IN THIS ISSUELetters(3): Mouth Blown Pipes(4): North Hero 2003(7):Summer School 2003(8): Hamish Moore Concert(12):

Interview - Robbie Greensitt & Ann Sessoms(15): Dance to Your Daddy tune (23):Washington's march(24): "Bagpipes and Border Pipers"(26): Jackie Latin(32):

Harmonic Proportion(34): Collogue 2003(38): Reviews(52):

EDITORIAL

The cover picture of a musette waspurchasd by Ian Mackay in Bombay! Themusette is considered by many to haveinfluenced the development of theScottish and Northumbrian smallpipes....

Those who attended the AGM inNovember will be aware of changes tothe committee - some of which appear atthe top of this page. Changes have alsobeen made to the web site to try and dealwith enquiries more effectively. Thoseseeking assistance with their pipes arepointed towards the new TechnicalAdvisers - Jon Swayne, Richard andAnita Evans and Julian Goodacre. Andwith this edition there's aquestionnairedesigned to help the LBPS , committeejudge more accurately w you, themembers, want from your Society. Delaynot a moment, but fill it in and post it off.

As most readers will know, the Manua!and CD-ROM (review p.54) have at last

hit the streets and, judging by theorders and comments, has been wellreceived.

Border pipes continue to grow inpopularity as the reports on theHamish Moore concert and NorthHero meeting illustrate. And all fourtrophies from Border pipecompetitions in 2003 (LBPS, NPS,Rothbury TMF, Moth Gathering)are at the moment held by one piper -Matt Seattle. Surely a first?

Now the LBPS Summer School has anew venue (again!). Auchincruidenear Ayr. Although the move to theGlasgow University Campus (see p.8) ,received the thumbs up from all theparticipants, the University decided toup the hire charge to an unacceptablelevel. Now it will be held with thealready established "CommonGround Scotland".

Jock Agnew jockagnew@n,aol.com

LettersFrom Peter Aitchison

Dunbar, Scotland

Looking back into the Common Stockissue of Dec 2002 [Vol 17 No.2],Nigel Bridges writes about thestrathspey "The Gruagach" by P/MD.R.MacLeennan on page three. Onpage fourteen Iain Maclnnes mentionsD.R.MacLellan. Maybe it should beD.R.MacLennan? P.S. I knew him.

From Robbie GreensittMonkseaton Northumberland

[abridged - Ed]I was surprised by Colin Ross'assertion in the June issue of CommonStock that he alone was responsible forthe revival of the Scottish small pipes,which he claims originated inNorthumberland. My perception istotally at variance with his.

Over the past few weeks I havemade a nuisance of myself by phoningand talking to many of the leadinglights of the Scottish traditional musicfield. What has been confirmed is thatthe original interest in the small pipesoccurred in Scotland in the earlyseventies when several traditionalbands were looking for an alternativeto the Great Pipes in their line up. Theminiature pipes suffer from poor toneand intonation and, whilst theNorthumbrian small pipes found alimited acceptance for some styles ofScottish traditional music, they wereinappropriate to the Highland style.This was when attention was firstfocused on the Scottish small pipes.Existing examples in museumsdiffered only slightly in detail fromthe early Northumbrian small pipes -i.e. very small chanter and aninconvenient pitch. This was whensets with larger chanters in a more

appropriate key were again made.Sets pitched in D with Highlandfingering had actually been made inthe mid-19t century by the Glasgowmaker William Gunn. Sets fitted withpractice chanters exist but they sufferfrom the poor intonation and tone ofthe miniature pipes.

In my opinion the revival of anyinstrument or tradition depends uponseveral factors. There must be aninterest or demand for the particularinstrument, there must be musicappropriate to the instrument, andthere must be instruments available.This implies that there must bemakers, players and music publishers,and as well as other enthusiasts likehistorians, working together topromote the revival. All of these havecontributed to the success of themodern Scottish small pipes. It cannotbe laid at the feet of one man.

If you have anything to addconcerning the revival of the Lowlandtradition and the early days of theSociety, please pass it on to me orJeannie Campbell so that we canproduce a more definitive history.

From Colin RossMonkseaton Northumberland

Can I make it clear that in my letter toCommon Stock in June regarding therevival of the Scottish small pipes Iwas not claiming that I was entirelyresponsible for the revival of theinstrument. I may have started it, butother local Northumbrian makers soonput to use their skills in making theNorthumbrian small pipes intodeveloping the Scottish small pipe thatwas then taken up later by the makersNorth of the Border.

MOUTH BLOWN SMALLPIPES AND

GARVIE SESSION PIPESDavid Kennedy shares his experience of playing mouth-blown pipes intheclimate extremes of California, and some of the problems found and solvedwhen using cane and plastic reeds.

The [mouth-blown] Shepherd smallpipe which I play has tonic note D 293.66cps ETS. Its structure is essentially African blackwood: drones, tuning pins andslides, and chanter. Drone reeds are single beating plastic tongues affixed at baseof tongue by a glue spot with an "0" ring tuning bridle. The bass drone is singlejointed and all drones (bass, baritone and tenor) are in a common stock. Chanterreeds are double reeds made of a white plastic and wrapped with Teflon tape -presumably to stop leaks and to tune the reeds. Their tone is almost as good as acomparable arundo donax reed. The bag appears to be Gortex or a similarmaterial. Some chanter reeds sent to me by Gordon Shepherd have a brashcoarse tone, so I smooth them out by wrapping an orthodontic rubber bandaround the blades just above the top Teflon windings. The tone of those reeds ismore plastic than comparable arundo donax reeds, and, like many plastic chanterreeds they tend to sgriach 1) if fingers do not quite close a hole and 2) if blowingpressure is too slack. Tuning drones to chanter is tricky because occasionally`sympathetic overtones' occur when the bottom D is played; but minuteadjustments of the tuning slides on the drones can correct that. Once the pipe istuned and is playing well, I leave everything as it was set up, and store theinstrument in a long enough box so that I don't have to move the tuning slides.The drone reeds have lasted many hours of playing and still have a good toneand "come in" readily. The chanter reeds last longer than arundo donax ones buteventually do conk out. All plastic reeds are susceptible to changes in moistureand temperature but much less than we'd expect from arundo reeds. And allreeds are difficult in our hot, dry climate here in the interior valleys ofCalifornia. If the drones are disassembled, re-tuning them will take time. Thechanter itself is short so the finger holes are closely spaced. The piper will findthat disconcerting at first, especially if he/she has been playing a longer chanteron another smallpipe. When all the reeds are " "t" cor rectly, the blowingpressure should be light, but moderate enough to get a steady tone from the pipe.The drones should rest across the chest and not on the shoulders.

