Matt’s article sent us back to his book Geordie Syme’s Paircel o Tunes, in the introduction to which he mentions the concept of ‘Bagpipe Way’, the adaptation of music to suit the bagpipe and cites its use in George Skene’s 1717 Manuscript. Here’s an example. Skene’s music ‘for the pipe’ is possibly the earliest staff notation of bagpipe music, and we hope to return to it in a future issue

Reproduced from an article by Iain McInnes in Common Stock, January 1989, where permission from the National Library of Scotland to print it was acknowledged