As bagpipes ring out across the valley this St. Patrick’s Day, some will pause and admire the haunting sound while others will just feel haunted and hurry to cover their ears, which is pretty much the reaction Stacie Lyn Houser, a Great Highland bagpiper, sees when she begins playing.

Although bagpipes are often associated with the Irish holiday, the instrument was actually developed in Scotland and likely originated in the Middle East.

“The ones that I play are the great highland bagpipes out of Scotland. They were created as a war instrument for the Scottish. They are probably the loudest bagpipes that exist,” Houser explained.

“Bagpipes themselves, I believe, originated from the Middle East, and there are actually hundreds of different styles of bagpipes throughout the world,” she said.

She pointed out that there are Irish bagpipes, but the bagpipes that most people have seen in parades and at funerals are the Great Highland bagpipes from Scotland.

Growing up, music was a part of Houser’s family. Both she and her sister played instruments through their school years.

Houser’s sister, who is now an adjunct professor of music at several local colleges, was actually the first to become interested in learning to play the bagpipes.

“When I heard that she wanted to learn the bagpipes, and I was starting to get into our Scottish ancestry, I said, well, so I got one, and we both started taking lessons from Dr. Arno Vosk,” Houser said.

“When we found out that he was local, only about 15 minutes from where we were living at the time, we would go every weekend and have a lesson up there at his house,” she said.

That was in 2014, when she was around 27 years old.

“He didn’t think that we were that serious, being two young girls, and he’s like, ‘Well, this is a very hard instrument. You have to really want this,” Houser said.

To begin, would-be pipers start on a practice chanter, which is a double-reed woodwind instrument for learning the fingering for different melody notes of the bagpipe music.

“It’s definitely one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn. You have to really want it to be able to continue up onto the pipes once you’re done with the practice chanter,” Houser said.

After a year, Houser said she moved up to the bagpipes.

“Once you’re comfortable with the tunes, then you can attempt the bagpipes. And I say attempt, because you’ll be confident until you get those pipes going. You’re like, oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can do this,” she added.

Houser shared what it was like when she reached the point in her training where she could begin playing the bagpipes.

“The first time I got to go up on the pipes. I remember being outside of his house in a big field, open field, and trying to get the pipes going. I couldn’t, they sounded like a dying goose. It was awful. They take a lot of air,” she said.

“It’s a whole body experience, for sure…every time you blow into the instrument, it takes such force that it’s almost like doing crunches or sit ups, the amount of ab work that it takes,” she added.

Her sister didn’t continue with the bagpipes but Houser went on to join a growing number of women who play.

“It’s becoming more and more popular. I’m not sure the reasoning behind that, but a lot of the big grade one professional bagpipe bands don’t allow women, just due to tradition. But more of the smaller bands, like the Nittany Highland pipe band that I play with, actually have a large amount of women,” she said.

Currently the band has about 15 pipers total for most events, depending on who is available, she added.

Houser arrived at the interview in the full traditional Highland dress uniform typical of bagpipers.

“This is more of the casual version of a pipe band uniform, versus the ones that have the big, giant hats and the spats and the colors over their shoulder. This one is more like a police uniform Pipe Band, though we are not affiliated with police,” she explained.

The hat she wore is called a Glengarry; the shoes Ghillie brogues;the tall socks are kilt hose which have a sgian dubh, (pronounced “skian doo”), a replica of the knives that would have been used by Scottish warrior, tucked into them. The elastic bands worn around the kilt hose are called flashes; the pouch worn over the kilt is called the sporran and acts as place to put belongings; a tie is usually worn; and some pipers also wear belts, although Houser said she doesn’t always do that. And of course there is the kilt, worn by men and women alike. Houser’s is the ancient Forbes tartan. The type of plaid usually signifies clan identity or the heritage of the person wearing it.

The starting price for bagpipes is around $1,000. More expensive models don’t necessarily mean a better sound, her teacher told her, they just have more “bells and whistles.”

Typically, because there are no other bands in the area, the pipe band that Houser plays with does parade-based events sometimes as far away as Harrisburg. Even though they’re not Irish, this time of year is their busiest season.

“We always have to prepare our repertoire and make sure we know our tunes for this time of year. Locally, I do a lot more private gigs. So this year, I won’t be doing any parades, because the parades fall on the same weekends as the gigs that I have locally. So I’ll be playing at The Bar on Market on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m also going to Valley View nursing home earlier that day to play. And I have a private birthday party. So I really take any events, anything that anybody’s interested in having me for,” she said.

She also plays for funerals, and in the past has done memorial events for local fire departments.

The reaction to bagpipe music is mixed, Houser admitted.

Some people – mainly kids – plug their ears.

“But a lot of different people do enjoy it. It really depends on the area that you’re at, and every town kind of has a different reaction to it. I would say the coal towns where there’s a lot of Irish in the region, they absolutely love it. So we really enjoy doing the parades down that direction. But overall, we always get asked back to the parade,” she said.

“It’s a very traditional Scottish heritage type of music. It’s interesting because it’s not like any other instrument out there, and it sounds very attention driving. You know, I think it’s one of those things that’s either you love it or you hate it,” Houser added.