The Scots have a peculiar musical instrument called a bagpipe. It’s a bag made of a pig’s skin and it has a pipeto blow it up as you would a balloon, and there are several horns attached to the bag. The player puts the bag under his arm, keeps blowing it up to keep air in it, and at the same time squeezes out the air with his arms sothat it blows the horns, making a peculiar squeaky music like a “dying pig.”

Some of the greatest ships in the World such as those that cross the ocean are made in Scotland, at a place calledGlasgow on the River Clyde, on the west side. Glasgow is the second largest city on the island, but the capital of Scotland is on the other side, the east coast. It is called Edinburgh. The Presbyterian Church started in Scotlandand most of the people in Scotland are Presbyterians, just as those in England are Episcopalians.

We call white potatoes “Irish” because they raise and eat so many potatoes in Ireland, the island to the westof Great Britain. In fact, Ireland is shaped something like an Irish potato. But they had no potatoes at all in Ireland and no one there had ever seen or heard of a potato before Columbus discovered America. Potatoes wereborn in South America and were brought over and raised in Ireland.

The island of Ireland is divided into two parts. The small northern part is called Northern Ireland and is part ofthe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That means the King of England is king of Northern Ireland as well as of England, Scotland, and Wales.

The Irish are great story tellers and fairy-tale tellers, and they say that once upon a time long ago a giant inthe north of Ireland built a magic bridge from Ireland all the way across to Scotland; and to prove the story true they show you thousands of stone posts from the shore out into the sea—all there is left of the bridge—thatlook as if they had been driven down into the sea by a pile driver. These stone posts running out into the sea are called the Giant’s Causeway, which means the Giant’s Bridge.

Have you a handkerchief in your pocket? Is it made of linen or cotton? If it’s a “party” handkerchief it isprobably made of linen and came from Ireland. Linen is made from the fiber of a plant called flax. Flax is much stronger and more silky than cotton, but it costs more. Flax grows especially well in the country around Belfast,which is the capital and chief city of Northern Ireland. In Belfast, they make more linen, and especially fine linen, than anywhere else —handkerchiefs, napkins, and table-cloths.