No Luck O' The Irish

By Jess D'Amico in Miscellaneous on Mar 11, 2008 5:19PM

A St. Charles bagpiper's pipes were stolen after the South Side St. Patrick's Parade on Sunday.

The unidentified piper left his instrument in the coat room of a restaurant on Western and half an hour later, it was gone. Why would anyone want to steal his pipes, you ask? Besides being generally bad assed, the pipes in question were worth around $1,200.

Bagpipes, a now iconic symbol of the United Kingdom and Celtic heritage used to be played worldwide and are even mentioned as far back as the Bible in the book of David.* According to Wikipedia a Bulgarian saying goes, "A wedding without a bagpipe is like a funeral."

Let's hope this piper wasn't scheduled to play any weddings soon.

Image from the parade by Fuschia Foot

*[Ed note: Only some translations have "bagpipe" in David 3:5. King James has "...cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick..." where New American Standard has "... horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery, bagpipe and all kinds of music...." New Revised Standard says "horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble." And Vulgate says "tubae, et fistulae, et citharae, sambucae, et psalterii, et symphoniae, et universi generis musicorum." OK. Anyway.]