Audience reaction to its sound can be negative 1) because the D is high and hasa flute-like tone, and 2) because non-pipers have the impression that Scots playthe piob mhor only and are in a standing posture, and 3) because the piob mhorconical chanter gives the hearer the impression that it is higher than it actuallyis, but has the tone which is unique to that instrument, and THAT is what thebagpipe should sound like!!! The wee chanter is very acceptable to fastfingering, as for Nova Scotia reels and jigs, for example. But as I said, listenersdo prefer a lower pitched pipe.

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The recent Session pipe [see CS 18.1 p.42 - Ed] structurally is like a modified -Border pipe with volume of tone somewhere between that of the piob mhor anda Border pipe. It is made of Mopane wood [though blackwood is an altrnative],with boxwood mounts and gold plated tuning pins. Bag seems to be elkhide.Drones fully combed and beaded. The chanter holes have been sited to allow forsemi-tones [cross-fingered accidentals] - along with the usual Highlandfingering [for the standard scale]. The chanter has a conical bore and the reed isscraped to allow a small amount of moisture only on the blades and to be blownlightly. Moisture control is achieved by a rather elaborate water trap - longplastic tube with a chamber at the end filled with hygroscopic small particles,and thin walled sponge below that chamber. I have experimented with thisapparatus and for me, at any rate, a removal of about 1 cm of particles and theuse of the sponge, I can play the pipe continuously for about 35 minutes. Nigel[Richard], the maker, says that if all the water trap devices are left in, it shouldplay for about an hour - and then to remove the water trap and put in thealternate trap. However I find that leaving everything in the trap makes forrather hard blowing - so possibly my removal of the particles in the catchchamber has limited the continuity of playing. At first I removed the greensponge, but now have decided that it is a necessary feature if the chanter reed isnot to be wetted too much. Evidence of too much moisture on the reed blades isthat bottom A goes flat, as does C#, and top A goes too sharp. Nigel warns thepiper not to fool around with the chanter reeds. And that is good advice; but withthe vagaries of our climate here the piper will have to continually watch the"setting" of the reed and ensure it is snug in its reed seat and not set too far out.But unless you have made chanter reeds, I'd say that squeezing the brass tuningbridle on the chanter reed to open it up is inadvisable, and will absolutely wreckthe modal scale.

On my Session pipe I've had a quirky difficulty in tuning the bass drone. Thedrone reeds are modified Easy Drone plastics. If you move the rubber tuningbridle up even a smidgen, the drone will come in at the same note as the twotenors (by the way, no baritone drone), and if you open the tongue up too muchthe drone will "roar". There is but one setting for the slides on my model - andone setting of the tuning bridle. So that to bring the bass drone [in] accuratelythe top slide should be up on the pin near the hemp, and the bottom slide downon its pin close to the projecting mount. To get all these items to perform as theyshould the blowing will have to be constant and moderate - not too light and nottoo heavy. The eventual tone is on pitch A 440 cps ETS; has the quality of aBorder pipe but perhaps more mellow, and the scale is well balanced. Thechanter is excellent BUT fingers have to be well placed and cover the holesentirely or there will be some strange sgriachan. I do not think that this pipe isfor a novice. But when you have it going it is a fine instrument and just aboutany tune can be played on it. The big caveat is not to let too much heat andmoisture get to the reeds. I plan to use this pipe for professional gigs, as well asthe D Shepherd pipe.

The Piping Brigadoon on Lake ChamplainA report on the 2003 North Hero Pipers Gathering www.pipersgathering.orgMichael McWilliams is a technology marketing executive and writer fromCohasset, Massachusetts, USA. He took up the Highland Pipes in 1999 and iscurrently extending his novice skills to the Scottish Smallpipes.

In the constellation of the world's annual piping events, there is nothing quite likeThe North Hero Pipers Gathering, which has been going on since the first gatheringin 1985.

As in previous gatherings, this year's event featured a full curriculum of seminarsand tutorial sessions with some of the world's most accomplished pipers. Thoseinstructors also provided what can only be called an all-star lineup of talent for thetwo evening concerts.

Veteran attendees have now come to expect the extraordinary from North Heroconcerts, and this year will be noted for surpassing even that high expectation.There were much-anticipated performances across the board from a host of NorthHero regulars.

• Jerry O'Sullivan, Benedict Koehler, Deborah Quigley, and Jimmy O'BrienMoran on the Uilleann Pipes.

• Ian MacHarg and Barry Shears on Scottish Smallpipes (SSP).

• Ian Lawther and Chris Ormstrom on the Northumbrian Smallpipes (NSP).

In addition, the audiences enjoyed some unexpected flourishes such as JimmyO'Brien Moran's singing, Hilari Farrington's harp accompaniment to her UP-playing husband Benedict Koehler, and the precise Scottish step-dancing of BarryShears' daughters.

Ultimately though, the 2003 gathering will likely be remembered as the point whenBorder Pipes (BP) emerged on the North American piping scene by virtue ofdramatic concert performances from young Fin Moore and Graeme Mulholland. Onboth evenings, Fin and Graeme treated awestruck audiences to driving, musicallyintense BP numbers - both solo and in duo -- that were roundly acclaimed withsuch adjectives as "riveting", "sensational" and "mesmerizing.

"They left no doubt

that the border pipe is clearly coming back into its own, with the young bucksleading the charge.

Some exceptional performances were discretely embedded throughout the three-day program as well. This writer was especially impressed by several sessions thatrepresented the sheer musical breadth of the North Hero Gathering.

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A seminar on accompanying border pipes with guitars and citterns in whichDan Houghton - yet another phenomenal young border piper - showed hisstuff while Nigel Richard - Edinburgh-based maker of BP, SSP and stringedinstruments - demonstrated how it all works with some truly fine folk-jazzchords on the cittern. Ian Mac Harg and Aron Garceau conducted a similarseminar earlier in the program.

• A demonstration and discussion about accompanying the pipes with fiddles,entertainingly conducted by the pipemaking father and son team of Fin andHamish Moore.

• An elegantly presented depiction of the Cape Breton style of piping for step-dancing, as demonstrated by Barry Shears on the Smallpipes and the precisefootwork of his talented daughters.

• A hands-on beginners session for newcomers to the NorthumbrianSmallpipes, patiently led by pipemaker Richard Evans and severalexperienced NSP players.

• A standing room only seminar on basic Uilleann Pipe technique conductedby one of the instrument's most renowned modem masters - JerryO'Sullivan.

• A presentation on the expansive musical possibilities of traditional double-chanter pipes, led and demonstrated by the inimitable Julian Goodacre.

