By Patrick Sawer
Last Updated: 3:04am BST 21/04/2008
[telegraph.co.uk]
Whisper it if you dare, but the age-old Highland bagpipe – beloved of sentimental Scots and American tourists in search of their Highland roots – is in fact a recent invention.
A controversial new study has claimed that far from being the time-honoured instrument which led the clans into battle against the Auld Enemy, the bagpipe as we know it was developed in the early 1800s.
It now seems that, like the kilt and most tartans, the tradition of the great Highland bagpipe was something manufactured for the benefit of nostalgic Scottish émigrés.
[via Funky Plaid at Swirling Vortex of Verisimilitude]