Halloween Bagpipes

October 31, 2023 on 4:06 pm by Michael Grey | In Music, Photographs | Comments Off on Halloween Bagpipes

It’s All Hallow’s eve and shenanigans and candy-collecting have been going on for hours all over the world where Halloween is marked. Here, a stash of chocolate bars sit in wait the first knock at the door in, I’d guess, less than two hours.

When I was a kid Halloween was a high holiday. It seems to me candy was not as commonly available as it is today. Today, all year around, grocery shoppers, for example, can buy 100 piece boxes of “fun size” chocolate bars. I can’t imagine anything like that coming into the house where I was raised. It would definitely not be part of any weekly food shopping.

So we did what we could in the couple of golden early and mouth-watering evening hours of Halloween and scoured the neighbourhood with our pillow cases of sugary loot and crappy plastic face masks (usually the following models available: pirate, princess, mummy, witch, “Indian”, “the devil” and Frankenstein).

Just as we were allowed to play with the plastic that came with dry-cleaned clothes, we were also good to run around in the dark with PCB-riddled face masks that both reduced our vision by at least half and ensured a steady stream of condensed breath down our chins. Happy times.

Even before Robert Burns’ “Tam O’Shanter” bagpipes have been connected to things otherworldly. From Medieval engravings to the nightmarish paintings of artists like Hieronymus Bosch, bagpipes have been connected to the ghoulish.

It’s not for me to say why here. I just wanted a segue to an image I stumbled on that I liked for its twee folksiness (that, and the piper’s pipes look fairly accurate in their portrayal).

Happy Halloween!

Here’s to “leftovers”!

M.