It has been a while since I have done a post concerning all things gothic. To this end, I was researching images of the magnificent ruined Melrose Abbey in Scotland when I stumbled across the following picture of a gargoyle from Melrose’s ruined walls.
A gargoyle/sculpture on Melrose Abbey
An older photo of the same sculpture
It’s a pig playing a bagpipe! And it isn’t alone. Apparently this was a very popular image in the medieval Celtic world. Pigs with bagpipes show up again and again in carvings and illuminations from Ireland, Scotland, and North England–and nobody is sure why.
Another carving of a pig piper from an ancient misericord in the cathedral city of Ripon in Yorkshire
In an article concerning the history of the bagpipe, distinguished Scottish historian (and piper), Hugh Cheape, speculates about the reason:
Strong visual imagery is a consistent and important element in medieval art and sculpture, and the bagpipe is found being symbolically played by pigs and angels. There are intriguingly different ways of explaining the pig pipers of the medieval period. On the one hand, by giving the bagpipe to a pig, it emphatically lowers the status of the instrument but associates it with the animal which could provide an airtight reservoir for the pipe bag. On the other hand it was said that pigs were lovers of music and were often shown in art as musicians, especially in ‘Bestiaries’ which were a popular type of book in the medieval period describing animals in a sort of ‘natural history’ but placing them in an ‘unnatural history’ of allegorical narrative.
How delightful! I am a big fan of pigs and I probably ought to write about the bagpipe, that strange shrieking instrument, which is believed to have an ancient history dipped in war and magic.
Oh, and I should not neglect my original purpose of showing Melrose Abbey, the epitome of Gothic architecture in Scotland. Constructed in 1136 by Cistercian brothers, Melrose Abbey replaced an ancient monastery to Saint Aiden which had been founded in the 7th century. The new Melrose Abbey was burned by Richard II in 1385 but rebuilt. In 1544, English armies again burned the rebuilt Abbey as part of their effort to coerce the Mary, Queen of Scots to marry the child son of Henry VIII. After this the Abbey was not rebuilt, but its beautiful ruins are a major tourist destination in their own right.
The ruins of Melrose Abbey
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6 comments
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January 6, 2011 at 7:43 AM
jenny
SOME PIG
January 6, 2011 at 5:40 PM
Hieronymo
Where’s Papa going with that Ax?
October 20, 2011 at 3:52 PM
Barbara S,otj
my daughter just brought me a refrigerator magnet of the gargoyle pig playing babpipes which protrudes from a wall at Melrose Abbey. It is utterly charming though small perhaps 2.5 inches by 2.5. Pigs are cleaner than we think and I just read that they like music.
October 21, 2011 at 10:19 AM
Hieronymo
You are lucky to have such a magnet. Pigs are indeed a much more clever and refined lot than we give them credit for: it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they have a feeling for music (even though the music we write about pigs largely seems to be about our own terrible appetites).
October 15, 2012 at 3:11 PM
Mike
There is a carving of a pig playing the bagpipes on the pulpit in St. Leonard’s Church, Ribbesford near Bewdley in Worcestershire, England.
Another carving shows a fox preaching to two geese.Some believe these may be parodies representing local people (ie priests)
July 29, 2020 at 7:00 PM
So Master Porker picked up his bagpipes and let rip….! | murreyandblue
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