William Tennant, 'Rab the Ranter’s Bag-pipe Playing'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Rab the Ranter’s Bag-pipe Playing

Nodded his liege assent, and straightway bade
Him stand a-top o’ th’ hillock at his side;
A-top he stood; and first a bow he made
To all the crowd that shouted far and wide;
Then like a piper dexterous at his trade,
His pipes to play adjusted and applied;
Each finger rested on its proper bore,
His arm appeared half-raised to wake the bag’s uproar.

A space he silent stood, and cast his eye
In meditation upwards to the pole,
As if he prayed some fairy power in sky
To guide his fingers right o’er bore and hole;
Then pressing down his arm, he gracefully
Awaked the merry bag-pipes’ slumbering soul,
And piped and blew, and played so sweet a tune
As well might have unsphered the reeling midnight moon.

His every finger, to its place assigned,
Moved quivering like the leaf of aspen tree,
Now shutting up the skittish squeaking wind,
Now opening to the music passage free;
His cheeks, with windy puffs therein confined,
Were swol’n into a red rotundity
As from his lungs into the bag was blown
Supply of needful air to feed the growling drone.

( And such a potent tune did never greet )

By William Tennant