Speak to me

"Donald asked RSM Maclean 'Well, John, and how is the pipe going?' John replied, 'She's going so well she's speaking  to me'."

Archie Maclean, as quoted in Piping Traditions of the Outer Isles of the West Coast of Scotland, Bridget Mackenzie, Birlinn, 2013.

Is this speaking the same as, or related to, the buzz, I wonder? Note that the pipe is referred to in the singular, and that, like cars, motorbikes, ships and countries, it takes the feminine. I have always given names and genders to objects of importance. The Monkey is male.

And while we are on the subject of the naming of things I note that the Shores of Loch Bea/Bee aka The Sands of Loch Bea/Bee is formally known as The Glasgow Police March Past. 

Also on terminology, tunes, and poems or songs, are not written or composed in this book, but are 'made'.

I'm intrigued by the number of pipers who went on to be schoolteachers (not necessarily of music) or in to the police (where the pipe bands might have been a draw, I supose). I don't know if this was just the case in the Outer Isles.

Here's a tune. Braemar, again, and still tightening up in the same places, still not relaxed with it, still struggling not to mix the 1st and 3rd parts.


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