The Pipers Coming
Serwer, Arnold
The Pipers Are Coming by ARNOLD SERWER IT was about eight years ago this month, if I recall correctly, that a terrible plague fell upon our house. Our teen-age son developed an addiction to...
...he broke the news that "importations oC any wood winds ~hat could in<;lude bagpipes from Communist-controlled countries has been negligible...
...Modern detractors of today may scoff...
...There were records of bagpipe soloists, of small groups of pipers, and of hordes of them playing in marching bands...
...The doctor has said that our son is definitely on the road to a cure...
...We sent our son to college-records and all-a thousand miles away...
...The squeals were piercing, the moans dolorous, as the pipers squeezed the tortured air out of the bags and played their keening pipes...
...Thus with quips and wiles, in a mood of insufferable drollery, the House voted to open our gates to a rising tide of bagpipes...
...The change of surroundings, the proximity of co-eds, and the competition of other cultural interests gradually reduced his obsession for bagpipe music...
...Here is a dismal prospect...
...This was a revelation to me...
...He further declared that "lifting of the duties would pro vide the widest possible circulation of the bagpipe to all our advantages...
...He took his savings, and such money as he could wheedle from us under false pretenses, and bought Scottish bagpipe recordings...
...Scots supposedly are able to make a little go a long way, but there is such a thing as a tune and lyric that are too frugal...
...The Pipers Are Coming by ARNOLD SERWER IT was about eight years ago this month, if I recall correctly, that a terrible plague fell upon our house...
...Who does Duncan think he is-Bonnie Prince Charlie...
...If a national epidemic of bagpipery is a boon, they might as well take the tariff off Japanese beetles and ruin the coun try proper...
...This iniquitous measure, if it becomes law, will flood the country with bagpipes and pipers...
...One assurance which probably prevented opposition to the bill that might have materialized among Congressmen who normally rally in support of tariff protection for America's "infant industries," was offered by Representative Wilbur Mills of Arkansas...
...In speaking for the bill which, incredibly, was unopposed, Congressmen vied with each other for the favor of Americans of Scottish ancestry, as well as Irish Americans who are also said to be addicted to bagpipes...
...With the duty eliminated the bagpipe will be an even thriftier instrument than it was and there will be a coast-to-coast cacophony of bonnie tunes...
...And there was some indulgence in the old custom of twisting the British lion's tail...
...But not for me...
...Well me no "wells...
...He said that on "most days" of his campaigning for the Senate in Oregon this fall he was accompanied by his own piper...
...The cold warriors in the House were comforted by Representative Donald Irwin of Connecticut...
...When the din begins never send to know for whom the pipe squeals...
...Eight years have passed and although he has not yet "kicked" the habit entirely he can go as many as four days without playing a record of Bonnie Dundee or Scotland The Brave...
...In the closing days of the Eighty-ninth Congress the House passed a bill to amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to provide t hat "bagpipes and parts thereof" shall be admitted free of duty...
...I will be hiding out in the boiler factory where there's a little peace and quiet...
...And those who need to be reminded that the American melting-pot is still making a stew of various cultures no doubt were heartened by the story Representative Dante Fascell of Florida told of "a Jewish piper in a [Miami] Scottish band playing The Wearing of the Green at a picnic for an American of Italian extraction...
...the fiddle he reserved for municipal bonfires) there seemed only one way to preserve our sanity...
...There is, I am told, in a certain land just south of Scotland, a misguided definition of a gentleman [as1'a person who knows how to play a bagpipe but doesn't.' Well, we Scottish have borne much abuse in respect to the bagpipe, but it is a thrifty instrument and plays a bonnie tune...
...He said that his Committee on Ways and Means "was advised that there is no known commercial production of bagpipes in the United States...
...Instead of learning to play Humoresque on the violin, or When The Saints Come Marching In on the trumpet, American youths by the tens of thousands will be practicing that wailing ten minutelong note on the bagpipes while their friends cry out raucously: "A-a-ah, McGrr-regor...
...Congressman Duncan made it abundantly clear that he is mad for the skirling of bagpipes...
...it squeals for thee...
...Our teen-age son developed an addiction to bagpipe music...
...When a year passed by and our boy showed no cooling of his passion for the cruel pipes (Nero is said to have played the bagpipes, possibly while making plans for the Christians...
...For clamor as you will, oh reformers, against the anti-social products of American industry-the cancer-causing cigaret, the overpowered death-dealing automobile, the wares of John Barleycorn-you still must credit our free enterprise system with this one noble act of self restraint-it does not manufacture bagpipes...
...Old Samuel Johnson scoffed at things Scottish...
...I recall that the worst of these classics consisted, for the most part, of a single high-pitched note sustained for what seemed to be ten minutes at a time while assorted Scottish voices cried out exultantly: "Aa-ah, McGrr-regor...
...Now, of course, there are always scoffers," Representative Robert B. Duncan of 0 reg 0 n told the House...
...Hour after hour when I was not at home, and all too often when I was, my son played these records, lost in rapture as he listened to the unholy Celtic din...
...But now something new and omi nous has taken place which threatens to afflict countless families and com munitie across the land...
Vol. 30 • December 1966 • No. 12