A traditional hallmark of the North Hero Pipers Gathering is that it givesexperienced and prospective pipers alike an uncommon opportunity to talk withpipe makers from around the world and to play their instruments before making achoice. Pipemakers on hand with their wares this year included Richard and AnitaEvans, Hamish and Fin Moore, Nigel Richard, BC Childress, Michael Mac Harg,David Quinn & Benedict Koehler, Kate & Mark Cushing, Julian Goodacre, SethGallagher, David Boisvert, and Michael Dow.

Of the many other offerings, one stands out for its novelty and pure historic value:the ongoing demonstration of treadle-lathe pipemaking by woodworker GeorgeLott. Working away continuously on a treadle of his own design, George providedan emblem of the deep sense of roots and tradition that distinguishes the NorthHero event.

Since 1985, pipers have come from far and wide to savour this kind of experience.As the last sound of pipes echoed away from the 2003 event, and North Hero Islandonce again returned to its rural peace, the common refrain was "see you next year."

For the North Hero Pipers Gathering, there's always another Brigadoon.

Session - Jim Buchanan, lain Maclnnes and Jock Agnew

GALLOWAY SUMMER SCHOOL 2003Six years ago DavidHannay opened his hometo a group of bellowspipers and organised aweek of tuition anddiversion, and with (nowlegendary) lunchesprovided by Janet, hiswife. Born from a longheld wish to encouragepiping in the Southwest ofScotland, it became anannual fixture known asthe Galloway SummerSchool. Now, along with the Melrose weekend, Collogue, Competition andBurns Supper, it is included as an LBPS annual event, and the venue has beenmoved to the Scottish Agricultural College, Auchincruide, near Ayr, as part of`Common Ground Scotland'. Now Jock Agnew, who has been one of the tutorssince the Summer School was first started, assesses the effect of this move.

Any change to a well-tried formula can bring uncertainties.

The first week in August, the height of the holiday season, was purposelychosen for the Summer School so that pipers could bring their families along tothis popular and beautiful holiday are. . Then, leaving the pipers to squeeze newtechniques out of long-suffering bellows and bags, the families can go visitingor exploring or take part in the many village Galas that spring up at this time ofthe year. And for the evening activities - folk clubs. dinners, session playing -they can join in. And it can also be good camping weather, and that saves on theB & B bill - though Neil Corbett might not whole-heartcdly agree about theweather as he explains on page 10.

There is no conflict of interest between the Melrose weekend and the GallowaySummer School. Indeed, they complement one another. The weekend allowspipers to be shown new methods and techniques and be introduced to new tunesto take home and practice. Given a whole week of tuition, though, as is providedin the Galloway Summer School, pipers can build on technique and musicalknowledge and monitor their progress. There is a positive development of skills,and an increase in understanding and repertoire. Tutors have a better chance toassess individuals. They can build on existing skills, and steer the piper awayfrom any doubtful practices that may inhibit development. There is also theopportunity to give individual tuition away from the group environs.

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Now, those evenings. It has been a feature of the Galloway Summer School thatthe evenings are arranged not only as a spell of relaxation and entertainment, butthe pipers can gain experience in playing before strangers and along with otherinstruments and with other musicians. And although these evenings form only avoluntary part of the course, few pipers opt out. Families can meet up and listenor take part.

On the first, day, the Monday, all the pipers and any family members areencouraged to get together for a meal. This a great chance to complete theprocess of putting names to faces. Then when the tables have been cleared andthe chairs pushed back, pipes and other folk instruments appear, and tunes areshared. This year there was an English concertina, two or three fiddles, anynumber of whistles, a mandola, and a harmonica or two. Some play from thewritten music (and here the LBPS Session book is frequently in evidence) whileothers might look on and listen and maybe learn a thing or two

With the course now based in Dumfries, the folk clubs of previous years were,for the most part, denied to us because of distance. Instead, an evening was heldin the Globe Tavern in Dumfries (famous for having been one of Burns' regularwatering holes), and where local musicians meet from time to time. AndTuesday night was one of those times! The beer glasses fair rattled with theswing of the music from smallpipes, Border pipes, Cornish pipes, whistles andfiddles. On that evening Matt Seattle drove over from Galashiels, therebydoubling the number of Border pipes in evidence. And Robert Burns himselflooked benignly down from his frame on the wall as tunes from Dixon andPeacock and other sources filled the air.

Wednesday saw us all at the pub in Corsock, where the local folk musiciansjoined in when they could and led the field when they couldn't - playingincredibly rapid Irish jigs (why use only one note when 12 will do!). Thursday,the final evening, we stayed on the campus, and were joined by Wendy Stuartand a class of clarsachs. There was also a massed band of smallpipes - well, ok,that was us - encouraged by the other tutor, Iain Maclnnes.

When quiet descended on the Friday afternoon and the last car had left thepremises. there was time to take stock. Those attending the course had beeninv ited to complete an appraisal of the venue, the facilities, the food, theorganisation and the teaching. For the most part it was `thumbs up', with justsome minor hiccups on room availability. The campus itself, with the openoutlook (the river Nith not far below), seems ideally suited to this sort of week.

So now the indefatigable David Hannay is organising the next one on behalf ofthe LBPS for 2004 - for which the dates and details are on the back cover of CS.

Fear and trepidationcured in a lunatic asylum -a week's therapy at theLBPS Summer SchoolNei/ Corbett gives his impressions of the teaching week in Galloway and hopesthat it might give encouragement to similarly hesitant novice pipers.

It was with some trepidation that I drove up the M6 on my way to the LBPSsummer school at Dumfries. I'm only a novice piper, and self taught at that.How would I fare under the scrutiny of the proper pipers? Would it all bebeyond me? The last thing I needed was a blow to my confidence (or what littleI had) with my smallpipes.

Well, Monday dawned somewhat dismally. I had elected to camp at a site justoutside Dumfries, camping being one of my other hobbies, and the LBPS weekturned out to be one of the few wet weeks this summer -just my luck! Theevent is held on the site of a former lunatic asylum, and I was beginning to feelthat was personally appropriate.

Arriving at the site was however a pleasant surprise, because it's a lovely place- elegant buildings in well manicured parkland. Anyway, clutching my nattyplywood pipecase, I took a deep breath and stepped inside the building to be metby a very genial chap who turned out to be David Hannay and was quickly madeto feel welcome. Other students were assembling and introductions were soonsorted. At least people seemed friendly enough. I began to relax just a bit.

After the usual introductory session we split into two groups, in which weremained for the rest of the week. I was safely in the beginners / novices lotalong with just four others. Next day it was one less because one of us wasrightfully promoted to the top group. So us novices had a lot of personalattention, and of course we were to be tutored by the redoubtable Jock Agnew,who as many of you will know, has tact, patience and understanding by thebucketful. Not that Jock will let you get away with sloppy playing, and woebetide anyone who lets their chanter dangle.

