Subject: RE: The Wicker Man
From: HipflaskAndy - PM
Date: 27 Feb 06 - 09:42 AM

Hi Duncan - far be it from me to argue with such a distinguished musician, wonderful guitar player, singer, and all round good guy. However me old china plate..............

I am not sure what he was carrying - but the sound was of uillean pipes. The piper was an American guy called Eric Rigler (credited on the film) and whilst he does in fact play highland pipes, small pipes and low whistle he was in fact playing the Irish pipes in that particular scene.

The film Braveheart was made in Ireland of course, made to look like Scotland by haggises being seen running around hillsides in certain scenes. It is believed - since Ireland does not normally allow imported ruminants because of the chance of importing swine fever - that these were specially bred for the film. And when it said at the end "No animals were hurt in the making of this film" the haggises were specifically excluded and were in fact eaten by the film crew on Burn's night.

To go back to the thread, the same applied to the haggises shown in "Wicker Man". Look carefully and you can see a whole school of them them swimming as the seaplane lands. These are (now) the farmed aqua-haggis from Loch Ryan (Stranraer) and have a "Scottish Farmed Quality" mark. You can buy them in larger branches of Waitrose. The aqua-haggis cages can be seen on the right of Loch Ryan as the Belfast Ferry comes in.