The Border pipe chanter

In an article first published in the Northumbrian Pipers' Society magazine last December, Colin Ross argues for going back to the original fingering and construction of the Border pipes.

When I joined the Pipers' Society nearly fifty years ago now, I was interested to hear about the Robertson half-longs which were supposed to be part of our tradition of Northumbrian piping. However they seemed, then as now, not very actively played as an instrument, compared to the Northumbrian smallpipe which was the main instrument of the majority of members.

The first set of half-long pipes I saw belonged to Bob Cowper, the then Chairman of the Society, and shortly afterwards I heard them being played at the society competitions. They seemed to me to be no more than Highland pipes, but played with bellows as the smallpipes were. I thought that maybe bellows were the link with the Northumbrian tradition, as the sound, and the music being played, was very Scottish. The volume in particular was very loud, and the scale had the flattened seventh note, which seemed at odds with the music

being played on the smallpipes.

I subsequently found out that in the 1920's W. A. Cocks and G.V. Charlton had commissioned Robertson, the Highland pipemaker, to make these instruments, to revive a Border tradition of playing the rallying pipes of the Border clans.

Left: Anty Charlton playing the Robertson half-long pipes at Boulmer. At the time he was landlord of the pub there.

Photo: Courtesy of Mr John Thomson, Boulmer

A large number were made to provide pipes for the Northumberland Fusiliers, the Boy Scout troops on Tyneside, and the officer training corps of Heaton grammar school; with the purpose of providing marching instruments to be played in bands, and for outside use only. This was actually not far from the purpose of the original Border pipes; which were used by the town waits on both sides of the border two to three hundred years earlier, when marching through the towns to announce the time of day. So in that sense this revival was not far off the mark, (see also photos in last year's mag, - Ed.)

Robertson half -long chanters were made with the top finger hole drilled to play the G natural in the A scale on the top hand.

This was the same as the regular Highland chanter -ie. the fingering was open with all the fingers of the top hand off the chanter. If you wanted to play the G# there was a way round it, now described in the LBPS tutor, “More Power to Your Elbow” - which was to finger the chanter with the thumb off the back hole and with the first two fingers of the left top hand down.

Right: Fingering chart for a chanter which has been drilled to play a flattened seventh scale. The G natural is the fingering customarily used by Highland pipers, and the G# that recommended for Border pipes in the LBPS tutor.

Within the first year of acquiring my first set of smallpipes I made a copy of them, and got into the business of making reeds. This lead me to thinking about the nature of blown reeds in general, and how they were never going to be as loud as the wet blown variety used in the Highland pipes. Applying this thinking to the Robertson half- longs, I knew that the volume they were producing was not a natural state of affairs. It required thick reeds being played at a much higher pressure than the smallpipes; resulting in the players exerting themselves much more than was comfortable, and with a greater

frequency of bellows action. I decided to make a set, to see if I could do something about this; with reeds that played at a comparable pressure to the smallpipe. I also wanted to see if the tone was better and less strident.

The drone reeds presented no problem, as they were just slightly larger than those used in the smallpipe, but the chanter reed needed more thought. The taper bored chanter would not take a smallpipe reed, and the Highland reed was too thick and strong to play at the pressure I was after. I resorted to thinning the Highland reed down, as described in the tutor for the Border pipes produced for the then newly emerging Lowland and Border Pipers Society. This got the result I was aiming for.

It took some time for me to be able to make a reed from scratch for the Robertson half- long chanter, as it had a different construction from the reed that suits the parallel bore of the smallpipe.

In all that time I was also thinking about the music for the instrument, and in particular was worried about the flattened seventh note at the top of the chanter. This seemed inappropriate for some of our Border tunes on the Northumbrian side of the Border, particularly the tunes that were adapted from the Border repertoire. These were tunes that smallpipers were playing, and which were an important part of our music. My concern was reinforced when Matt Seattle published the Dixon MS, where a number of the tunes were plainly diatonic, not modal in the sense that they used the flattened seventh in their scale. They needed a sharpened seventh which was easier to finger than the G# fingering in the LBPS tutor.

