Bagpipes - instrument of torture
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Whoever coined the phrase “instrument of torture” was evidently thinking of bagpipes. A strange musical instrument that looks utterly comical but makes human ears bleed, the bagpipes are an emblem of Scotland that are only loved by people who live far enough away from Scotland not to hear the damn things.
Sorry to break it to those of you in the rest of the world (well, America mainly) but there is no romance to bagpipes. Unless you find the sound of a goose being slowly expelled from a car exhaust to be a turn-on. In which case you are one sick puppy.
In Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital, bagpipers are endemic. Not because it’s a national pastime or anything… just because they make a fortune in small change from tourists who think they’re cute and other people who think that if they get enough money they might shut up and go home.
Having said all this, however, I recently observed a new breakthrough in aural suffering when I found a piper in Edinburgh’s Princes Street playing the Celine Dion song from “Titanic”. Terrifying. Two of the world’s most painful sounds combined into one horrendous dirge…
It’s enough to drive a man to a double Van Gogh job…
Sorry to break it to those of you in the rest of the world (well, America mainly) but there is no romance to bagpipes. Unless you find the sound of a goose being slowly expelled from a car exhaust to be a turn-on. In which case you are one sick puppy.
In Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital, bagpipers are endemic. Not because it’s a national pastime or anything… just because they make a fortune in small change from tourists who think they’re cute and other people who think that if they get enough money they might shut up and go home.
Having said all this, however, I recently observed a new breakthrough in aural suffering when I found a piper in Edinburgh’s Princes Street playing the Celine Dion song from “Titanic”. Terrifying. Two of the world’s most painful sounds combined into one horrendous dirge…
It’s enough to drive a man to a double Van Gogh job…
