Lincolnshire bagpipes

It is unclear whether Lincolnshire bagpipes refer to a specific type of pipes native to Lincolnshire, England, or to the popularity of a more general form of pipes in the region. Written records of bagpipes being associated with Lincolnshire date back to 1407, but it is difficult to find certain proof that any regional variation of the bagpipe existed which was peculiar to Lincolnshire. Despite the lack of evidence for a uniquely local instrument, it is clear that the bagpipe was enjoyed by the people of Lincolnshire.

By the modern era the bagpipe had largely fallen out of use in Lincolnshire and a 1901 commentator noted that it had become defunct by 1850. By 1881, later researchers had identified that the 19th century farmer, John Hunsley, had played the bagpipes "up to a short time before his death, which took place twenty or thirty years ago (i.e. between 1851 and 1861)." John Hunsley lived in Manton, near Kirton-in-Lindsey. In 1984 John Addison, a pipemaker in South Somercotes began his research to try to establish whether a uniquely local "Lincolnshire bagpipe" existed, and in 1989, he finished making a set of bagpipes based on the limited sources he found.

In 1407 we find possibly the earliest reference to bagpipes in Lincolnshire: "It is right well that Pilgrims have with them both singers and pipers." Bales added a note in the margin: "Well spoken, my Lord, for the Lincolnshire Bagpipes".

Michael Drayton (1563-1631) writes in Polyolbion: "Bean belly, Leicestershire her attribute doth bear. And Bells and Bagpipes next, belong to Lincolnshire."

Sometime prior to 1662, Thomas Fuller had written: "I behold these as most ancient, because a very simple sort of music, being little more than an oaten pipe improved with a bag, wherein the imprisoned wind pleadeth melodiously for the enlargement thereof. It is incredible with what agility it inspireth the heavy heels of the country clowns, overgrown with hair and rudeness, probably the ground-work of the poetical fiction of dancing satyrs. This bagpipe, in the judgement of the rural Midas's, carrieth away the credit from the harp or Appollo himself; and most persons approve the blunt bagpipe above the edge-tool instruments of drums and trumpets in our civil dissensions."

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Wikipedia