoist the large elk bag with its load of drones, chanter and blow-piece and drape it over my left shoulder. A clean wash rag cushions my clavicle.I haven't played yet today and the reeds are dry and cold. Standing erect, I blow into the bag to fill it then push the sound out the drones. I know the wail carries over the lake and down the beach, but I pretend I'm the only one around for miles. I have a mission. I play these pipes in a week's time to a special audience, my dying father. The instrument warms up enough for me to tune the drones. The two tenors whine on low A. The bass drone hits one octave lower. I sound the E note and enter Amazing Grace. The beach fronts my parents' property on Burt Lake, northern Michigan. My mother came here every summer from the time she was twelve in 1922, when her father purchased the land. He chose one mile of lake front on the east side of the lake, as prevailing southwest winds discourage insects, and bought 500 acres of back land to go with it - birch and beech, maple, oak, hemlock and hornbeam, fragrant cedar, tamarack, quaking aspen and pine. My grandfather built the two-story cottage on the bluff overlooking the lake and my grandparents and mother came up each summer and stayed until fall. The summer life was rustic, still is - no running water, baths in the lake or sponge baths, outdoor toilet and indoor chamber pots; no electricity until 1960, which meant kerosene lamps, ice in the ice box. Coming up for the summer involved packing clothes for warm weather and for cold - even in August the nighttime temperatures sometimes dip into the forties. Like New Englanders, we referred to the place as "camp." As my grandparents aged and my own parents were building their family, the summer traffic changed. I don't believe my grandparents came up at all after I was born in 1950. Some time before that, grandfather Clyde sold a half mile of lake front to the south of our place. This was a spite-driven action: an adamant atheist, he could not bear my mother's conversion to Catholicism. Somehow this was punishment. But he left the remaining land to her and since my father was, like my grandfather, a professor, we came each June and left each September. The summer of the pipes marks the fifth one since my father and mother got too old to come up. The sandy beach I'm standing on is mostly my father's doing. It is a pebble beach, but by piling large rocks in a thick line from shore to the end of the dock, grains of sand on in-corning waves are dropped against the breakwater and accumulate. We then have sand for swimming and sunning. Today however, I wear my river sandals. The pipes add weight and press me onto the underlying rocks. I walk up and down the shore as I play. I like to feel the cadence the pipers in a march adopt-back and shoulders straight, the step rhythmical and regular, the imaginary kilt swinging back and forth above my knees. A chick-a-dee calls in the woods and I think of the time my father hand-fed the saucy song birds. He knew how to suck in his lips and call them down from the pines. First one, then several flitted from branch to branch closer to him and his alluring sound. He filled the feeder each day with seed and called to them as he poured it in. They grew used to this ritual and flew close in their curiosity and greed for the sunflower seeds, tiny black and white morsels a match to their own feathers. My father took to holding the seeds in his large hand out to them, still and steady. One day one of them took the offering - landed on his open palm, sharp feet tickling as it bobbed to pick up the seed, a bright eye fastened on my father's face. Just as quickly, it flew off leaving a sense of awe that lasted for the rest of my dad's life. I feel the presence of both my parents in this place. The memories have smells here-in the pines, the wood pile, the shin-tangle growing in sunny spots, bacon frying on the wood cook-stove, the musty window seats where blankets, sheets and towels are stored, the handmade tool cupboard smelling of leather, old metal, peanuts for the chipmunks. I hear my parents in the sounds: the ashes of yesterday's fire scraped through the stove's grate and the crackle of day's first fire. I hear them in the records from the 20's that they danced to when young. We play them every summer on the same 1910 wind-up victrola that they used. Memories hide in the dusty covers of hundreds of murder mysteries, the favorite Rex Stouts and Agatha Christies marked in father's handwriting at the back, "good one, surprised me again. A.J.". I remember my father in the splash of cold water hauled from the pump-hear him call out that fresh spring water was on the table. I remember my mother in the endless sand swept from the floors, the cheerful curtains at the windows, the collection of antique choppers on the wall behind the stove, huckleberry pies in the oven, one side too dark from the uneven heat. And although I can't divest either parent from this place, I play for my dad alone. He's the Scot. And when I hear Scot, I hear bagpipes. The Great Highland Bagpipes, or Piob Mor, were pipes of war. When the Highlanders weren't fighting invaders from sea or land, they fought each other - clan against clan. Sometimes during dinner my father gave us snatches out of Scottish history. I was stirred by the old tales. Never mind that our ancestor, James MacAlpin, left Scotland in 1776 to fight on the side of the English, and that he was booted out of The States to live in Canada, or that his descendants worked their way back down into the Northeastern states, that our family's steps on Scottish soil were hundreds of years cold. The stories connected me to my great-greats all the way back to the first king of Scotland, Kenneth MacAlpin. We were told of the oppressive English and my Scottish ancestry fought the English heritage from my mother right there at the table, the tatties and neeps claiming indigestion with the corned beef. We learned of the traitorous Campbells who sided with the English against their own at the battle of Culloden, their betrayal of the MacDonalds at GlenCoe. I heard the drones' wail, the clash of swords, the howls of men killing and dying. The first time I heard bagpipes playing in the open air was in 1958, 30 miles north of our Burt Lake cottage. The Mackinac Bridge had just been built across the Mackinac Straits, eliminating the need for time-consuming ferries. A grand celebration was in order and we were planning to attend. For some reason, my father did not accompany my mother, sister and me. I can hear them arguing, hear my father's opinion on crowds, traffic, noise, time wasted. I remember my mother