Re: Mike Donnelly’s letter in the Sept. 20 edition of The NEWS about the Sept. 13 column by Arthur Black.
I was a bit disappointed to see Arthur Black’s column disparaging bagpipes taken so seriously. I see where Donnelly is coming from, having been raised myself in a strict protestant environment, by parents and grandparents who would have understood “sheep-molesters” to mean persons who beat their sheep with sticks while herding them down the lane. (As in the first definition in the Oxford dictionary.)
Perhaps Donnelly, like myself, is becoming crotchety in his old age, and is tired of these frequent intrusions of the “lower terms” into our vernacular. At almost 80 years of age, I still prefer heck, darn and gosh over their synonyms (unless very angry).
While my name is English, my ancestry is predominantly Scottish, and I was raised in a rural village called Scotland, Ontario, in an area north of Lake Erie, where John Kenneth Galbraith wrote of his neighbouring “Scotch Canadians.” And yes, I love the bagpipes.
However, I also recognize that bagpipe-challenged individuals like Arthur Black do exist. I only hope they reform before they get piped up to the Pearly Gates by William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, who will have taken up the pipes in earnest, once they heard them in action. I fear pipe-haters will not be welcome in Heaven.
Nelson EddyBowser/Deep Bay