The general pattern of each morning was a group lesson in some aspect of basictechnique, with each of us being called upon to have a go under Jock's watchfuleye. After that each of us would be set an individual practice exercise by Jock

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according to our ability. To do these exercises tree from distraction, we wereable to take advantage of the many vacant rooms in the building, so we each hadour own private space which Jock would come and visit in turn. There wereuniversity staff still working in the building and quite what they thought ofstrangled sounds of doublings etc. being practised over and over from everynook and cranny I can only imagine. To their eternal credit, they just smiled!

We novices were a mixed bunch. Two had border pipes, I had my A smallpipes,and the fourth member, Fergus, had none! He was a singer who wanted to tryout bellows pipes to see how they would work as an accompanying instrument.Amazingly he had never set hands on pipes before. So it goes to show that youdon't have to be an expert to attend the summer school. Jock lent him a set ofsmallpipes, and by the end of the week Fergus was making all the right noises.

I'm not sure what the top group were up to, but they all seemed busy. I thinkquite a few new tunes were learned. We all met up at breaks of course, so wedidn't feel segregated.

After a very acceptable lunch each day, there would be a bit more basic work,followed in mid afternoon by a workshop for the whole school. By then I wasusually too exhausted to practice much more and welcomed the break. Myfavourite workshop was "making your pipes easier to play" by Richard andAnita Evans, in which I learned a lot about setting up and maintainingsmallpipes. Other sessions were on border repertoire and on modes and scales.

Each evening the group would gather for a session somewhere in Dumfries or ashort drive away, and we were often joined by local session musicians. The bestof these session was in the Globe Inn, apparently Rabbie Burns' old local, wherewe had an appreciative audience, and we were joined by Matt Seattle who haddriven over from Peebles. These sessions gave us novices a chance to hear theproper pipers, notably the brilliant Iain Maclnnes who tutored the top group, andof course Jock.

Sadly, I had to miss the final day in order to get home for a funeral, but the weekwas more than worth the effort. So my initial fears were groundless. Thanks toJock I learned a great deal, and really felt I had had a lot of individual help. Notonly that I had made some new friends, and generally had a good time. Iwouldn't hesitate to recommend it to pipers of any standard. My thanks andcongratulations go to David, Jock and lain for a great week I very much hope toreturn next year, although I don't aspire to move up groups. I'll be very happyand comfortable to keep my L plates on for a while longer.

HAMISH MOORE CONCERT OF PIPINGPITLOCHRY TOWN HALL .FRIDAY 31st OCTOBER, 2003.

Report by Rona Macdonald.

It was a mad dash through Friday night rush hour traffic to make it to Pitlochry intime for this event, but well worth the hassle factor. Arriving in time to grab aquick fish supper, there was no need to enquire as to the whereabouts of thevenue - it was obvious from the queue snaking out of the door and halfway downthe street where the concert was to be held. Extra seats were being found and laidout for those who hadn't bought tickets in advance so that no-one went awaydisappointed, although this did mean rather a "West Highland" approach to thenominal start time of 7.30pm.

Ian Green came briefly to the stage to appeal for quiet and to explain that theevent was being recorded for a future CD [and the 'live' album will also includeAnna Murray and Graham Mulholland], before the MC for the night, AndyHunter, introduced the first piper.

Fittingly it was Fin Moore who kicked off the evening with three short sets on afine sounding set of Border pipes in A. After Horsburgh Castle and the FamousBaravan - a Fred Morrison tune - he was joined by Simon Bradley, the fiddler,whose contribution was slightly lost under the volume of the pipes, which was ashame. During Fin's final set Frank MacConnell came on stage and did a fewsteps to some fab Cape Breton style strathspeys and reels and a huge cheer fromthe audience. A very accomplished, relaxed performance with faultless attentionto rhythm.

Duncan MacGillivray, by contrast, seemed ill at ease in this setting - indeed hecommented that this was a more nerve wracking experience than playing for thegold medal! Duncan was the first piper with Battlefield Band and a lone voice(chanter?) for many years on the folk piping scene and many have trodden in hisfootsteps since then, but he is rightly famed more for his Highland piping than forthe Smallpipes he played at this event. Had we been at the Northern Meetinghowever, he would undoubtedly have won the Best Dressed Piper award for his 3piece green tweed suit and checked shirt!

Hamish has a passion about acoustic events: all the pipers played withoutamplification - which of course is the way our music is best heard, but the lack ofa PA system left much of the audience completely at a loss to make out any ofAndy Hunter's introductory comments, or to hear the muttered rantings of manyof the pipers who were supposed to be announcing their tunes, but who couldonly have been addressing their comments to their own feet, which was ratherdisappointing.

No such difficulty with Malcolm Robertson, one of 4 local boys playing in thisconcert. His chosen instrument was a set of boxwood Border pipes in A, and he

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really did them justice as he powered through some tunes from his St LawrenceO'Toole band days; The Man from Skye hornpipe along with a set of jigs; andhis final set of strathspeys such as Dell in the Kitchen, and King George's goinginto the King's Reel, Glenlivet and a Scot Skinner tune, The Left Handed Fiddler.Malcolm demonstrated great technical ability in his use of natural notes and crossfingering, which at that speed, on Border pipes needs some skill (not that we arejealous or anything!).

Last on before the half time break was star of radio and local favourite, GaryWest. Gary commented that it was almost 30 years to the day since he had hadhis first chanter lesson in that very hall - he must have started at a tender ageindeed! Despite a few problems with tuning his pipes (apparently the tuningroom was much cooler than the hall itself) Gary made his way through a pleasantset including Kilworth Hills, Clan Alba March and some border tunes such asLinkumdoddie, Bobbing John and Dixon's Highland Laddie which were an idealcontrast to what had preceded. Had we been at the Northern Meeting (again)Gary would almost certainly have been shown the red light for the length of timehe tuned, but the result was worth it for his final set, slow air Drumcorrie,Galician Jig, Scarce o Tatties and Langstrom's Pony.

The event was sponsored by Edradour Distillery and during the interval the raffleprize of a bottle .of their 12 year old malt was won by some undeserving soul (ienot me), the rest of us receiving a miniature with our ticket. This was very wellreceived and most of these were consumed during the concert.

The second half commenced with undoubtedly the most popular piper, GordonDuncan who came on to a huge cheer. Gordon was the only Highland piper inthe line-up and characteristically he did not make any attempt to introduce any ofhis tunes, however we recognised lots of "big" tunes in his set and he finishedoff with a March (with variations), Strathspey....and Jig. (Highland Wedding,Susan MacLeod and Alan Macpherson of Mosspark). We do not feel thatGordon was on form on this night - he had several noticeable lapses and his pipemade some uncharacteristic squawks.

