To the Editor of the "Norru-Cuina Datty News."
Sir,—I suppose the majority of your readers are really—not sufficiently interested to care a rip about the difference between Scottish and Irish bagpipes as set forth by your Scottish correspondent. For these I am truly sorry—maybe the day will yet come when the southron ear will come to appreciate the world's earliest and still best music, such music as people make love to and_ win battles to. And you never heard of a regiment charging with an organ or & violin at its head, did you?
However, for those who are interested, it might be as well to point out some very big mistakes made by your correspondent, in order to show that the Highland Society of London is not so "absurd" in its suggestions as he thinks. The earliest Irish pipes certainly are a cumbrous _instrument—a colossal affair as big as a bass fiddle and can only be played sitting down.
What is more generally known as the Irish pipes, however—and is distinctly an Irish product, generally accepted, even in the Highlands, as the parent of the "great Highland pipes,'—or "Scottish war pipes," as used by the Highland regiments—is an instrument very like the Scottish pipes, but it only has two drones, a bass and a tenor, it has keys on
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.