Customer Reviews

The Book of the Bagpipe

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're a piper, Irish, Scottish, or just love the Celtic culture, "The Book of the Bagpipe" is a great book to own! It's full of information about the history of the great Highland bagpipes, bagpipe music, and bagpipers. This book also contains information on other types of bagpipes, but keeps the Highland bagpipe as it's main focus. The pictures and illustrations in "The Book of the Bagpipe" are excellent, a great portrayal of Celtic culture. The bibliography can be found at the back of the book, and the resources are absolutely amazing. Overall, "The Book of the Bagpipe" is full of great poetry and pictures and is put together by Hugh Cheape in such a delightful manner that I rate it as one fantastic read!

*Tiffany*

This pretty, little gem of a book is a great gift for the piper or Scot-o-file in your family, especially if that person is you. Cheape delivers a basic FAQ on pipes and piping, but it's the lavish illustrations that make the book special. Cheape gives ample space to pipes from other parts of the world besides the British Isles. If you ever visit Glasgow, Scotland, visit the museum at the Piping Centre. Cheape designed and installed this museum.

I went through considerable trouble to acquire this book, based on the good reviews it garnered here, and the references to it I've read in other places. First off: this book is miniscule. I didn't notice that it was listed as 80 pages when I ordered it, but it isn't even really that. It is a 20-page essay, well salted with pictures, printed in a tiny format, and the first 10 pages contain no text! If it was in a standard picture book coffee table format ... it might come out as 40 pages if they made the first 10 blank as they did in this book.
The text, what there is of it: the assertions in the book are pretty free and breezy. They're also not very deep into the folklore of piping. I'd complain that he doesn't delve deeply enough into the Scottish folklore of piping, but he doesn't delve deeply into any folklore of piping. I've learned more piping folklore looking at a bottle of scotch than I did from reading this book.
I give the book a star, as the paintings and engravings he chose to include were actually rather nice. Not nice enough to justify owning the thing. Especially in the tiny format it was printed in.

Had been trying to locate the hardback version for sometime. Glad I checked Amazon, they have yet to let me down.