The bagpipe notes reverberate with distinction. Somber. Regal. Strong. The bass and snare drums sound as though they should announce a coming army or foreshadow an impending battle.

Instead, they rattle the windows of the Carrick High School cafeteria, where the Greater Pittsburgh Police Emerald Society Pipes & Drums Band gathers for one last practice before last Saturday's St. Patrick's Day parade.

For the two-dozen men who hone this centuries-old musical form, it's a chance to recognize their ethnic heritage. A chance to honor their profession.

And, "It's a chance to see a bunch of grown men wear skirts. Proudly," kids Joe Smith, a Port Authority police officer and drummer in the band.

The jocular camaraderie exhibited by the group does not belie their seriousness of purpose, their attention to detail and their respect for tradition.

The band was formed in 2001 by Collier Officer Dave Agostino and South Fayette Officer Chuck Handerhan after the pair attended funeral services for Aliquippa police Officer James Naim, who was slain while on duty.

"We went to the funeral and couldn't believe that there was no local police pipe band," Handerhan said. The Allegheny County Sheriff's Department has a pipe band, but Handerhan said it is composed mostly of civilians.

"Boston and Cleveland had sent their bands, so after the funeral, we approached them and talked to some of the officers about how to start one, and they set us on the right track," Handerhan said.

Handerhan said that they didn't feel quite so bad after learning that the Boston police, the oldest department in the country, in a city chock full of Irishmen, no less, had founded the Boston Police Gaelic Column band as recently as 1992. The circumstances were similar; the Boston group was formed after pipe bands from other states had to be imported to play at the funeral of an officer in the Boston bomb squad who was killed while on duty.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the New York Police Department's 95-member band sets the standard nationwide.

"The NYPD pipes and drums band is the band," Handerhan said, adding that police pipe bands in Chicago, Cleveland and Camden, N.J., would be among the elite in the country.

"It's an easy instrument to learn, but it's hard to play, if that makes any sense. It's more of a physical instrument," Handerhan said, explaining that inexperienced players become so wrapped up in keeping track of the blow-and-squeeze sequence of the pipes that its easy to forget about the notes.

If the band has made quick progress in the brief time since its inception, it owes it to its instructor, Alasdair Gillies, who also teaches the Carnegie Mellon University Pipe Band. A native of Scotland who grew up in Ireland, Gillies has 17 years' experience as a piper and Pipe Major with the Queen's Own Highlanders, a distinguished Scottish military unit, and served for many years as instructor to prepare recruits to be Regimental Pipers.

He's won numerous international awards for solo piping and is considered one of the world's finest. Gillies, traveling in the United Kingdom and Ireland, could not be reached for comment.

Pipe Major Michael Scott, a Pittsburgh police lieutenant, said the band had grown to 18 regular members with six in training. All are active or retired law enforcement officers in the greater Pittsburgh area, plus Gillies and another civilian instructor, Bob Mackey, of Bethel Park.

Most members are city police officers, and Wilkinsburg, Mount Oliver, the Port Authority, Oakdale and Bridgeville departments are represented. Scott said he recently was contacted by an FBI officer in West Virginia who was interested in joining.

According to Cecil Adams, the pseudonymous author of the nationally syndicated newspaper column The Straight Dope, "it is generally thought that bagpipes are a Scottish instrument. But, in fact, both the Irish and Scottish branches of the Celtic tribes played them, and some argue about who invented them."

Regardless of who lays claim to their creation, it's somewhat ironic that bagpipes, which have been so heavily embraced by law enforcement, were considered the instrument of outlaws, even a weapon of war, and banned by the British in the 13th century.

Adams explains that the tradition of bagpipes played at fire department and police department funerals in the United States goes back more than 150 years.

"When the Irish and Scottish immigrated to this country, they brought many of their traditions, including the bagpipe, often played at Celtic weddings, funerals and dances," Adams wrote.

"It wasn't until the great potato famine and massive Irish immigration to the East Coast of the United States in the 1800s that the tradition of the pipes really took hold. Irish immigrants faced massive discrimination and the only jobs they could get were often dirty, dangerous, or both -- firefighters and police officers. ...

"When cops wanted to salute their fallen brethren, they thought quite naturally of the pipes, which had been played at funerals for hundreds of years. ... Being practical folk, cops use the Scottish version of the bagpipes, which is louder and better suited to outdoor use than the Irish counterpart."

Agostino is lucky that the band he helped form didn't play at his own funeral.

Saturday will mark five months since a motorcycle accident that should have killed him. Not could have, not would have, but "should have," he emphasizes. He is certain of this because he spent four years as a paramedic before becoming a police officer. He's seen first hand what happens to people in accidents like his. They die.

Agostino was critically injured Aug. 15 while returning from the 64th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in the Black Hills of South Dakota when his motorcycle rear-ended an SUV on the Ohio Turnpike near Cleveland. Ohio state troopers said he was thrown off his Harley-Davidson by the force of the collision and suffered massive head injuries when he landed on his head and shoulders on the berm of the turnpike.

He was not wearing a helmet.

Agostino doesn't remember the trip or the accident. He was in a coma for three weeks. When he woke, the 40-year-old father of three he thought he was 20, and back to delivering furniture for a living.

He is on an extended leave from his duties as a police officer but hopes to return to work soon. He has regained his physical and mental faculties to the point that if you weren't aware of his accident, you wouldn't know that anything was wrong with him. He has no limp and a small scar on his neck from a tracheotomy is the only visible mark on him.

Call it the luck of the Irish, even if he has an Italian surname.

"I'm half Italian, but I think I have more Irish and English in me than anything," he said, pointing to an olive birthmark on his arm "I think that's the only Italian in me," he laughed.

A kilt-clad Agostino was out in front next to Scott when the band wound its way through the thousands of green-garb wearing, green beer drinking revelers at Saturday's parade Downtown.

Scott said March is a big month for the band to do "fun types of things," but May is truly its most hectic month. It plays eight dates, including memorials at the fallen officers monument on the North Side Riverfront Park between Heinz Field and PNC Park, at the police Blue Mass at Epiphany Church, Downtown, and at a state police memorial in Harrisburg.

But its most humbling distinction is playing at the annual National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, D.C., where it will again accompany the host band to play for President Bush.

Larry Jones, of Banksville, who is with Pittsburgh EMS, said the Washington, D.C., trips were among his favorite memories as a piper.

"The first year that we played in the law enforcement memorial in Washington, we were making our way from the hotel to the rally point and we went straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. I got goose bumps thinking here we are going to play in our nation's capitol, for the president," he said.,

"That's not a bad gig."