Written by Sam Mackenzie
The ‘Great Highland Bagpipe’ is commonly just referred to as ‘the bagpipes.’ Love them or loathe them, the instrument is distinctly Scottish: they have led our armies in war, our brides and grooms down countless aisles, and now serve as the soundtrack of a nation whose proud and ancient history has rung out with their notes for hundreds of years.
For many years however, the bagpipes were known by another name, and served a far different purpose to their modern, peaceful (though not always on the ear) counterparts. The instrument was known as the ‘Great Highland War Pipe’ and served as the latest iteration in a long line of war pipes taken to war by the Gaelic peoples of Scotland and Ireland.
The history of the Highland Bagpipe then, is martial, and nowhere was the bagpipe more closely tied to a military campaign, and indeed to a period of history, as it was to the Bliadhna a’ Phrionnsa: The Year of The Prince.
When Bonnie Prince Charlie first landed at Glenfinnan, the Highland army that he was promised would be waiting was a disappointing sight. Only a few hundred local clansman had come to answer the Prince’s call to arms, and none of them had the influence to force the hands of the larger undeclared clans like the Camerons, the MacDonalds, and some branches of the Mackenzies.
All in all, the Prince’s ‘army’ numbered somewhere near four hundred men, nowhere near enough to threaten some of the other clans, never mind the British State. For a brief moment, it looked as though the Stuart cause was doomed before it began, and the Prince had to be taken to a barn so that the men who had come didn’t see him weeping.
Then, a sound carried over the mountains which lifted the Prince’s heart in a way that only one instrument is capable of. The tune ‘March of the Cameron Men’ was composed some eighty-four years later to recount the events of the day.
Clan Cameron, one of the most powerful clans in all of Scotland, had come. Led by Chief Donald Cameron of Lochiel, as well as a second contingent led by Lady Jeannie Cameron of Glendessary, near a thousand Camerons had rallied to the Chief and marched with their pipers to Glenfinnan.
Later the same day, around three hundred and fifty MacDonalds of Keppoch arrived, with the promise that more branches of the Clan would soon come. Charles had secured the loyalty and soldiery of two of the most powerful clans in Scotland and thus, with their endorsement, most of the smaller clans would rally to his standard with renewed fervour and hope.
The statue which stands at Glenfinnan today commemorates where Prince Charles officially raised his standard for the new Jacobite Cause. Charles’ likeness is seen staring towards the hills behind Glenfinnan rather than towards Edinburgh, or even London. Many believe he is depicted at the very moment he heard Clan Cameron’s war pipes in the distance. The bagpipes surrounded Charlie’s rebellion from the very beginning.
The plague below his statue reads as follows (roughly translated from the original Gaelic)-
“1745
IN THE NAME OF THE LORD
HERE WERE THE STANDARDS
OF CHARLES EDWARD RAISED
TRIUMPHANT AT LAST”
The war pipes would dominate Charlie’s rebellion. Prince Charles personally loved the Highland bagpipes and his army of clansmen marched south to the sound of a hundred pipers, as the old song goes.
The pipes played a key psychological role for the Highland army in battle. It must be remembered that the Highlanders’ tactics were highly unconventional for the time. The clans employed ‘The Highland Charge’ which was a tactic perfected by an Irish commander of Scottish troops during the Three Kingdoms War. The charge relied on speed and disorienting the enemy.
The highlanders would rush forward and fire a volley at close range, before drawing their broadswords and forming triangle-like wedges while charging straight into the enemy. This would be done so fast and with such ferocity, that all but a highly trained army of veteran professional soldiers would be broken by it.
The Highlanders also still enjoyed a certain mystique, as they were still seen by many as ‘The Barbarians of the North,’ the very last holdouts of an ancient way of life. It’s not hard to see why. The Highland soldiers, from the perspective of an English soldier, or even a Lowland Scot, spoke a different and strange language, wore strange clothes, played strange, unpleasant music, and still wielded a broadsword and shield in battle.
The Highlanders exploited a kind of primitive fear in the age of modern ‘Gentlemanly’ warfare. What better sound to accompany this army of ‘Barbarians’ than the skirling of the Highland War Pipe. As W.L Manson wrote about the Bagpipes-
“I have power, high power for freedom,
To wake the burning soul;
I have sonnets that through the ancient hills,
Like a torrent’s voice might roll;
I have pealing notes of victory,
That might welcome kings from war;
I have rich deep tones to send the wail,
For a hero’s death afar.”
The Bagpipes were present and involved at the battles of Prestonpans, Clifton Moor, Falkirk, and, fatally, at Culloden. At the battle of Falkirk, there was one unfortunate piper named Allan MacDougall, who fought under the command of Lord Nairn’s regiment. MacDougall happened to be completely blind, and kept advancing forward after the Jacobite army, having successfully repelled the government forces, turned around and marched off the field. MacDougall played straight into the hands of his captors, and he was imprisoned until 1747, when he was finally released by a general pardon.
