G'day,

Casting my mind back to the old, one-volume Oxford Companion to Music, by Percy Scholes, I seem to remember that he describes annual, Christmastide, visitations upon London of Italians playing zampogna and ciaramella (or similar shawn-like pipe) to play (busk?) on the streets over the Christmas period. One presumes they played their carols ... and introduced them to London - and England.

He describes this as happening a few centuries back ... when the English had a half-dozen different regional bagpipes ... and before the Scottish, the last European people to take up bagpipes, had done so.

Regards,

Bob Bolton