There, at the conclusion of the Committal Service at St George’s Chapel later today, the Pipe Major will play once more, as the Queen’s body descends from public view. Family members and royal household staff past and present will watch on as the piper plays, walking from the doorway between the chapel and the Dean’s Cloister towards the Deanery in the Cloister. The mournful sound will swell and then fade in the chapel, as the Pipe Major makes his exit and the Queen’s 70-year reign truly comes to an end.
It will be a fittingly nostalgic tribute for the Queen whose every morning began at 9am when her piper played for 15 minutes underneath her window, at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Holyroodhouse or Balmoral.
A piper walks in the Queen’s coffin procession out of the St Giles’ Cathedral
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The sombre goodbye will echo the funeral of her beloved husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, making it the most poignant moment of the day. Last April, the duke’s coffin was lowered into the vault as Pipe Major Colour Sergeant Peter Grant played Flowers of the Forest, the Queen watching on. It is to a similar sound that she will join her ‘strength and stay’ today.
It was Queen Victoria who first struck up the tradition of morning pipes after she was introduced to the instrument in 1842 on the occasion of her first visit to the Highlands with Prince Albert. So in love she fell with the Highlands and its traditions that Albert bought Balmoral for her 10 years later.
