Bagpipe Quotes & Sayings

It sounds like the cry of a newborn demon ready to destroy all peace and love!" Dietmar said. "But I believe it is merely a bagpipe. — Michael Grant

The Scots are subsidy junkies whingeing like a trampled bagpipe as they wait for their next fix of English taxpayers' money. — Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton Of Brenchley

When you've heard one bagpipe tune, you've heard them both. — Jack Finney

Wildland firefighters do not enjoy the cultural prestige that structural firefighters do. They do not wax their fire engines and cruise down the local parade route, lights flashing; they are not the subject of countless popular books and movies; major politicians do not honor their sacrifices on the Senate floor or from the Rose Garden; they do not have bagpipe bands, fancy equipment, enduring icons, or other signifiers of honor verifying the importance of their activity. — Matthew Desmond

Because each nation has its own history of thieving and lies and broken faith, therefore there can only flourish international suspicion and jealousy, and international moral shame becomes anaemic to a degree of ludicrousness. The nation's bagpipe of righteous indignation has so often changed its tune according to the variation of time and to the altered groupings of the alliances of diplomacy, that it can be enjoyed with amusement as the variety performance of the political music hall. — Rabindranath Tagore

Aegean Islands 1940-41

Where white stares, smokes or breaks,
Thread white, white of plaster and of foam,
Where sea like a wall falls;
Ribbed, lionish coast,
The stony islands which blow into my mind
More often than I imagine my grassy home;

To sun one's bones beside the
Explosive, crushed-blue, nostril-opening sea
(The weaving sea, splintered with sails and foam,
Familiar of famous and deserted harbours,
Of coins with dolphins on and fallen pillars.)

To know the gear and skill of sailing,
The drenching race for home and the sail-white houses,
Stories of Turks and smoky ikons,
Cry of the bagpipe, treading
Of the peasant dancers;

The dark bread
The island wine and the sweet dishes;
All these were elements in a happiness
More distant now than any date like '40,
A. D. or B. C., ever can express. — Bernard Spencer

Rock music sounds like an octopus making love to a bagpipe. — Brother Dave Gardner

It's hard to play with a bagpipe player. It's like an exotic bird. I love the sound, it's like strangling a goose. — Tom Waits

Harry heard the final, quavering note from the bagpipe with relief. — J.K. Rowling

Scottish bagpipe has two tenors and one bass - three drone pipes - and then the one chanter. If you put bagpipes together, it creates such a fine sound. — Yoshi Wada

His head tilted to the side and humor twinkled in his dark eyes. "Turn yer back."
'Are you shy? What's wrong, big guy? Afraid to show me your Scottish bagpipe? Are ye built like a moose and hung like a mouse? — Vonnie Davis

Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass. — Paul Zollo

I got into one of the Scottish classical styles called piobaireachd, which is a very old music that started around the 1700s or something. I really got into this music. After that, I started to compose bagpipe music in my notations. Then I started building bagpipes by myself, and then I started to perform with the instrument myself in the 1980s. — Yoshi Wada

We piled into the back of his big red Sun-Times truck: Robertson, McHugh, a bagpipe player, assorted other regulars, and Good Sydney Harris. Good Sydney Harris was a Spanish Civil War veteran, not to be confused with the Bad Sydney Harris, the Daily News columnist. Good Sydney had fallen into conversation with a dominatrix named Jake, who joined us. — Roger Ebert

I somberly reflected that the history of the Highlands is five hundred years of cruelty and bloodshed followed by two hundred years of way too much bagpipe music. — Bill Bryson

There's always something in most world folk musics that always seems connected; whether it's a bagpipe or a tambura, there's always some sort of drone instrument, and there's always percussion. — Paul Weller

I grew up with boys of all kinds - I have two brothers, and I was in a bagpipe band for several years. — Maggie Stiefvater

Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe. — Lee Trevino

about as emotional as a bagpipe. — Robert Louis Stevenson

He held his crotch, his knees bent and his kilt showing he wore nothing beneath it.
She shuffled from one foot to the other as she stared at his Scottish bagpipe. Bet he could hit a lot of high notes with that thing. "You...you startled me when you grabbed me like that."
"Well, ye needna be afraid now. I couldna molest ya, even if I wanted to, which I dinna.I'm betting foreplay with ye would be like grabbing hold of an electrical wire while sitting in a tub of water." He groaned and cussed some more. "Hell, I bet yer vagina is lined with shark's teeth. — Vonnie Davis

The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover. — Peter S. Beagle

Some men there are love not a gaping pig, some that are mad if they behold a cat, and others when the bagpipe sings I the nose cannot contain their urine. — William Shakespeare