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Stock-and-Horn

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Stock-and-Horn
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Print showing a shepherd playing the stock-and-horn, possibly from a sketch by David Allan. This is the frontispiece from vol.1 of Joseph Ritson's 'Scotish Songs' [sic], published in 1794.

In Robert Burns' letter to the music editor and publisher George Thomson on 19 November 1794 he described finding the Stock-and-Horn and its construction : 'I have, at last, gotten one, but it is a very rude instrument. It is composed of three parts: the stock, which is the hinder thigh bone of a sheep, such as you see in a mutton ham; the horn, which is a highland cow's horn, cut off at the smaller end, until the aperture be large enough to admit the "stock" to be pushed through the horn, until it be held by the thicker or hip-end of the thigh-bone: and lastly an oaten reed exactly cut and notched like that which you see every shepherd boy have, when the corn-stems are green and full-grown. The reed is not made fast in the bone, but is held in the lips, and plays loose in the smaller end of the "stock", while the "stock" and horn hanging on its larger end, is held by the hands playing. The stock has six or seven ventiges in the upper side, and one back ventige, like the common flute. This one of mine was made by a man from the Braes of Athole, and is exactly what the shepherds were wont to use in the country. However either it is not quite properly bored in the holes or else we have not the art of blowing it rightly, for we can make little use of it.'

In its origins, the Highland bagpipe in common with other European and World bagpipes is a prehistoric wind instrument. Its main elements are the melody pipe or 'chanter' on which the music is played with the fingers (usually on a scale of nine notes) and with an accompanying fixed note or chordal accompaniment from the drone or drones, all of which are held in stocks tied into an animal skin bag (now coming to be replaced by synthetic materials). The player blows into the bag to supply a constant pressure and flow of air onto the reeds which are set into the chanter and drones and which make the sound. The air flow is controlled by a simple non-return valve on the blowstick.

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