This is an accepted version of this page Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag.

The bag is an airtight reservoir that holds air and regulates its flow via arm pressure, allowing the player to maintain continuous, even sound.

Materials used for bags vary widely, but the most common are the skins of local animals such as goats, dogs, sheep, and cows.

Primarily because of this inability to stop playing, technical movements are made to break up notes and to create the illusion of articulation and accents.

A distinctive feature of the gaida's chanter (which it shares with a number of other Eastern European bagpipes) is the "flea-hole" (also known as a mumbler or voicer, marmorka) which is covered by the index finger of the left hand.

Depending on the type of pipes, the drones may lie over the shoulder, across the arm opposite the bag, or may run parallel to the chanter.

The Oxford History of Music posits that a sculpture of bagpipes has been found on a Hittite slab at Euyuk in Anatolia, dated to 1000 BC.

[4] Several authors identify the ancient Greek askaulos (ἀσκός askos – wine-skin, αὐλός aulos – reed pipe) with the bagpipe.

[6] Dio Chrysostom wrote in the 1st century of a contemporary sovereign (possibly Nero) who could play a pipe (tibia, Roman reedpipes similar to Greek and Etruscan instruments) with his mouth as well as by tucking a bladder beneath his armpit.

[citation needed] In the early part of the second millennium, representation of bagpipes began to appear with frequency in Western European art and iconography.

The Cantigas de Santa Maria, written in Galician-Portuguese and compiled in Castile in the mid-13th century, depicts several types of bagpipes.

[8] Several illustrations of bagpipes also appear in the Chronique dite de Baudoin d’Avesnes, a 13th-century manuscript of northern French origin.

[9][10] Although evidence of bagpipes in the British Isles prior to the 14th century is contested, they are explicitly mentioned in The Canterbury Tales (written around 1380):[11] A baggepype wel coude he blowe and sowne, /And ther-with-al he broghte us out of towne.Bagpipes were also frequent subjects for carvers of wooden choir stalls in the late 15th and early 16th century throughout Europe, sometimes with animal musicians.

[12] Actual specimens of bagpipes from before the 18th century are extremely rare; however, a substantial number of paintings, carvings, engravings, and manuscript illuminations survive.

Many examples of early folk bagpipes in continental Europe can be found in the paintings of Brueghel, Teniers, Jordaens, and Durer.

This period saw the creation of the ceòl mór (great music) of the bagpipe, which reflected its martial origins, with battle tunes, marches, gatherings, salutes and laments.

[19] The "Battell" sequence from My Ladye Nevells Booke (1591) by William Byrd, which probably alludes to the Irish wars of 1578, contains a piece entitled The bagpipe: & the drone.

In the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Nations such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia, the Great Highland bagpipe is commonly used in the military and is often played during formal ceremonies.

Foreign militaries patterned after the British army have also adopted the Highland bagpipe, including those of Uganda, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Jordan, and Oman.

Many police and fire services in Scotland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and the United States have also adopted the tradition of fielding pipe bands.

[citation needed] Numerous types of bagpipes today are widely spread across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa as well as through much of the former British Empire.

In Southeastern Europe and Eastern Europe bagpipes known as gaida include: the Albanian: gajde, mishnica, bishnica, Aromanian: gaidã, Bulgarian: гайда (gaida), Greek: γκάιντα (gáida) τσαμπούνα (tsaboúna) or ασκομαντουρα (askomandoura), Macedonian: гајда (gajda), Serbo-Croatian: gajda/гајда, Turkish: gayda also tulum and Ukrainian: gayda / ґайда.

Since the 1960s, bagpipes have also made appearances in other forms of music, including rock, metal, jazz, hip-hop, punk, and classical music, for example with Paul McCartney's "Mull of Kintyre", AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)",[24] and Peter Maxwell Davies's composition An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise.