Bagpipe sb.

Forms: 4–7 bagge-pipe, 5–6 -pype, bagpype, 7 bagg-pipe, 6– bag-pipe, bagpipe. [f. BAG sb.¹ + PIPE.]

  1.  A musical instrument of great antiquity and wide diffusion, consisting of an air-tight wind-bag and one or more reed-pipes into which the air is pressed by the performer.

  Formerly a favorite rural English musical instrument; now chiefly used in the Scottish Highlands and in Ireland. The modern Highland bagpipe consists of a greased leathern bag, covered with flannel, inflated by blowing into a valved mouth-tube, and having three drones or bass pipes, and a chanter for the tenor or treble.

c. 1386.  Chaucer, Prol., 565. A baggepipe wel coude he blowe and soune.

1483.  Cath. Angl., 17. Bagpype, panduca.

1530.  Palsgr., 196/2. Bagge pype, cornemuse.

1557.  Tottell’s Misc. (Arb.), 197. And bagpipe, solace of the rurall bride.

1579.  Spenser, Sheph. Cal., April, 3. Or is thy Bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete?

1596.  Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., I. ii. 86. As Melancholly as … a Louers Lute … or the Drone of a Lincolnshire Bagpipe.

c. 1625.  MS. Bodl. No. 30. 16 b. If they heare the baggepipe then the beares are coming.

1638.  Heywood, Witches Lanc., III. i. Wks. 1874, IV. 217. No Witchcraft can take hold of a Lancashire Bag-pipe.

1678.  Otway, Friendship in F., 30. A Scotch Song! I hate it worse then a Scotch Bagpipe.

1864.  Engel, Mus. Anc. Nat., 78. The bagpipe is also very universal throughout Asia.

  b.  Now often used in plural, esp. in Scotland.

a. 1613.  Overbury, A Wife (1638), 175. Don Quixotes Watermills are still Scotch Bagpipes to him.

1683.  Tryon, Way to Health, 654. Bag-Pipes are under the dominion of Venus & Mars … This sort of Musick is sometimes used in Wars.

1763–5.  Churchill, Proph. Famine, Poems I. 110. With mikle art, could on the bag pipes play.

1876.  Grant, Burgh Sch. Scot., II. 380. Discoursing laments upon the Bagpipes.

  † 2.  A retort shaped like a bagpipe. Obs.

1558.  Warde, Alexis’ Secr. (1568), 14 b. Put it into a croke necked viole of glasse which distillars call a Bagpipe.

  3.  Applied to the organ of sound of an insect.

1833.  Brewster, Nat. Magic, ix. 233. The Cicadæ or locusts in North America appear … to be furnished with a bagpipe on which they play a variety of notes.

  4.  fig. a. An inflated and senseless talker, a wind-bag. b. A long-winded monotonous speaker.

1603.  H. Crosse, Vertues Commw. (1878), 103. The Seruingman, the Image of sloath, the bagge-pipe of vanitie, like a windie Instrument, soundeth nothing but prophanenesse.

1850.  Carlyle, Latter-d. Pamph., v. (1872), 169. Such parliamentary bagpipes I myself have heard play tunes.

1884.  Chr. World, 19 June, 463/4. Two fresh sermons a week … from the one poor droning theological bagpipe.

  5.  Comb., as bagpipeless, without bagpipes; bagpipe-like, like a bagpipe.

1618.  D. Belchier, Hans Beere-pot, E iv. Or Bagge-pypelike, not speake before thou art full.

1812.  W. Tennant, Anster Fair, IV. lxvi. The poor pipers bagpipeless they saw.