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50 free Bagpipes trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This bagpipes trivia quiz covers the instrument inside and out: bag, chanter, drones, stocks and reeds, the nine-note Highland scale, bellows-blown 'cauld wind' pipes, the practice chanter and the tiny flea-hole that gives Balkan gaida music its trills. It also covers the history and the people — Nero's bladder pipe, Chaucer's piping Miller, the Battle of Pinkie, the MacCrimmons, the myth of the 1746 ban, Queen Victoria's regimental pipers, Bill Millin playing on Sword Beach, pibroch and pipe bands, the World Championships on Glasgow Green — plus the pipes of Ireland, Northumberland, Brittany, Galicia, Italy and Estonia, and the songs that took bagpipes to the charts, from 'Mull of Kintyre' to AC/DC. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Scotland and Musical Instruments quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01To which family of instruments do bagpipes belong?
Woodwind
Air blown into the bag feeds enclosed reeds, which is why organologists file them under aerophones.
Q 02The word 'chanter' derives from the Latin cantare, meaning what?
To sing
It is the melody pipe, fingered with both hands while the drones hold a constant note.
Q 03What is the job of a bagpipe drone?
To sound a constant harmonizing note
Most drones are cylindrical single-reed tubes pitched two octaves below the chanter's tonic.
Q 04What are the sockets that fasten the pipes to the bag called?
Stocks
A set minimally needs an air supply, a bag, a chanter and usually at least one drone, all held in these sockets.
Q 05How many drones does a modern Great Highland bagpipe have?
Three
Two tenors and one bass, plus the chanter and blowpipe; that makes four reeds in all, every one hidden inside the stocks.
Q 06How many notes can the chanter of a Great Highland bagpipe play?
Nine
The scale is roughly Mixolydian, and with continuous airflow there are no dynamics and no rests either.
Q 07How is the Highland pipe's chanter voiced, unlike its three drones?
With a double reed
The three drone reeds are single; double-reed chanters are typical of Western European pipes, single reeds of most other regions.
Q 08Which nickname do pipers give to bellows-blown bagpipes?
Cauld wind pipes
Because the air is never warmed or moistened by breath, bellows pipes can use more delicate reeds; the idea dates from the 16th or 17th century.
Q 09Which of these was NOT a traditional material for bagpipe bags?
Silk
Skins were often turned fur-side in to fight moisture; modern synthetic bags such as Gore-Tex may even have zips for a moisture trap.
Q 10What do pipers use to learn fingering quietly, without bag or drones?
A practice chanter
Its much quieter reed lets a piper learn fingering and new tunes without disturbing the neighbours.
Q 11What does uncovering the 'flea-hole' on a Balkan gaida chanter do?
Raises the note a half step
The tiny hole is often a metal tube or a chicken feather, and its trills give Balkan music its distinctive character.
Q 12Which Roman emperor did Suetonius describe as playing the bagged tibia utricularis?
Nero
Dio Chrysostom also wrote of a sovereign who played the pipe by tucking a bladder beneath his armpit.
Q 13Where was the earliest surviving bagpipe part, a medieval chanter, found in 1985?
Rostock, Germany
Actual instruments from before the 18th century are extremely rare; most evidence comes from paintings, carvings and manuscripts.
Q 21Whose personal piper was Bill Millin on D-Day?
Lord Lovat
Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat, ignored orders restricting pipes to rear areas and had Millin play the commandos ashore.
Q 22Which 1962 film portrayed Bill Millin's D-Day piping?
The Longest Day
He was played by Pipe Major Leslie de Laspee, official piper to the Queen Mother; a bronze statue of Millin was unveiled in Normandy in 2013.
Q 23The uilleann pipes are the national bagpipe of which country?
Ireland
Their name is a 20th-century coinage by Grattan Flood, translating 'pipes of the elbow'; earlier they were called Union pipes.
Q 14Which 14th-century English work explicitly mentions a character who plays the bagpipe?
The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer's Miller blows the pipes to lead the pilgrims out of town.
Q 15The first clear reference to Scottish Highland bagpipes concerns which 1547 battle?
Pinkie
A French history recorded their use there, and George Buchanan claimed the pipes had replaced the trumpet on the battlefield.
Q 16Which of these was one of the famous Highland piping families of the early 17th century?
The MacCrimmons
Alongside the MacArthurs, MacGregors and Mackays of Gairloch, they shaped the martial 'great music' of the pipes.
Q 17What is the widely repeated but unproven claim about the Act of Proscription of 1746?
That it banned the Highland bagpipe
The act's text never mentions pipes and no prosecution for playing them is recorded; the clan system's collapse did more damage.
Q 18Whose passion for the Highlands led the War Office to fund regimental pipers in the 1840s?
Queen Victoria
Each Highland battalion was allowed five pipers and a pipe major, still all the British Army pays for.
Q 19Roughly how many pipers are estimated to have been killed in World War I?
1,000
Pipers were easily identifiable targets; front-line piping was finally prohibited after heavy losses at El Alamein in 1943.
Q 20Piper Bill Millin famously played under fire on which D-Day beach?
Sword
German snipers later told him they had not shot at him because they assumed he had gone mad.
Q 24How is the bag of the uilleann pipes inflated?
With a bellows strapped to the arm
The dry air is kinder to the reeds, and some pipers can talk or sing while playing.
Q 25What range does the uilleann pipes' chanter have, unusually for a bagpipe?
Two full octaves
It can be overblown into the upper octave and plays sharps and flats, and its extra keyed pipes are called regulators.
Q 26Which film and stage show helped make the uilleann pipes widely known?
Braveheart and Riverdance
Both leaned on the softer Irish pipes rather than the Highland pipes most people picture.
Q 27The Northumbrian smallpipes come from which part of England?
The North East
The Duke of Northumberland's family has kept an official piper for over 250 years, and a Pipers' Society was founded in 1928.
Q 28What is pibroch, or ceòl mòr?
Extended theme-and-variation art music
Literally 'great music', it opens with a slow ground called the ùrlar followed by up to twenty variations.
Q 29What is the Gaelic term for the 'little music' of marches, reels and strathspeys?
Ceòl beag
A march, strathspey and reel set — the MSR — is the standard competition combination.
Q 30What is the slow opening statement of a pibroch's theme called?
The ùrlar
The Gaelic word means ground or floor; the variations that follow start simply and grow ever more ornate.