BAGPIPES SKIRL IN GERMANY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 16, 20 October 1942, Page 6

BAGPIPES SKIRL IN GERMANY

SASSENACHS SUPPLY 200 SETS TO BRITISH WAR OFFICE

Stands Scotland -where lie did ? To-zday London is making bagpipes for the proud regiments of Caledonia. It is, indeed, an old. story, although probably the Scots Guards have never heard of it. For as long as 28 years, the Ist, 2nd and 3rd battalions of that regiment have had their pipes made up Kentish Town -way. No fewer than 200 sets have l recently gone to the War Office for issue to Scottish regiments. The ivory used for the fittings cost £500. The sheep of the Scottish Highlands supplies the skins for the bags, clad later in their appropriate tartan. The wood for the drones and chanters wh'ich send out the pipes' wild and, melancholy notes comes from darkest Africa —African blacluvood arriving as rough logs to be cut up in Kentish Town. The reeds are from Spanish cane. The makers made their first set of bagpipes for Queen Victoria's piper in a London backroom sixtysix years ago. Their founders son started the pipe band of the London Irish. They have supplied bagpipes for the Royal Irish Inniskillings. They make flutes for the Grenadier Guards, for the young women of the A.T.S., for the Army Cadets and the lads of the A'ir Training Gorj)S. And, their bagpipes are even now skirling among the Nazis. They have sent 12 sets into the heart of German}- —through the Red Cross to prisoners of war.