Bagpipes at dawn

It’s one of those stories which makes you look twice at the date. It did, after all, appear on 1 April. ‘Scotched: Diageo bows to pressure to rename whisky brand’.

The reason for this surprise announcement? The reported renaming of the firm’s Indian whisky, McDowell’s No.1, and the cessation of exports of its sister brand, Bagpiper, at the insistence of the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) over potential confusion that they were Scottish. 

The changes only apply to markets outwith India but, the more I consider it, the more it seems either some weird post-modern joke, or the start of something more sinister. 

Let’s take bagpipes for starters. I think we all can accept that the great Highland bagpipe has associations with Scotland, but bagpipes themselves are originally Greek, or Egyptian. Chaucer’s motley collection of pilgrims are piped out of town as they depart for Canterbury in the 1390s:

            ‘A baggepype wel coude he blowe and sowne.’

That’s the same poem, by the way, which first mentions beer being used as a base for a distillate, but I digress.

Bagpipes have been played in India since at least the 19th century. First introduced to the military, they have also become a folk instrument there. Those of you who have travelled to Garhwal will have thrilled to the skirl of the pipes being played there by the Kumauni people. For the few of you who may not have experienced it, here’s a clip.

So integral are bagpipes to the Indian military that, in 1976, United Breweries (as was) launched its brand. Maybe Diageo, riddled with post-colonial guilt, has only just realised this and acquiesced to the SWA’s demands, seeing the brand name as an example of a symbol of British imperialism being imposed on a proud and independent nation. Ok, they might be 40 years late, but it’s a start.

Maybe, though, there’s another way of looking at this. Perhaps the SWA’s motivation is to protect bagpipes for Scotch. Equally, it could be an attempt to rid the world of what most whisky marketeers see as an antiquated cliché.

Whatever the case, you can’t on one hand preen yourself about the international reach of Scotland and then object when one Scottish export is then co-opted and adapted into local culture. No country ‘owns’ bagpipes – and, by extension, bagpipers. 

Exclusively Scottish?: The World Pipeband Championship is open to all (Photo: World Pipeband Championship)

This could be the thin end of the chanter. We could be seeing an SWA-led campaign to turn the World Pipe Band Championships (which brings 40,000 people to Glasgow every year) into a Scottish-only event, the piping equivalent of baseball’s World Series. 

A ridiculous notion, you say? It’s not the first time the SWA has acted as cultural shock troops. Take the long and somewhat absurd fight between the industry body and Glenora Distillery of Glenville, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and their use of the world ‘Glen’ in the name of their Glen Breton whisky. The Canadian distiller has managed to fight off the SWA, but the apparent success of the bagpiper gambit might see another attempt being mounted. 

With the Scots clearly now in the mood to reclaim their cultural heritage, where will it end? Might Nova Scotia have to be renamed? Are the good folk of New Caledonia trembling in their boots? Who is next? When might the distillers at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, expect the writ to come through the door? What of craft distillers in Glendale, Missouri (where, as the New Riders of the Purple Sage reminded us, a train was robbed), or Glen Echo, Maryland?

Where will this madness end? Will there be law suits to ban bars being given Scottish-sounding names – yes, I’m looking at you, The Auld Alliance and Campbelltoun Loch. Could Haggis Appliance Repair in New York be concerned, and where, one might ask, will you then find a mechanic to fix your haggis appliance if they go under?

Could tartan and shortbread be next? You might think this the workings of an over-excited imagination, but if McDowell is now deemed to be an exclusively Scottish name (despite the firm being established in India in 1898), then whither all the Mcs and Macs around the globe?

And what, may I ask, of Scotch Tape? As far as I can ascertain, there’s no whisky involved in its production. A sticky situation indeed.