a question, if not quite advice...

[MacLowlife]

Does anyone have an authoritative answer for the connection amongst (kilted) pipers and policemen? And I do not mean the tendency of some pipers to get arrested.

I mean the practice of using pipers (and kilts) in ceremonial roles involving policemen, particularly retirements, funerals, and other memorials.

In some parts of North America, I know it is popular to blend Scots and Irish cultures. On the one hand, here in the South, many of us are descended from "Ulster Scots" also known as "Scots Irish" or "Scotch Irish" ( I know, I know, Scotch is what we drink, etc.) But on the other hand, I do not see any strong connection in these parts between Law Enforcement and Scots by any name.

And I know there are Irish pipes and I know, in Boston, New York, and Chicago, many Irish- Americans are policemen, but I think of them as "regular" Irish, not Scots Irish. I wonder sometimes if the whole Police Piper thing has been recently invented. I would love to learn otherwise.

Thanks

[HarveyH]

You ask for an authoritative reply and I am not sure that there is a research paper specifically on this. There is a short paper on Piper Brian Solum's web site at http://www.bagpipebrian.com/sitebuil...albrochure.pdf

You will see that he cites the historian Cecil Adams.

The suggestion appears to be that the practice went over to the US with the great migration in the wake of the Irish potato famine and that because the Irish immigrants could not get work except in dangerous professions including Police and Firefighting, the connection with pipe playing at Funerals emerged there c. 150 years ago.

My own interest has been sparked by recent conversations with American liturgists about the growth in the use of the pipes at funerals in the US and Canada and also the use of pipes inside churches and not just at the graveside. This does appear to be a fairly modern innovation.

[SlackerDrummer]

Or to put it more concisely: Emerald Societies.

[plaid preacher]

I think there is perhaps a tradition from across the pond. Cessna152 posted the following about the end/amalgamation of police pipe bands in Scotland a while back.

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/f...e-bands-77868/

So it seems the tradition is not a uniquely North American thing.

[OC Richard]

There's a fairly long tradition in Scotland for various localities, collieries, police departments, and so forth to have pipe bands.

But yes in the USA it traditionally has been a post-famine Irish-American thing. Many of these Irish ended up in somewhat enclosed communities in big cities in the northeastern quadrant of the country, where they used their combined voting power to elect Irish mayors, who in turn nominated Irish police chiefs and fire chiefs, who in turn hired Irish policemen and firemen. They took care of their own, in other words.

In Chicago, for example, the police chief was Francis O Neill, a traditional Irish fluteplayer and Irish folk music fanatic, and you auditioned for a job on the police force by playing traditional Irish music for the chief. He hired the cream of Irish traditional musicians from nearly every county in Ireland.

Francis O Neill, by the way, was a fanatical champion of the uilleann pipes and despised the Scottish Highland pipes, and in particular despised Irishmen playing this instrument in favour of the uilleann pipes. Ironic that it's the Scottish Highland pipes, and not the Irish uilleann pipes, which have been used by the Emerald Societies in connexion with American police and fire.

[TheOfficialBren]

Easier to march on parade with, Richard.

Makes sense to me.