Ornaments on a Mallorcan bagpipes or 'xeremias'
 
the xeremier and his instrument, the bag made from local 'roba des llengues'
ornamentation on the Mallorcan bagpipes
the fabiol or pipe played at the same time as the tabor



Xeremias, the Mallorcan bagpipes

The first documented bagpipe appears in a carving in the Hittite city of Eyuk prior to 1000 BCE. Cerca 60 AD, Nero depicted himself on coins playing a bagpipe and not a fiddle! He is also said to have played a pipe with his mouth, with a bag thrust under his armpit in order to “escape the disfigurement of Athene”, a reference to the sagging skin and distended facial muscles occasioned by the pre-bag method of circular breathing where the mouth acted as the repository for the air.

Modern translations of the Bible consider the symphoniae mentioned in the collection of motley instruments in Daniel 3:15 to be a bagpipe. It is interesting to speculate if the bagpipe, ever the instrument of the common people, was known to Jesus, as there is a term for it in Aramaic, and it’s popularity was spreading through the Mediterranean at that time.

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