One of our personal highlights of the evening was the "quiet man" IainMacDonald who played a set of lignum vitae Smallpipes in the key of A. Initiallack of a bass drone was quickly sorted as lain launched into a fluid set of 9/8 jigsincluding Lochaber Dance. He was joined by Malcolm Stitt on guitar, which wasa fantastically subtle touch and gave a great lift to lain's faultless playing. Wegot a selection of old style reels and quicksteps and tunes of his own making allof which blended into a quickly established groove, the only pity being wecouldn't hear the names of any as they were announced.

lain's brother Allan was the next performer, with a change of pipe key to CSmallpipes. Allan gave us a set of tunes featuring Inverness Gathering,Macpherson's Strathspey and a plethora of reels including Girls are fond ofGossiping (the title of which seemed to particularly amuse Allan) and Ann

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MacKechnie to warm up - although many pipers, we suspect, would be delightedto show off such dexterity as their piece de resistance! As many will be aware,Allan has a good singing voice and he sang a song of the '45 about John RoyStewart in Gaelic while accompanying himself on this very mellow set of pipes.His set concluded with audience participation in a nonsense song by AlexMacKenzie which was a fun item.

Iain Maclnnes chose a set of pipes in D for his set and he played a number ofwell known tunes such as Murdo MacKenzie of Torridon by Bobby MacLeod,MacDonald of the Isles' March to Harlaw, Because he was a Bonny Lad and theLowland Dance. Sweet pipes, (our preferred key), Iain is always a well preparedperformer and a great supporter of the LBPS. He made passing reference to theBBC Pipeline website which apparently receives more hits than any other BBCprogramme, a testament to his own sure handling of the production andpresentation through the years and the strength of interest from pipers all over theworld.

Before the concert concluded, Hamish stood up to make the customary vote ofthanks and to explain the concept behind the concert. Although she couldn'tattend, the originator was in fact Mairi Campbell, whose song The Piper and theMaker was the inspiration for the event [see CS Vol 16 No.1]. Mairi sang thissong at our own Burns Supper two years ago and it tells of the maker whoconstructs the bare bones of an instrument, and the player who puts the life andsoul into it through the music. It's a powerful song and the concept took life withthese 8 great pipers showing just what a range and breadth of sound and feelingcan be had from this one instrument. All were playing pipes made by Hamishand Fin (except Gordon) and each one was different in character. Hamish isnever one to shrink from a bit of self publ icity, but he really needs no other advertthan for an audience to hear his pipes in full flow on such an occasion as this.Andy Hunter suspects that future generations will mention the Moore name in thesame breath as other famous pipe makers such as MacDougall, Henderson andRobertson. Time will tell.

We understand that Mairi's song will be included on the CD to allow others toappreciate this aspect of the night.

The last player was Angus MacKenzie, of Cape Breton and South Uist descentwho gave us a great foot stomping set on Border pipes to set us up for the journeyhome. Among them were Donald Mor nan Ceapaich, a Fergie MacDonald tune,Skylark's Ascension and the Soup Dragon to name but a few. He was joined byfiddler Gabe McVarrish, but alas again the fiddle was overpowered by the pipeand could hardly be heard from the back.

All together this was a night which will live on in people's memories for sometime - even without the CD - as a great celebration of pipes and piping.

IN CONVERSATIONwith

ROBBIE GREENSITT & ANN SESSOMS

Anxious to be politicallycorrect, 1 enquired as to

whether they wished tobe called Heriot and

Allan, or just Robbie andAnn. "Well, we trade as

Heriot and Allan. Peopleknow us as that.... "

Ok. So how did you comeby the name?

R In the mid-to-late seventies, while living in the Watford 1 St Albans area, I metseveral makers and players of early musical instruments, gaining from them muchuseful help and advice, especially in tuning and intonation. My interests extendedfrom woodwind to stringed instruments, particularly the clarsach. I was fortunateenough to receive instruction from Marie Goossens, then an active supporter of theLondon branch of the Clarsach Society. My first harp was built followingpublished plans, and like so many amateur-built harps it started pulling itself aparteven before it was up to tension. It was passed on, with the traditional metalstrengthening plates, to another member of the Society. I still have the second harp,which was made to my own design. This led to several commissions for clarsachs.Then I met Ann Sessoms, who had recently moved to London to work as a sub-editor for a scientific publisher. We shared the same interest in early music, herinstruments being clarinet and recorders. She showed an interest in the small pipesso I made my first set of pipes for her, a simple three-key three-drone set. Thename Heriot and Allan came into being at this time. The intention was to build upthe harp making into a full-time business and, as it was a joint venture, we wanteda name which would reflect this and maintain a distance between our private-andbusiness lives. Many of the top harp makers had double-barrelled names likeMunson and Harbour, and Lyon and Healey. The intention was to make mainlyclarsachs and as both our inherited middle names are Scottish it seemed an idealsolution.

Where did your interest in piping come from?

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R My introduction to piping came through the local Boy Scouts troop, which hadseveral Northumbrian half-long pipes (which are now included in the more generalterm Border pipes). I had one of the sets in my possession until I left home in theearly sixties. There has always been a residual interest in this form of bagpipe onboth sides of the Border. My first job was in Newcastle, where I joined theLiterary and Philosophical Society and became interested in a wide range of earlymusical instruments through their collection of books on the subject. There weremany different bagpipes described and illustrated in these books along with otherwoodwind instruments. It was in the mid-fifties when I first met Jack Armstrong[1904-1977], who frequently played the Northumbrian small pipes on the localwireless; he also had a dance band and played the pipes at many functions. (Ibelieve he also played on a film sound track.) I became interested in the smallpipes then and he introduced me to Bill Hedworth, who made me a nine-key set ofNorthumbrian small pipes. By then I had already joined the Northumbrian PipersSociety and met Forster Charlton. I became a committee member after a year ortwo. Forster took me under his wing and instructed me in the arts of reed makingand playing the small pipes. He also fired my interest in pipe making.

Do you still play any pipes yourself Robbie? I know Ann plays the Northumbriansmallpipes professionally.

R My second job was with a company in Wallsend, which still had the remnants ofits own pipe band, I received daily instruction on the Highland pipes, and myplaying of the half-long pipes improved significantly, but I was unable to stop myright arm flapping when playing the Great Pipes - much to the annoyance of myinstructor. I don't play much at all, now. I've got hand problems as well as memoryproblems - half-way through a tune I forget what I'm doing! But I play enoughslow airs for just tuning the Scottish chanter.

When you tune a new chanter you start with the tonic, and then the 5th?

