Not quite right M. Eric le Rouge, but you are on the right track. The highland pipes as we know them were, as you know, an awful mistke by a famous but anonymous Irish pipe maker. Upon hearing the fearful noise that his invention created gave (and that's an important bit) the offending set of pipes to a Scotsman. This chappie sought to make some money out of this piece of what would could only be described as wretched ill-luck. One of his brainwaves was to send the pipes to sea with the Loch na Gar Whaling fleet. The effect was devastating, whales throwing themselves at the factory ship when they heard the pipes tuning up. Powerful conservationists acted fearing a complete wipe out of the whales having the practice outlawed. But the secret was out so they changed the spelling to wailing.