The Morpeth Rant with a characteristic step; musically it is similar to a reel, though somewhat slower, and with more of a lilt. During 1770–2 William Vickers made a manuscript collection of local dance tunes, of which some 580 survive, including both pipe and fiddle tunes, many of which are from Scotland, southern England, Ireland and even France, revealing the very extensive and varied repertoire of local musicians at that time. Bagpipe music In the later medieval period pipe music appears to have been characterized by the use of the Northumbrian 'war pipe', which may have been the ancestor of the Great Highland Bagpipe, but no example has survived. It appears to have been replaced in the region by the eighteenth century by a variety of pipes, ranging from the conical bore, open-ended border pipes, to the cylindrically bored smallpipes; the closed-ended form with its single octave compass and closed fingering is known to have existed since the seventeenth century, and open-ended forms were also known. The Union or Pastoral pipes, the precursor of the Irish Uilleann pipes, are also known to have been played and made in the region. The earliest known bagpipe manuscript from the UK is a tunebook by William Dixon of Stamfordham in Northumberland, dated 1733. This includes forty tunes with extensive sets of variations. Some of the tunes correspond to later versions of known smallpipe tunes; others, with a nine-note compass, must have been played either on Border pipes or on an open-ended smallpipe, like the Scottish smallpipes. In the early nineteenth century, makers such as John Dunn and Robert and James Reid added keys to the closed-ended smallpipe, extending its range to almost two octaves. With its greater flexibility, the instrument became more fashionable at this time. On the other hand, the Border pipes seem not to have been found in Northumberland much after the middle of the century, though they were revived as the 'half-long pipes' in the 1920s and more successfully in the 1970s and 80s. Many families have been associated with traditional Northumbrian piping. Will Allan (Old Wull) and his son James (Jemmy) were noted pipers in the eighteenth century: James played on several occasions for the Countess of Northumberland. In 1756 Joseph Turnbull was appointed piper to the Countess. The Percy family have continued to maintain a piper to this day. Contrary to popular tradition, the Duke's current piper, Richard