What is the significance of bagpipes

Official Website of the City of Meridian. Prevention Public Education. Pipes and Drums History. Home Fire Pipes and Drums History The tradition of bagpipes played at fire department and police department funerals in the United States goes back over years.

Was this helpful? Comments optional. Home I Want To Contact Accessibility. All Rights Reserved. At the same time, it served to remind the citizens of the city exactly who it was that protected them against fires and criminals. In the old country, they are almost always present, even more so than other types of instruments.

This instrument originally came from the Scotland-Ireland area and is commonly used in many military and civilian ceremonies. While you might think that there are only a few places where bagpipes are appropriate, there are in fact hundreds of different types of events where they are used.

The key is to pick the type of music that would be appropriate. This can be easily done, either online or by consulting with a Piper, as bagpipe players are called. An answer may begin to suggest itself when I tell you that bagpipes are not unique to Scottish culture—they were culturally important in Ireland as well, where they featured prominently in traditional weddings and funerals. It's true that Irish uileann pipes—that's pronounced "illin'," for you Run-DMC fans—aren't quite the same as their Scottish counterpart.

Scottish pipes get their air from a bag the piper blows into, while Irish pipes use an arm-operated bellows. Could this bellows-powered instrument be the long-theorized missing link between the twin hells of bagpipes and the accordion? Inquiring minds…. In any case, there was enough overlap between the two musical traditions that Scottish-style pipes, which are louder and better suited to outdoor events, began to appear at American Irish funerals in the 19th and early 20th centuries—right around the time big-city police departments in the U.

The sanitized explanation why so many Irish became cops and firefighters is that these were dangerous jobs that no one else was willing to take. More clear-eyed historians have noted that police and fire departments offered lots of public sector jobs for Irish political bosses like "Honest" John Kelly to spread among the members of machine-supporting Irish families.