Alain Touizer

18/01/2026

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

18/01/2026

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

18/01/2026

18/01/2026

18/01/2026

Ces cinq plantes sont des "antibiotiques naturels" pour soulager les bobos et infections courants | TF1 Info

18/01/2026

Lamento de Sunneva is a piece for solo viola da gamba by Amarilis Dueñas, inspired by the life and death of Kristina av Tunsberg (1234 in Bergen - 1262 in S...

18/01/2026

Bagpipes are often linked with Scotland today, but the instrument itself is far older and far wider-spread.

In the medieval period, bagpipes were heard across much of Europe, from England and France to the Baltic and the Balkans.

They appear in manuscripts, carvings, church sculpture and even on misericords, usually played by shepherds, travellers or village musicians.

The basic idea hasn’t changed in centuries. A bag (usually made from animal hide) acted as a reservoir of air.

The player blew into it or used bellows, and the steady pressure allowed a continuous sound. A chanter carried the melody, while one or more drones provided the constant background note that gives the instrument its distinctive character.

Medieval pipes came in many shapes.
Some were small single-drone pipes for indoor use; others were larger outdoor instruments loud enough to cut through market noise or open fields. The Scottish Great Pipe developed later, but its roots lie in these earlier forms.

Bagpipes weren’t military by default. In the medieval world they were everyday instruments… used for dancing, processions, harvest celebrations and village feasts.

Shepherds played them to pass the time.
Travelling musicians used them because the constant airflow made them reliable in all weathers.

By the late Middle Ages the instrument was common enough that parish records mention pipers being hired for fairs, weddings and church ales.

The idea of the bagpipe as a purely Highland symbol came much later.

So while later history narrowed the instrument’s identity, in the medieval period the bagpipe was simply one of Europe’s loudest and most recognisable sounds, filling fields, halls and roads long before the first tartan ever appeared.

So...now you know!