What’s the deal with bagpipes at funerals and memorial services?
Is there a highe population of Scots in New York?
There is right now.
Most of the firefighters and policemen were Scots and Irish.
The pipes are of Irish origin, and were long associated with soldiers entering battle, and the bagpipes were long considered to mimic the pulse…the pumping of the blood…were used for funerals for centuries.
Different groups used them at funerals and during battle.
Considering the high number of Irish, and some Scotts, it isn’t a hard stretch to see their use during funerals for police and firefighters, considering the military type format of those departments and the concentration of Irish in those departments, especially when founded.
Philster:
Every encyclopedia I’ve describes the area of origin of bagpipes as “generally known in Europe and West Asia by the time of the Roman Empire.” AFAIK, nobody’s ever pinned it down to any smaller geographical area.
My wording is misleading, Monty. The pipes as we know them came from Ireland, and it the Irish and Scottish who brought them to the U.S. and used them as part of traditional ceremonies.
They go back much farther back and farther east.
In 1911, William Grattan Flood, a professor of music at National University of Ireland, researched and printed The Story of the Bagpipe. Professor Flood explored the instrument’s early origin in the cradle of civilization, the Middle East, where he states the earliest date for the pipes is 4000 B.C., where a bagpipe is found in Chaldean sculptures. This evidence shows it is ancient, certainly as old as the harp and nearly as old as the drum. Greeks, Egyptians and Romans all marched to the skirl of the pipes to battle.
It is clear that the bagpipe existed in Ireland long before Scotland. The bagpipe is believed to have made its way to Scotland with the Dalradians upon their exodus from County Antrim across the Irish Sea at about 470 A.D., when Prince Fergus MacErc lead his clan in the invasion of the lands of the Picts at present Argyle. The difference in the Scottish and Irish bagpipe is their name and the number of drones. The Scottish refer to their bagpipe as “the Great Highland Bagpipe,” which today (an ancient bagpipe preserved from the battlefield of Culloden, 1746, has but a bass and a tenor drone) has three drones: one bass and two tenor. The Irish call theirs “the Great Irish Warpipe,” which has two drones: one bass and one tenor. In Gaelic the bagpipe is called “Piob Mor.”
Bagpipes go back further than the Roman Empire, though the origins are hazy, and it is quite possible that they were developed independently in many places. The earliest occurrences seem to be in the Middle East. This account, for instance, notes (in a terrible choice of text color and background) evidence back to 1000 BC (Hittite):
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/2328/bagpipes.html
As for the Romans themselves, Nero is associated with the bagpipes and was depicted playing them on coins. He also used them to inspire troops before battle.
(He certainly didn’t fiddle while Rome burned (violins wouldn’t be invented for several centuries). This conjures up visions of him playing bagpipes while it burned. Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody has ever seriously suggested it.)
The specific question about Police funerals has been addressed by Cecil:
Here’s a link to theDublin Fire Brigade’s piping page which shows a similar traditional link between firefighting and piping. (Note, though, that the Dubliners seem to be using the Scottish pipes rather than the traditional Irish war pipes, which only had two drones, not three.)
The pipes are traditionally associated with war and fighting. Given the risks run by police and firefighters, I can see why the pipes would have a similar attraction for those groups - high-risk group activities, a form of public service, where group bonding is important for morale.
As others have noted, although often associated with Scotland, bagpipes also have a strong Irish connection.
The New York Fire Department, like the Police Department, has traditionally had a heavy concentration of Irish-Americans. It’s not as true today as it was historically, but there is still a very strong Irish presence in the FDNY. Many neighborhood bars in Irish neighborhoods (like mine in the Bronx) will display fire fighter memorabilia as well as Irish emblems.
I suspect the original association of Irish as police and firemen dates to the nineteenth century, when they were discriminated against for many jobs and civil service may have offered the best chance of employment.
In fact, I remember that at some of the funerals last year, there was pipe band that only New York firefighters of Irish descent could join. Admittedly, the NYFD is pretty big, but having a viable pipe band with that restriction on membership suggests there is still a pretty large Irish contingent in the NYFD.