Early Highland bagpipes

[Jack Daw]

In 2008, my niece and I attended the Worldwide Gathering of Clan MacIntyre in Glenoe on Loch Etive, Taynuilt, and Oban. We had a banquet dinner in Oban, and one of the features was the so-called 'MacIntyre Faery Pipes'. All attendees received a laminated history of the pipes, which I don't have readily available, but I found this bit of information from another source (from the web) who was also in attendance:

"The ‘Faery’ pipes were on loan by permission of Kinlochmoidart, chieftain of that MacDonald branch and the West Highland Museum in Fort William. They are the oldest Highland pipes in existence and were handmade by a MacIntyre piper over 800 years ago. They contain the extra sounding hole at the end of the chanter that he placed there on the advice of a faery in order to have the sweetest sounding pipes in Scotland. These pipes were played at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and played only once in the last century, fittingly by our own master piper, Archie McIntyre, who is a descendant of the MacIntyres who formerly possessed them and the Gentleman Piper to the High Council of Clan Donald. He played them at our Banquet, for the first, and perhaps only, time in this new century. To see them was special, but to hear them was a thrill of historic proportions."

I cannot attest to any of the legend as true, but I can tell you the pipes were too old to be melodic in any way, with all due respect to a fine piper as Archie Mac; so apparently, the faery has long since abandoned the pipes. Anyway, here is the only pic I took of them:



Poster's Edit:
Ah, I found a video (and, audio)! Click on the link, read the explanation in the page middle, then go to the bottom of the page and click on "View the video here."

http://www.electricscotland.com/webc...ring/faery.htm