Billy Pigg

[1] He learned the instrument from several pipers including Tom and Henry Clough as well as Richard Mowat, but, according to Tommy Breckons, Batey of Stannington was his main teacher.

He subsequently began playing with other musicians in this area, particularly John Armstrong and Annie Snaith, and later Archie Dagg – together the band were known as the Border Minstrels.

A. D. Schofield and Julia Say produced a biography and tune book, The Border Minstrel, published by the Northumbrian Pipers' Society in 1997.

An album of selected recordings made by Forster Charlton was issued as Billy Pigg, the Border Minstrel on the Leader label in 1971, and re-released on CD in 2002.

Recently the Northumbrian Pipers' Society issued an expanded second edition[5] of his music, the two volumes respectively covering his own compositions and his distinctive versions of other tunes.

The distinguishing characteristic of Pigg's playing style is the use of complex open-fingered ornaments, in imitation of Irish and Highland piping.

Tom Clough considered that any departure from this, a style where the chanter was closed and silent between any two notes, would be "a grievous error in smallpipe playing".

The popular variation set for Northumbrian pipes Holey Ha'penny which is based on a simpler tune known elsewhere in the UK and Ireland as The Chorus Jig, was recorded by Pigg, and Tom Clough in the 1920s.

In 2009, "Skye Crofter's / The Swallow Tail" from Wild Hills O'Wannie, The Small Pipes of Northumbria, was included in Topic Records 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten as track one on the seventh CD.