R Yes , and then tune the others into the tonic or 5th . Nowadays playing with adrone tuned to the 4 th has become very popular, so I check against that as well.

Do you have enough movement on the tuning pin to tune down from a 5th to a 4th?

R No, I either fit a tuning bead, or use a second, longer, drone end - becausemoving the drone in or out affects the tone, i.e. the sound quality, noticeably.

You have written to Common Stock [see page 3] about the development of theScottish smallpipes. Would you like to say a bit more about that?

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R The longer D chanter (compared to the smaller Eor F of the original smallpipes in those days) madeby William Gunn of Glasgow was possibly the firstone to play with Highland fingering. I don't believethe early smallpipes were played with Highlandfingering. And I don't see why you can't have

normalclosed fingering smallpipes alongside Highland pipes - they don't have tohave the same fingering. They are different instruments with probably a differentrepertoire and different type of people playing them.

So the design was modified to suit modern requirements. How did you develop'our own?

?The design of the drones only involved making typical Northumbrian droneslook typically Scottish. I designed the chanter completely from first principles,taking my initial inspiration from the long practice chanter, i.e. unequal-size toneholes equally spaced and the extra length at the bottom with the a tone hole eithers ide. This gained immediate acceptance amongst Highland pipers. I gave apresentation on this process at a meeting of the Society I organised at the BagpipeMuseum in Morpeth in the early days. There is enough information in the Cocksand Bryan book on Northumbrian small pipes for anyone with a little imaginationo make their own Scottish small pipes.

The shape of your drone ends seems to have remained fairly constant

?I make two - the flared end and the bell or tulip. It depends what the customerwants..

What sort of pipes are these (turning the page of a book of display photographsInd coming across a bagpipe with a single drone lying parallel to the chanter, and

fitted into the same stock)?

R That's what I called a cabrette. It can either have a Scottish or a Northumbriantype chanter - something to learn on. Cheap and cheerful.

And the drone is a tenor .... ?

R ... Or a bass. You can have either. Just a very simple set. I made half a dozenhen the interest in them died out.

You don't see many keys (looking at another picture) on Scottish smallpipes.

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R Two

keys are fairly common. Some that I have made have a couple of keys onthe bottom for going downwards.

What pitch of Scottish smallpipe do you find most people prefer?

RA, B flat, C. AID sets. It depends where they are going. B flat in the southernpart of Germany, C in the north of Germany. Very few D sets because of thesmallness of the chanter (I don't like D, it's too brash). I have also made sets in E.One group started with B flat, wanted something brighter for jigs and reels, sowent up to B. Some people like a lower pitched set for slow airs, higher pitch forfast tunes.

Do you ever get requests for Scottish smallpipes using closed fingering?

RI think I've only made one. To me they are just Northumbrian smallpipes with anopen end - the same instrument. The only difference between early Scottish andNorthumbrian smallpipes is slight differences in style. If the chanter is tapered andthe set has combing one would call it Scottish. Closed fingering is not possible onthe larger chanters.

I've seen, indeed played, a set you made with drone switches. Is there much callfor these?

R Only one or two a year. Some people have a switch on each drone, some havethem just on the middle drone. Some have them to switch the whole lot off, othersto switch from one chord to another chord. It can become fairly complicated attimes.

You use the same principle for all the switches?

R No. The swap-over switches are different to the individual ones. It is easier to doindividual switches. Switches tend to muffle the sound of the drones a bit. Insteadof just being an open cavity, each drone is in a separate chamber [in the commonstock], blocked off from the others. You can usually switch drones on and offwhile playing if the reeds are set properly.

And your design includes little plugs hanging off the ends of the drones as manualstops.

R It's an old traditional way of doing it. If you have plungers like theNorthumbrian system it affects the tone again. A straight through drone sounds

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louder and brighter than one where the sound negotiates a right-angle bend. It alsodistinguishes the two smallpipes a bit more.

I've noticed that your blow-pipe stock has a mushroom shaped end inside the bag, - so you have to introduce it via the drone stock aperture?

R One of my first customers was so heavy handed he frequently pulled the blow-pipe stock out of the bag. So I made the stocks with a mushroom shaped end, andthought "Oh, this is a new idea. Nobody has done this before." Until I came tomake Czech pipes - and they already had stocks with similar ends. I've found quitea few things I'd thought innovative, only to find someone had done it before - forinstance the way I tie in the chanter stock; I tie it in through the welt. Then I sawan 18 th century set in a museum tied in in exactly the same way!

What wood do you like working with best?

R I like working in boxwood, but blackwood is the most practical to all intents andpurposes: good tone, strong, attractive. Boxwood has the better tone, but it's liableto warp - it's nice to work with.

A It's a mellower tone. It doesn't have the edge of blackwood, so if you play ablackwood set with a boxwood set the latter gets a bit drowned out.

So the boxwood might be better for singing to - the volume wouldn't drown thevoice?

A Yes.

Any problems getting hold of wood?

R Not blackwood. But good boxwood is extremely difficult to get.

Is the boxwood that you do manage to get grown in the UK?

A The best comes from Turkey - or did. I don't know if you can get it now. Someused to be obtained from the Spanish Pyrenees, until a German dealer came andcleared out a whole hill-side, and the locals decided they weren't having that anymore!

Talking of materials, I seem to remember you once telling me, Ann, that part of thesecret of good reeds is finding the best source for the cane.

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A If you don't have decent cane you're not going tomake a decent reed - although different people makereeds out of quite different types of cane. For instanceColin Ross must use a much softer cane than I do,because he demonstrated at the meeting in Morpeth that

by putting guides on his gouging block he could run the gouge along and the caneslip is finished, ready for shaping and assembling. I don't think the cane we've gotcan do that - it's quite hard.

Your cane comes from Spain? France?

.4 France. I buy it through Howarth in London.

Does it deteriorate in time during storage? Do you have to work it fairly quicklyafter buying your supply?

A Actually I prefer to get it about six months before I'm going to use it. Otherpeople have different experiences. I've had cane I thought was unsatisfactory, andlooked at it three months later and it was beautiful. So now I buy it ahead of myrequirements.

Do you finish your reeds with a scrape or with sanding?

A I finish off with a knife. With sandpaper it is more difficult to tell exactly whatyou are doing. Sometimes, if I want the tips [of the reed] slightly thinner, I use thesanding strip.

When I attempt to make chanter reeds I have high failure rate. You, I expect, havea high success rate?

A I'm doing pretty well just now. I was having problems for a while, then Irealised I was starting with a slip that was too thin.

Do you soak them at all?

A The [gouging] machine is dry, but when I'm working by hand - I actually use ahand gouge to thin them down to just over 0.5mm - I get them wet for that. I use abassoon reed scraper to finish off with.

