Episode 4 - The Hero - Bagpipes, a deadly weapon

Hello and welcome to another Danetkas podcast.

This episode is called: The Hero.

A Kid showed his talent. People started running away. In the end, he got a medal.

In the picture: We see a little kid wearing a cape.

In the background, we have lots of medals acting as a background and the kid is laughing or seems happy and he has  glasses.

What was the talent? Why did people run away? Why did he get a medal? I will know reveal the four rigolettos that we have for this story. The secret hints.

The first Rigoletto says: Troops, prepare, attack!

So the first Rigoletto points us that there is (are) troops involved here, maybe military or war.

The second Rigoletto says: music can help in the most troubled times. So the second one shows us that there is, uh, a complicated time. There is something bad going on and that music and help that. So what kind of bad thing can be happening involving military.

Third thing. Third rigoletto: It was such a weird and loud sound. Let’s run away.

The third Rigoletto points to the fact that was a weird and loud sound. Hmm. How can weird and loud sounds be produced, maybe by some special instrument?

Fourth Rigoletto: They thought it was an army, but it was a scared little kid.

So someone thought an army was coming, they thought it was an army but it was a scared little kid.

Do you know what the solution might be? Feel free to pause the audio and I will now read the answer: The hero.

While an army was invading a village, a little scared kid found comfort in playing his favorite instrument: the bagpipes. The loud sounds made the enemy think another army was coming to protect the village. They got scared and retreated. The kid became a hero. Until 1996, bagpipes were classified as a “weapon of war” and they are the only instrument to have ever received that classification. They were used in order to scare off enemy armies.

The second image shows a little kid playing the bagpipes and the military running away.

This Danetka is fictional Danetka because it didn’t literally happen, but it helps us to educate about the rule of bagpipes in the military. The Scottish great Highland bagpipes are the best known examples in the Anglophone world of bagpipes, but people have people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, Anatolia, the Caucasus, northern Africa, western Asia and around the Persian Golf. It is very interesting that until 1996 the bagpipes were classified as a weapon of war. This does not simply mean an instrument or as a tool used to direct troops, it actually means a physical weapon like a sword or a musket.

To understand the origins of this we have to analyze the battle of Culloden and the Piper named James Reed. Culloden is a place in Scottland, where a battle was fought in 1746.

This piper James Freed was one of the several pipers who played at this battle. He was captured along with 558 men by Cumberland’s troops and taken to England. There, James was put on trial and the accused of high treason against the English crown. Piper Reid claimed that he was innocent because it did not have a gun or a sword. He said the only thing that he had on the battlefield was the bagpipe. After some deliberation, the judge did not found him innocent. He said that the Highland Regiment never marched to war without a piper at its head.

Therefore, in the eyes of the law, the bagpipe was an instrument of war.

James Reed was condemned and got death sentence. He was hanged and then drawn and quartered only because he was playing the bagpipes, a weapon of war.

This story shows us how music was used for the military, for war purposes.

And now some instruments carried that connotation maybe still carry it to the present day.

Or in the case of bagpipes, are even considered a weapon until the year 1996. Not so long ago. Today, Pakistan is the world’s biggest producer of bagpipes.

We will now finish the episode by listening, you guess it, to some bagpipes. I hope you enjoyed this episode and see you on the next one.