Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes,
play on. (John Keats)
I’m not very literary, But I think Keats just told pipers to shut up.
“those unheard Are sweeter”, I can take a hint
At the SF 2005 tionol, Pat Sky related that Oscar Wilde upon hearing the pipes said that “at least they don’t have a smell”…
These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equaled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
Alfred Hitchcock
That’s a cool quote! 
(Fits to my playing … 
)
Do you have any more detailed reference for this?
/TiE
Bulgarian: “Svatba bez gajda si e pogrebenie”
English: “A wedding without a bagpipe is (like) a funeral”
Sonnet 128
How oft when thou, my music, music play’st
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks* that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with blessed gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips:
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
—William Shakespeare
*jacks=keys, as on a spinet (or, in our case, regs)
I’m delighted to hear bagpipes play,
In their singular, happy-sad way.
It’s the best music played
In most any parade;
So it’s bagpipes for me, any day.
Hmmmmm…
I see the quote that I posted as saying the best music is yet to come, yet written, or yet “taken out of the air” as S. Heaney penned. And, I think the charge is to keep playing the pipes in order to find that sweeter unheard melody.
So, keep on practicing! Find your tune!
Keats obviously had a thing for the rare tunes that the pipers have: the tunes he wasn’t hearing at sessions! Do as he urges. Learn rare tunes.
P.
Rare Tunes and Common Women.
“It takes an Irishman to play the pipes”
- Pvt. Flanagan (Sean Connery),
the Longest Day, 1962
‘If 21 years is the rigor
for learning the pipes, then so is the figure
for tuning the bastards - and the job gets bigger’
from ‘Pipemakers’ by Ronnie Wathen
If you can get your hands on a copy of Ronnies ‘The Unwritten Mountains’ it’s worth it!
Check this :
http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/4244/