You used to make Border pipes, Robbie?

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RI think I made a dozen or so in the early days. People wanted a nice strong lustychanter, now they want quiet chanters, and it would have been a lot of expense tomake new jigs and things. It was actually Glens that initiated our change fromharps to bagpipes. They asked me to make some Border pipes: the chanters weremade using Glen's mid-19 th century by one of Glen's pipe-makers.A Now they are making very quiet sets. Pipe-makers make what musicians want -a nice bright sound which you can still play in a small room.RI have more than enough orders for smallpipes, so it just wasn't worth it[continuing with Border pipes].

Where did you get your Border pipe reeds?

RWhen I had the Half-longs I used to get reeds from Glens. They were canepractice chanter reeds with the ends chopped off. They would probably still worknow if you can get cane practice chanter reeds.

You mentioned that you number your sets. How exactly?

RI punch it onto the drone stock, initially on the top, flat, surface - and on therounded part for later sets. Probably started in 1984 when I bought the punches.It's a date stamp rather than a consecutive number. I know then what year theywere made, and can quickly find out who had the set.

Finally, you were, I believe, one of the very early members of the LBPS?

RI attended the very early meetings of the Lowland and Border Pipers' Society,held in the College of Piping in Glasgow. The first I attended was sponsored byGrainger and Campbell.A They had a committee, but it wasn't formalised with a constitution. Meetingsmoved around - Thirlstane Castle, School of Scottish Studies, College of Piping.They had some very interesting afternoons, with guest speakers.RI organised one well-attended meeting at the Sallyport Towers in Newcastle inthe early days, then two at the Bagpipe Museum in Morpeth with talks anddemonstrations.

The Society has developed a lot since those days, I know. Well many thanks forinviting me into your house and treating me to some glimpses of the past. Goodluck in your future endeavours.

Dance to your DaddyArranged RoderickCannon

Dance to Your Daddy is in two sections, the first a rounded sort of song time,the second in what I think of as reel time apart from having only three crotchetsto the bar instead of four. In other words, play the first bar just the same as thefirst few notes of "Miss Girdle". I timed myself playing and worked outmetronome markings, 90 minims per minute and 144 crotchets per minute, butthese are just to give an idea. I've not written any gracenotes, though in fact Ialways play this one on the big pipes with pretty standard, though light, gracing.

AdvertisementFor Sale: Smallpipes by J. Goodacre Leicester Pattern HighlandFingering 'A' & 'D' Chanters & Drones. Bellows and Blowstick, Case, inexcellent order. £500. Peter Williams: 0131 445 3969 (Edinburgh)

Scottish smallpipes in key of C. As New. Maker David Naill & Sons.Price £575. Contact David Scott 01620 861 231 (East Lothian)

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Washington's marchPaul Roberts, who gave a paper at the recent Collogue (see elsewhere in thisissue) offers some interesting comments and theories about a tune that appearedin Playford 's "Dancing Master'.

This tune comes from the 1657 edition of Playford's Dancing Master. I am prettysure this is a Lancashire bagpipe tune, thought the evidence is entirelycircumstantial.

It is obviously comparable to the usual "border" style of pipe variation set, buthas a definite character of its own - comparing it to Dixon, Peacock etc. it lookslike a fragment from a related but different local tradition. It has a very similarfeel to Lancashire Bagpipes and Bagpipes from a bass viol MS of about 1625 inManchester Library, also to tunes like Jack Warrell's Hornpipe and Mr Preston'sHornpipe in Marsden's Lancashire Hornpipes of 1705 (all reproduced in PeteStewart's Robin with the Bagpipe). Indeed, a certain playful irregularity,including syncopation and changes in internal time signature, is starting to looklike a distinctive feature of period Lancashire piping.

Given the date this is almost certainly a Civil War march, and probably namedafter a leading Lancashire gentleman and Royalist Officer, Colonel Washington.He was a great-uncle of the George Washington, first president of the UnitedStates. The Washington family were big landowners in the WartonlCarnforth areaof Lancashire, and strong Royalists. At the time they were the most importantbranch of an old Durham family, which also included the Northampton extensionfrom which George Washington sprang.

The following extracts were lifted off the web after a very cursory and basicsearch. This failed to reveal any other significant Washingtons involved in theCivil war, though I believe several members of the extended family wereinvolved on the King's side....

In around 1642, Stockport Bridge figured briefly in the Civil War when Charles 1despatched Prince Rupert with 10,000 men to raise the siege of York. The bridgeover the Mersey at Warrington was too well guarded and they turned east toStockport. Parliamentary forces of about 3,000, under Colonels Ma' waring andDukinfield, drew up their forces on the Cheadle side of the town to defend thebridge. They deployed musketeers along the hedgerows, where Prince Rupert's

forces had to pass in their advance. However, Royalist dragoons, under ColonelWashington, drove the musketeers back into the town and mar_ dead werereported, though the parish register records only one burial

On the morning of 26 July 1643, Rupert launched an attack from two directions.On the southern side, the Cornish infantry were repulsed with great loss of life,including the commanders of all three of their assault columns. On the northernside, where Rupert led the assault, the outer defences were breached by Colonel

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Washington. With Prince Rupert inside the city defences, Colonel Feinnes calledfor a truce and a parley. The Parliamentarians were running short ofammunition and the citizens of Bristol were unwilling to risk the destruction oftheir city. Feinnes surrendered that night and marched his troops out nextmorning, leaving his ammunition, arms and sixty cannon. He was later court-martialled for incompetence and sentenced to death, though the sentence wasremitted.

Washington's March. (p)1657.PLFD.164 Playford, Supplement to 3 rdEd.,1657

The piece sticks out like a sore thumb in Playford, which mostly consists ofperfectly normal two-part Country Dance tunes. One wonders what use a weirdand irregular tune like this could be to a 17 th century dancing master! The answerprobably lies in the notorious Royalist sympathies of the Playford family. Somewriters have suggested that Playford's books and the popularity of CountryDancing among the restoration gentry have to be seen against the politicalbackdrop of the times, as a thumbed nose to the Puritans and as part of acultivated nostalgia for the old, pre-Cromwellian England. For many of thebook's target audience this tune would have had powerful "party" associations.

The only other version of the tune I have come across is from Ireland, where asimpler and regularized setting is known as The March of the High Kings of Leix.Given the strong links between Ireland and Lancashire (especially Royalist andCatholic Lancashire) during the period in question this could be seen as furthercircumstantial support for my theory. But whatever its origins, it's a greatbagpipe piece, and deserves to be more widely known.

