Wanna make Rio cry?

Sunset, North Uist, taken from the back door of my friends' house

That's easy. Just make him listen to a really good pipe band play "Amazing Grace"— mission accomplished.

I've got a wee smidgeon o' the Scots in me, Clan Graham. But mostly it's Irish and then *gulp/blush* English. I prefer to think that the power of the pipes o'er me has to do with the historical, and perhaps genetic, fact that it was the Irish who exported the pipes to Scotland in the first place (along with the kilt). And as an Irish piper/fiddler friend of mine likes to say, "And they still haven't got the joke!" He tells the story of his baby daughter (now a well-known Irish musician) who would cover her ears when he was outside practising with his war pipes and say "Ceol tín salach!" ("Sick, dirty music!")

But the snap and rattle of the snare drums, the skirl of the pipes— what can match it as a visceral whallop? No wonder the Irish call the piobh mhor ("big pipes")— the war pipes.

A couple of years back I was on the Outer Hebrides and they were having a major pipe competition there. I went of course. A "typical" North Uist day: cloudy and a wet on-shore wind— ah, summer on the Hebrides!

These competitions are very formal, with required moves, footwork, and tunes that are not all that entertaining. But the local crowd was as interested in the fine points as a knowledgeable ranch crowd would be at a back-country rodeo. And they couldn't have been more warmly welcoming of me, the outlander.

There was a young lad there from Northern Ireland, competing. Saved his money and made his way alone from Belfast to Lochmaddie and then down to the competition. We struck up a conservation. Wonderful manners and a sweet, gentle disposition. Won second in his class. I was very happy for him, and he was "over the moon" as they say in that part of the world.

A pipe band, for me, is a powerful experience as long as they are good. It's a connection to a racial memory I think. I believe in that. I think we are connected to things through our genes that we know not through our brains. Just ask any handy Celt.