Victorian Scottish Dogs Bagpipes Christmas Card, 1890s

There's a buoyant, almost delusional confidence radiating from this scene: two rough collies — because apparently someone decided Lassie needed a career pivot — are rearing up on their hind legs, decked out in teal fringed tartan shawls, and absolutely shredding on bagpipes with colorful ribbon streamers fluttering from the pipes like a Celtic fever dream. The larger collie in the foreground plays with an expression of smug, dead-eyed confidence, while the smaller one behind it either looks mildly enthusiastic or deeply resigned to this arrangement — it's hard to tell, and frankly that ambiguity is doing a lot of emotional labor here. The red cursive 'A Merry Christmas to you' at the bottom suggests this was intended as a wholesome holiday greeting, not a recruitment poster for a Scottish canine militia, but the Victorian artist who painted two bipedal sheepdogs performing traditional Celtic music in matching outfits clearly had a different definition of 'wholesome' than the rest of us.