Lincolnshire bagpipes

• Illustration — Carving of a bagpiper: Lincoln Cathedral Cloister • Illustration — Limestone relief carving of a bagpiper and three dancers – taken from Moorby church (Lincolnshire) before it was demolished in 1982 According to their own records, on 12 November 1988, the Lincolnshire Heritage Trust (now renamed Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire) commissioned pipemaker John Addison of South Somercotes to undertake research into historic bagpipes in Lincolnshire and to create a set of Lincolnshire pipes based on that research. Addison was a maker of Northumbrian smallpipes, Irish pipes, Musettes de Cour, Border and Lowland pipes and Northumbrian Half Longs. Addison was well aware of the high degree of conjecture that anyone recreating a bagpipe, of the type once seen in Lincolnshire, would have to employ. In 1984, Addison wrote about the carving in Branston Church: "This powerful but primitive motif gives at least some information; it shows a bagpipe with one chanter (melody pipe) which is probably conical, one drone with a bell end, and it is mouth blown". Addison goes on to say "This description also covers pipes which would undoubtedly have been seen in a large part of Eastern Europe, most of Western Europe and some of North Africa and can be still seen in some of these places today". Addison reached the conclusion, from his research on the possible existence of a regional bagpipe for Lincolnshire, that the closest relative of such a pipe was the Spanish gaita gallega, which he believed to be the most straightforward form of the bagpipe existing in Europe. Addison based his new pipes on three carvings: a pew end carving in All Saints' Church, Branston; an oak ceiling boss in the cloister of Lincoln Cathedral and a stone carving taken from Moorby Church before it was demolished in November 1982. All three depictions appear to have a conical chanter and a single bass drone. The pipes made by Addison strongly physically resemble the Spanish gaita.

Folk musician Annie Walker played the resulting pipes during a ceremony at All Saints' Church, Branston, Lincolnshire, in September 2002. In April 2012, the Addison pipes were loaned to musician Al Garrod, founder of the recreated City of Lincoln Waites, the medieval band of the Mayor of Lincoln.

The pipes are famously mentioned by the character Falstaff in William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 1 (c. 1597) in which he likens his melancholy to their sound: "Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib cat or a lugged bear...Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe." Robert Armin, an actor in Shakespeare's company, also mentions the bagpipe in his prose work A Nest of Ninnies (1608): "At Christmas time, amongst all the pleasure provided, a noyse of minstrells and a Lincolnshire bagpipe was prepared – the minstrells for the great chamber, the bagpipe for the hall – the minstrells to serve up the knights meate, and the bagpipe for the common dauncing."