As I sat at breakfast I heard the drone of bagpipes. A man was playing at the New Inn. He came playing down the road and stopped in front of the forge droning on while the blacksmith’s children danced before him. He could not complain that he had piped to the Clyro children and they had not danced. He was a wild swarthy Italian-looking man, young, with a steeple-crowned hat, and full of uncouth cries and strange outland words. He moved on from the forge to the inn still playing while the children still danced before him. I could see the group through the screen of chestnuts. Poor Captain Brown used to say he could go anywhere and do anything under the influence of the bagpipes. It seems to me that I could go anywhere and do anything to get out of the sound of them. He found them warlike, exciting, inspiriting. I find them intolerable. A droning wailing whine, no tune. I had far rather go into battle to the sound of a barrel organ. << less