announcing that she was going and would take the girls along, with or without him. The morning of the fair was sunny. We got into our green Buick and started driving the sandy two-tire road out to the highway. Our road was a mile long and had to be driven slowly, as thick pines and old yellow birches grew close. We were halfway out when we passed by my father working to clear a huge tree that had fallen in the road. His face was grim as was my mother's. He directed her off-road, through the tall bracken and around the downed tree. I felt like a traitor going off without him, especially because I didn't know why he wasn't coming and my mother offered no explanation. I looked back through the high window to see him, shirt off; sawing the big limbs into smaller pieces, a red bandana tied around his head. There were hundreds of other tourists at Mackinac City when we arrived. Lines for parking were long, so it was a bit late when we finally climbed the high bleachers to some seats at the top. I couldn't see much and became bored. I remember speeches and bands playing and more speeches. The sound jumped through the air in that delayed way it has when you're far away. I felt cutoff from it all. When the Native American tribes local to that area, the Chippewa's and the Huron's, played their music and danced, I really regretted being so far away. Then came the bagpipers. This was my own music, I was told. The strange whine and complicated melody wafted up to where we were, so thin a sound, so far away. I wasn't sure I liked it. Traitorous thought! I knew one thing - without my father it was like going to a party, the host absent. Back at camp, I asked him about these strange instruments and, if he loved them so much, why didn't he play them himself. "It takes a lifetime to learn and only big men can play them," he said. I said, "You're big, Daddy. You could play them, couldn't you?" "Someone has to teach you. You have to go to Scotland to even get them." That Christmas, back in South Bend, Indiana, I got my first 45 record: "Scotland the Brave" with song and pipes. When my best friend, Anne O'Hara, was listening to her first 45, "Purple People Eater," I was marching around our sun room to Scotland's most popular patriotic tune. I believed what my father said about learning and playing the bagpipes until 1991 when I saw two small women playing in a pipe and drum band in southern Michigan. The pipe master of this band was a Chinese-American who called himself the Peking Piper. It was not hard to approach him and ask about lessons. He gave them, free of charge, on the condition that I play in the band when good enough. I agreed and began weekly lessons at his country home in Mishawaka, Indiana. I play piano and flute but this music has some major differences. There are no chromatic half notes and no opportunity for rests. Between blowing directly into the bag, and thus through the reeds of the chanter and drones, and squeezing the bag while taking a new breath, a continuous sound is produced, and there is no way to increase or decrease the volume. To give complexity, the notes are emphasized by grace notes - short notes played quickly around the melodic note. How delightful to learn that these embellishments have names; the D throw, the double F, the leumluath, the birl, the taorluath and so on. And how fortunate they are learned one at a time. After we moved to Lewiston, Idaho, I found the pipe major of a local band, The Border Highlanders and continued studying. Soon I got my own pipes and practiced as much as I was able, although a more accurate word would be struggled. It is a finicky and frustrating instrument, not only because the music is fast, precise and must be memorized but because it marries a precise sound to an imprecise instrument. The three drones must be tuned perfectly with each other, with the low A of the chanter, and with the other bagpipers. One of these summers I will study at the bagpipe camp in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. For two intense weeks I will wake, eat and fall asleep to the sound of pipes, learn about the instrument and improve my playing of it. It was June when I got my pipes and August when I played for my father. My pipe major helped me work up four tunes to play with enough proficiency to give a credible sound. My sister drove us from Michigan to Indiana, to the nursing home where my father stayed. We wheeled him out to the patio and I filled the bag for my best tune, Amazing Grace. As I stood before him and played, the staff and some of the patients gathered at the window to listen. I was very nervous and my mouth kept getting dry, not good with a wind instrument, but my father never noticed. At 85, he was no longer mentally sharp. Short-term memory was gone, causing him to repeat questions, even to ask questions whose answers once were part of his world. He didn't remember how many sons I had, or where exactly I was living. He couldn't understand how I came to have bagpipes and learned to play them. He did understand the music, knew our tartan covering the elk-hide bag. He loved his clan fiercely and he loved his youngest daughter. I laid the pipes in his bony lap. The wind was brisk and chilly and he had a blanket covering him. He stroked the African blackwood of the drones almost reverently. He asked if the trim were ivory. I hated to tell him, "No, ivory was outlawed and this is synthetic." He talked about the different weavings of the MacAlpin plaid. "Our plaid is beautiful, isn't it?" he asked. "This must be the modern weave. Tell me again how you got these. Play me one more tune." It was the only time I played for him. He died two years later and after his funeral Mass, another bagpiper piped him out of church and following the grave-side prayers, piped his interment. We toasted him with fine Scotch whiskey and let the haunting music fill our ears. I could not play for him then but one day I'll go back to the Notre Dame cemetery where he lies with my mother. I'll park the car inside the black iron gate fronting Notre Dame Avenue. A grassy lot where the football players sometimes practice is across the street. Houses line the southern boundary, the golden dome and basilica's steeples visible through the tree tops. Their grave is at the back, giving me a good slow march under the sheltering elms and oaks. Playing as I walk, I'll have time for one full tune, grace notes blessing it into prayer. When I get to their tombstone, I'll stand before it, face to the west. I'll play Blue Bells of Scotland. I'll play Olde Lang Syne. I'll play Going Home. All Rights Reserved |
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