The fingering of the recorder to play the C# in the scale of D provides a good clue as to cross fingering for taper bore chanters of various sorts; not only the half long chanter - which by now was being called the Border chanter. However this fingering is not particularly easy to execute at speed, and was not exactly in tune, because of the diameter of the back A hole - which was too big. The hole diameters on the Highland chanter were designed for loudness and their own fingering system.

When I was curator of the Bagpipe Museum in the 1970's I had taken the opportunity to examine the old Border pipes in the collection. I was surprised to find that most of the dozen or so chanters played with a sharp seventh. However a flat seventh could be played by cross fingering, in the way described in recorder fingering for the C natural in the D scale - or in the more familiar way of playing the C natural on the D tin whistle.

Now this fingering is much easier to do than then the C# I described earlier. This also reminded me of the playing of ‘piobaireachd', where the top G was fingered in the same way. Could this be the original fingering of the Highland chanter, with hole spacings similar to the other British bagpipes: - the Irish, Pastoral and Border pipes, as well as the continental bagpipes such as the Spanish gaita? - in fact most wind instruments as far as I can see.

The business of the flat top G on Border chanters still niggled me, and it was only this year that I decided to do some further research.

I went back to the Cocks collection to look at the Border chanters again, to check my original suspicion that the position of the top finger hole was in fact drilled to give a sharp seventh when played in the open position (Highland pipe chanter fingering). I found that half of the nine chanters I examined played a positive sharp note, and the rest were not completely flat, (see chart overleaf.)

Whether the flatter notes were to help playing in maybe a pentatonic scale I don't know: this is outside my knowledge of the finer points of the Highland scale as described by Seamus McNeill in his book on the subject.

The original Jacobite set was reputedly brought to Hamsterley in Co. Durham by a Scot seeking to avoid repercussions by living in seclusion in England, thus dating the set to pre- 1745.

It has a hole position which is quite definitely for a sharpened seventh, (see diagram, p. 45 below.

Using these ideas I made a Border chanter with the top finger hole further up the chanter for my own use, applied the fingering method I have suggested, and found no difficulty in playing the top G either way.

However whenever I was asked to make a Border pipe I still drilled the top G as a natural, since this was what other pipers expected.

Left: Diagram of the original Jacobite chanter in the museum. The relative positions of the top G and A make it almost impossible that this was anything other than a set with a sharp 7th.

We have got to the stage of reeding the Border pipe to play at the lower pressure of the smallpipes, and with reeds that are economical with air, so that the bellows are not being used with greater frequency than necessary. The volume of the chanter is now much quieter, with a less strident tone - more like the Pastoral pipe chanter, which frequently had a rush inserted in the bore to enhance the tone and volume.

The next stage must surely be to get the scale adjusted, with the holes drilled the so that they resemble the examples in the Bagpipe Museum. Then Border tunes can be played as they were intended. Until this alteration of hole positions on the chanter is accepted as the original position, the revival of the Border pipe cannot be properly accomplished, as a good proportion of the Border repertoire is unplayable on the present chanter.

It would certainly help in the revival of the Border pipe repertoire to include those tunes which are in a diatonic scale of A. It would not prevent pipers from playing the modal and D tunes in the Dixon collection - as if the fingering is accepted, it is easier than the G# described in the LBPS tutor.

I am therefore proposing that makers should try drilling the G hole in the sharp position, to see if they can persuade players to finger the chanters almost like a tin whistle for the flattened seventh of the modal A scale. This is also of course the fourth interval of the three finger D scale. It harks back to what I see as the probable original fingering of the instrument: that already commonly used on other instruments. It will be interesting to see if it presents any great difficulty in execution.

Right: Modern Border chanter, made by Colin Ross, with a sharpened seventh as the top finger hole.