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Why did medieval pigs play bagpipes? The answer might very well be 'cause it's funny' but I also speculate that it might be a materially-coded 'go fuck yourself'. Hear me out, it's a story about medieval SKIN! Mildly NSFW https://twitter.com/thijsporck/status/1048599717112946690
The biggest clue is in the image attached to the tweet, from BL MS Sloane 748, f. 82v. In it, a pig is playing the bagpipes, but the interesting figure is the jester right next to it, who is clasping his chest with one hand, while cupping/squeezing his genitals with the other
While the pig is playing the bagpipes, squeezing an inflated bladder resting across his chest and grasping the shaft of the chanter pipe, the jester is miming the pig's stance by pressing his air-bag (chest) and grasping his dangling penis and testicles
The jester is playing his own organ, that the pig's bagpipe morphologically and visually resembles. Read through this lens, even though the jester is miming, the bagpipe is the mimetic object. This reminds us of the materiality of the medieval bagpipe, made from animal skin
The medieval musician knew how the bagpipe sausage gets made. Touching the bag, you could identify if it was made from the bladder or stomach of a bigger animal (goat, pig) or from the entire skin of a smaller one (rabbit, cat, monkey). Yes, all these animals play bagpipes!
There is humour in the realisation that the instrument you are playing is the skin of an animal. Caricatures of fools sometimes depict them trying to 'play' animals (usually dogs) like a bagpipe. In last miniature, a man trains a dog-headed bagpipe to stand on its rear legs.
This sense that the bagpipe itself is an animal is preserved in international bagpipe names (gaita/gaida 'goat', Bock 'ram', chabrette 'goat instrument'). Medieval bagpipes are also drawn featuring animal and human heads, sometimes reflecting the player, including puffed cheeks
Playing the medieval bagpipes was an intimate contact with (animal) skin, and when the player was imagined to be an animal, it bordered on cannibalilsm. But what if the bagpipe was human skin? What if the bagpipe stands for the human body, with baggy glands and dangly appendages?
The pig plays the pig-bladder. It handles the hard shaft and makes noises. The hairy or stretchy exterior moistens with the player's breath and saliva. The jester plays his own body, that makes noises and secretes bodily fluids. These 'instruments' attend to their materiality
So animals playing bagpipes could remind one of human masturbation. If we pay attention to the materiality of images, if we remember that the medieval individual was very attuned to touching real skin and wood and bone and leather, we might get more insight into marginal doodles.