As the Jacobite army retreated Northward into the Highlands, the border-castle of Carlisle was besieged and liberated from the Jacobites by the Duke of Cumberland’s army. The Garrison’s piper, one James Reid, would go on to make history with his trial in 1746.
The Highland army of Bonnie Prince Charlie was finally defeated for good on Culloden Moor, on 16 April 1746. The Highlanders, having been ill-fed for months and having had no sleep the night before, charged over open, wet, boggy ground at a line of government infantry who were waiting for them.
Where the Highlanders reached the government lines, they broke them, but too many of the clansmen were laid low by volleys of musket fire, and torrents of ‘grape shot’ (tens of large metal balls stuffed into a net and fired from a cannon, spraying the balls out like a modern day shotgun on a more destructive scale) from government cannon.
As Charles fled the battlefield, it was not a sad lament or pìobaireachd that sounded after him, but one of his officers, calling out, “RUN! RUN, YOU COWARDLY ITALIAN!”.
The Highlanders were slaughtered, and the retribution wrought by the Duke of Cumberland’s army after it was finished ensured that the Highland clans could never again rise in armed rebellion against the Hanoverian crown.
Charles escaped on a boat to the Isle of Skye, where he was rescued and returned to Europe. The woman who assisted him was named Flora MacDonald, and the episode is immortalised in one of the most well-known bagpipe tunes in the world: the “Skye-Boat Song.” Along with Charles’ boat returning to Europe, the chance of a Stuart revival to the throne of Britain sailed into the mists forever.
As mentioned earlier, a certain James Reid was captured after the Siege of Carlisle. He was taken to York, put on trial for armed rebellion against the crown, and thus charged with high treason. Reid’s defence was that he was not an armed rebel, merely an unarmed musician, a piper to the Prince’s army. In response, the court handed down a ruling which immortalised the Great Highland War Pipe forever, giving James Reid a remarkable legacy.
The English Court stated that it was known that a Highland regiment “never marched without a piper; and therefore [Reid’s] bagpipe, in the eye of the law, was an instrument of war.”
For the first time in history, a musical instrument had been made a weapon of war. As for James Reid, he was hung, drawn, and quartered at the gates of York.
For the next two hundred and fifty years, bagpipes were officially recognised as weapons of war, and were, when captured, stored with sabres, rifles and other actual weapons. This even took place when there were other instruments present, even the enemies of the British army recognised the ruling, and the power of the Highland bagpipes.
The instrument was only reclassified in 1996, following a trial where a man in London attempting to get out of a busking fine by saying he was not playing an instrument, but displaying a weapon of war; citing Reid’s case in his defence. The judge was unconvinced, pointing out that brandishing a weapon in public carried a jail sentence while the busking charge carried only a light fine. Thus, in an official ruling, the bagpipes were finally reclassified as a musical instrument, though with exceptions for times of war, when the Great Highland War Pipe may be called upon once again.
Bibliography
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the. 2025. “ALASTAIR HAY BAGPIPES.” ALASTAIR HAY BAGPIPES. June 5, 2025. https://www.alastairhaybagpipes.com.au/blog/the-great-highland-bagpipes-the-instrument-of-war
Ortiz, Miguel. 2022. “Bagpipes Used to Be Classified as Weapons of War.” Explore the Archive. September 26, 2022. https://explorethearchive.com/bagpipes-weapons-of-war-watm
Letford, Stuart. 2020. “James Reid, a Hero of the ’45 – Bagpipe News.” Bagpipe News. April 8, 2020. https://bagpipe.news/2020/04/08/james-reid-a-hero-of-the-45/
Gebhart, Tim. 2021. “Are Bagpipes Weapons of War?” Medium. Exploring History. July 13, 2021. https://medium.com/exploring-history/are-bagpipes-weapons-of-war-b2d50d4d1f5
Piper’s Dojo. 2017. “Bagpipes — an Instrument of War?” Medium. September 6, 2017. https://medium.com/@pipersdojo/bagpipes-an-instrument-of-war-77faaea13acd
“York Castle and the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion – by Steve Pickard, York Castle Museum Volunteer | York Museums Trust.” 2018. Yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk. March 2018. https://www.yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk/blog/york-castle-and-the-1745-jacobite-rebellion-by-steve-pickard-york-castle-museum-volunteer/
Moffat, Alistair. 2023. War Paths. Birlinn Ltd.
Duffy, Christopher. 2007. The ’45. London: Phoenix.
Featured Image Credit: Piper’s Dojo. 2017. “Bagpipes — an Instrument of War?” Medium. September 6, 2017. https://medium.com/@pipersdojo/bagpipes-an-instrument-of-war-77faaea13acd
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