Pulling together what is known of eighteenth-century West Highland piping and pipers and relating this to the effects of changing social conditions on traditional Scottish Gaelic piping since the suppression of the last Jacobite rebellion, Gibson presents a new interpretation of the decline of Gaelic piping and a new view of Gaelic society prior to the Highland diaspora. Refuting widely accepted opinions that after Culloden pipes and pipers were effectively banned in Scotland by the Disarming Act (1746), Gibson reveals that traditional dance bagpiping continued at least to the mid-nineteenth century. He argues that the dramatic depopulation of the Highlands in the nineteenth century was one of the main reasons for the decline of piping. Following the path of Scottish emigrants, Gibson traces the history of bagpiping in the New World and uncovers examples of late eighteenth-century traditional bagpiping and dance in Gaelic Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He argues that these anachronistic cultural forms provide a vital link to the vanished folk music and culture of the Scottish highlanders. This definitive study throws light on the ways pipers and piping contributed to social integration in the days of the clan system and on the decline in Scottish Gaelic culture following the abolition of clans. It also illuminates the cultural problems faced by all ethnic minorities assimilated into unitary multinational societies.

John G. Gibson is a scholar of Gaelic culture and musicologist who lives in Judique, Nova Scotia. He is the author of Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745–1945 and Old and New World Highland Bagpiping. Born in Edinburgh in 1941, he spent much of his childhood in Craigag near Glenfinnan but attended both school and university in Edinburgh before his emigration to Canada.

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"A must-read for all piping aficionados and those with a taste for the sacred cow." The Voice "This is a book that every piping enthusiast should read." Celtic Heritage "Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping's contribution to the region's cultural history is priceless." Atlantic Books Today "By studying and reinterpreting the historical relationship between traditional Scottish and New World preliterate piping Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745-1945 vastly enriches our knowledge of both of them. A monumental contribution to Scottish and Canadian cultural studies." Robin Lorimer, musicologist