You don’t have to wear a kilt to play them, but it helps. Might as well make a spectacle of yourself while you’re creating a godawful racket on
NATIONAL BAGPIPES APPRECIATION DAY!
We blame the Scots for bagpipes and kilts, and the Irish for their Uileann Pipes, but the bagpipe has been traced as far back as the Hittite Empire, another skirt-wearing warrior culture from the Bronze Age.
That’s over 3,500 years of 40 guys getting (more or less) together and playing “Amazing Grace,” or one of the many other bagpipe songs that sound exactly like “Amazing Grace.”
Legend has it that Emperor Hadrian once visited Scotland, got an earful of the Scottish Army Band, and decided on the spot to build Hadrian’s Wall, vowing to keep bagpipes out of the Roman Empire forever.
•Suggested Activities: Slow drum rolls, defining “appreciation.”