The Bagpipe Society

A Northern Catch

I was idly leafing through an old book of rounds, catches and the like, when I came across this interesting tune. A catch for three voices, it has two nice bagpipe references, and links them to the north country. It references both ‘Piper’ and ‘Drone’ leaving no ambiguity that this describes a bagpiper.

‘Strike it up Piper, let’s have a spring good’, and ‘Hark how the Drone, below a tone, doth hum’. So, he falls for a rich girl, they dance, enjoy the ‘Juice of Barley’ and ‘Sport all night’! Where did I go wrong!

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