Are coming through loud & clear in unison from next door. Is it just the bagpipes or is it Dundee?
The sound of Bagpipes and sexual sounding moanings…
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Yes.
Here we go…
It’s the way that the pipes are evocative of pretty much everything.
Bagpipe Music – Louis MacNeice
It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.
John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.
It’s no go the Yogi-Man, it’s no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It’s no go your maidenheads, it’s no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.
The Laird o’ Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife ‘Take it away; I’m through with overproduction’.
It’s no go the gossip column, it’s no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother’s help and a sugar-stick for the baby.
Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn’t count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.
It’s no go the Herring Board, it’s no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.
It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.
No offense to my Caledonian fellow celt chums, and I don’t want to start a pipe war, but Uillean pipes are the druid’s bollocks. No contest:
I much prefer the Uillean pipes. The highland war pipe is far too limited in the range of notes it has to be of much musical use. It was fine for scaring the shite out natives the world over but that’s about it.
The Irish pipes have soul.
That’s fighting talk, when it’s common knowledge, that they are, like whiskey, a creditable alternative for when the real thing is unavailable
In the spirit of pan Celtic harmony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNhWxH_NUh8
Takes a while to get into, but this is rather cool too:
Reefer madness! Oh, those crazy Swiss!
Sleeping with my window open, I was once woken up in the early morning by a single bagpipe striking up a rousing march in the street below, the sound of it ringing between the houses. The piper was leading a procession of children from the school at the end of my street, celebrating the start of their summer holiday, but if someone had stuck a sword in my hand at that moment and told me to fight for Scotland or die trying, I would have, even though I’m Swedish.
Best wake-up call ever! I was in a great mood all day after that, and I usually hate being woken up earlier than I have to be.
Did anyone ever see any of those children again?
Did 4 years up in Dundee as a art student and 9 months in a ad agency. Never heard bagpipes once.
On the other hand, I live in London and hear the pipes everyday, as I walk through Trafalgar Square. There’s always a piper, or bagger as a slightly confused Canadian relation calls them, there. The repertoire includes The Skye Boat Song, Flower of Scotland, and The Star Wars Theme. I quite like it, but I may be prejudiced. Here’s a link, which I hope works, to someone playing a tune on the chanter which my great-grandfaher wrote, called the Piper’s Cave. It’s full of highland feeling – as you’d expect from something he wrote in Cairo while in the army.
@david-kendal You say “The repertoire includes The Skye Boat Song, Flower of Scotland, and The Star Wars Theme” – did you mean “includes”, or “consists entirely of”?
Too true, but they are still one-up on the people who dress up as witches or Star Wars (again) characters and sit on some bits of scaffolding which are hidden by their cloaks to make it look like they’re floating.
But all of these are easily outclassed by the acrobat who climaxes his act by lying on his bare chest on a bed of nails which is on top of a 20 foot pole. And then he starts to juggle four cleavers. Even I gave him some money.
Possibly my favourite ever was a young Irish woman at Covent Garden who ended her set by hanging upside-down by her toes from a trapeze while juggling three machetes.
I shared a house some years ago with an Irishman and a Scot.
Celtic insults were common. The Irish lad likened the sound of the bagpipes to ‘someone squeezin’ the dung out of a cat’.
I’ve never forgotten that. Which is why I was able to type it just now.
I shared a college flat, in first year, with 2 Englishmen, 3 Jocks, 1 Irishman and a Yank who’d been to Gordonstoun. 1 Irishman, 1 Englishman and me, a Jock walked into several pubs. Can’t remember coming out ‘tho.
Bagpipes or sexual moaning.
I was in my tent with my girlfriend many years ago as we were about to engage in serial unison someone decided to play some bagpipes in the tent next to use. Let’s just say it didn’t help the atmosphere.
The reason I’m on this page and I know there are fans of the doodlesack a friend mentioned Seaside Shuffle by Terry* Dactyl and the Dinosaurs which reminded me of this.
* one of the few Terrys in popular music.