Regimental 'row' going into WWI trenches

[OC Richard]

A family brought in an old set of pipes...the restorer was of the opinion that they had been used in the trenches.

EDIT: I watched that program, it does seem quite possible that those pipes were indeed played in WWI. Lovely to have provenance like that.

However I should say that it's very common for pipes to be claimed to have been played in WWI. The pipes carrying these claims are generally too recently made to have been around at that time.

So often has this claim been made by Ebay sellers that it's become something of a standing joke. So many pipes are claimed to have been "recovered from a WWI battlefield" that one imagines the ground strewed with them.

The set was mismatched - pipers took spares from the sets of their fallen comrades to keep their own sets going.

Sorry to say that this is another bit of romanticism.

Sets of pipes that were issued to new regimental pipers were often mismatched already, the battalion oftentimes having bits & bobs from which full sets were cobbled together.

It's common for old pipes to be what we call FrankenPipes whether or not they saw military service.

I once had an old set that had bits of perhaps four different sets present.

That's talking about drone parts. Most sets in the hands of pipers have blowpipes and chanters by makers other than the maker of the drones & stocks. I would say it's fairly rare to see a set of pipes being played by an experienced player which has all 14 wooden parts which were originally sent out of the shop together when the pipes were new.

BTW about "spares" pipers don't have the space to carry around spare parts- those old pipe cases were tiny by today's standards. Pipers do carry around spare reeds, and will have a practice chanter in the box as well.