Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

285-286

text excerpt

what has become, I would ask, of the Hieland pipers, "braw" in all the faded splendours of eighth-hand sporrans and plaids, kilts and philabegs, with their tartans of clans which they could not name when solicited to do so, and their significant little knives stuck in their stockings, indicating profuse weasand-slitting to the unsophisticated childish mind well primed in Scott's national novels, but really functioning (as observation taught me) in connection with the carving of bread and cheese and the extraction of the reluctant winkle from his curly home? I never see or hear those pipers now, and I am glad of it, for their instrument is one which does not convey unmixed gratification to ears that, like my own, have not undergone a peculiar training in appreciativeness of its musical charms. But they used to be seemingly ubiquitous in London streets about the time I refer to, and compared infavourably, to my childish apprehensions, with the wooden Highlanders on guard in front of the snuff-shops, who were cleaner and more glossy than their perambulatory compatriots, over whom they had the additional advantage of not giving utterance to a stomach-ache of sound.

excerpt from 'Music and manners; personal reminiscences and sketches of character' pp. 285-286 (192 words)

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1451932713649