Postscript: since writing the above both Niall Anderson and Roderick Cannonhave pointed out a third version of this tune, the pibroch Duncan MacRae ofKintail's Lament. The fine details of the ground are different, but its essence isundoubtedly the same. The variations, however, are very different. To my mindthe basic theme is an obvious and effective one on bagpipes and I wouldn't besurprised if it is even more widespread than this. The scarcity of written sourcesmeans it is unlikely we will find an earlier version than Washington's, butpossibly other versions from other piping traditions still await discovery.

"Bagpipes and Border Pipers"By Rev. W.A.P. Johman, M.A. (1913)

Some time ago Jim Eaton kindly sent me two separate "transactions "

from the Ha wick Archaeological Society, which were "in a little bookwith a dull brown cover" which he found in a second-hand bookshop.They are long documents, so even this slightly abridged extract, which istaken from the Seventh Meeting, will be offered in two parts. Dated 28thOctober 1913, it gives an insight into the interest being shown inbagpipes during the early part of the 20th century.

The paper starts with a page-long dissertation on the whole philosophyof music, a large part of which has been edited out for considerations ofspace.

If our most ancient literature informs us that in the pastoral life, "Jubalwas the father or inventor of all such as handle the harp and pipe," (Gen.iv., 25.) We are not thereby led to infer that stringed instruments in theirinception and use preceded wind instruments: for reason will assertpriority of claim to the humble unaided whistle over that produced bystrings or other outside and adventitious aids.

Music, more than any others of the fine arts, of which it is generallyregarded as the oldest, is an immediate off-spring of nature. Itsinstruments are very many. The Scriptures Old and New, bear frequentreferences to them and to their varied use, from the Ram's Horns of theSiege of Jericho, to the flute-players with the dead daughter of the ruler(Mat. 9 23), and the harpers harping with their harps of the Revelation,and the harpers and musicians, and pipers, and trumpeters 14, 2 and 18,22 of the same book. Leaving aside all other inst r uments, if the ditty issomewhat far fetched - that the Bagpipe was a most ancient andhonourable instrument will not be difficult of verification -

"And music first on earth was heardIn Gaelic accents deep,When Jubal in his oxter squeezed [arm pit]The blether o ' a sheep. " [bladder]

While its extinction has again and again been prophetically decreed, itsdiscordant braying being the burden of many a sneer; still falling on theear under the skies near and far away, its notes have often evoked manya tender memory when

"Remembrance wakes with all her busy trainSwells at the breast, and turns the past to pain."

Instead of decadence development, and in place of extermination awider extension is the record of the bagpipe today.

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Robert Glen, in his " Notes on the Ancient Musical Instruments ofScotland, " begins it with the "Horn." The more ready to hand, the morelikely to be primitive. And so, animals' horns, hollow reeds, bones andtusks, and spiral shells emitted their trumpet call, and, in course, theirmodulated sounds. The Buddhist priest in China, the Mexicans, theAborigines of South America, and the wizards in Africa identified theconch-shell or an equivalent, with worship and their gods; and in somecases decreed the death of any woman, who, by ill-luck, or pryingcuriosity, should catch a glimpse of the sacred instrument.

If an angel blowing a cow ' s horn, adorns the tombstone in PencaitlandChurch in Haddingtonshire, and a demon plays the bagpipe in MelroseAbbey in the transformed guise of a pig; under that, to me, the primitiveunity of the race is bespoken, and the old Latin saw [traditional saying]approved - "Perverted the best becomes the worst." And so generally,"figures angelic, human, diabolic, and bestial, playing on the bagpipes,are to be seen sculptured on ancient churches in England as well as inScotland."

A bagpiper is cut in marble in the Cathedral of Upsala in Sweden; whilein a woodcut of the " Nativity," Albrecht Durer has one of the shepherdsplaying on a bagpipe, and the same artist, in a grotesque cut, representsthe devil performing on a bagpipe, made to represent the head of MartinLuther. The Scottish bagpipe of today, be it noted, forms an object in hisengraving of exactly four centuries ago. So far, Robert Glen. But not toanticipate it may be remarked, universality or world-wide ubiquity,seems to be a characteristic in the spread of pipe music, without andultimately with the windbag. In fact the dispersion of the race, it standsto reason, must have meant the carrying with them their manners andcustoms, their profession, trades, faiths and characteristics of life. Thepipe was known and practised upon in India, and Persia. Babylon andEgypt possessed it. It was familiar to the Greeks and Romans. It is acommon place that Nero regaled his courtiers with its cadences while thetemples and palaces of the capital were being devoured in the flames -an impressed coin of his can be produced in evidence. We have to travelfar back in the centuries to get to its beginning in Germany, Italy, and theother parts of Europe. The Calabrian Highlands have always rivalledours in its love of the pipes. In France, pipe music seems to have had arefined culture and prevalence ahead of other European countr ies. Apiper at an early date formed an adjunct of the Court establishment.Francisque Michel, to whom we are indebted for a digest of theseparticulars, suggests that the Scottish use of the instrument was animportation from France (but another says it came through Wales to theHighlands.) He says that the earliest picture of it with which we meet,occurs in a French and Latin Psalter of the end of the twelfth century ; astatement which may be true, as it is admitted that the Melrose bagpipeis of a more recent date than the foundation of that building, which was

in 1136, but repeatedly thereafter destroyed. The Cathedral cupboard ofNoyou of the 14 th century, and the illuminated M.S.S. of variouscountries show by their figures that the pipes were popular in themiddle ages. In the Pilgrimage, of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," hemakes the miller play the part of the musician.

" A baggpipe wel koude he blowe and sowne (sound);And therwithal he broghte us out of towne. "

But while a piper usually headed the pilgrim bands to the shrines ofsaints, exception seems to have been taken occasionally, for before thistime complaints were made to the Arch-bishop in 1407 that "some otherpilgrims will have with them bagpipes. " In Shakespeare's day the"Yorkshire bagpiper " and "the drone of the Lincolnshire bagpipe" wereso familiar as to be referred to by him.

Probably in imitation of the Court of France, the English king and theprincipal nobility by the 16 th century, had added a bagpiper to theirestablishments. It is noteworthy that when a piper is mentioned at theScottish court, he turns out to be an Englishman. And repeatedreferences are made in the "Accounts of the Lord Treasurer of Scotland,"to payments made to "Inglis pypars, " who came from time to time toplay before King James IV.

Judging from the carvings in Roslin Chapel (founded about 1450) [see CSVol 11 No.2 -Ed] and Melrose Abbey, the first appearance of thebagpipes in Scotland dates from about the 15 th century. In 1510 Pitcairnhas an entry relating to the theft of a bagpipe whose supposed value was20 marks.

Before the middle of the 16 th century there is evidence that it was used inwar. The Highlanders in preparing for action, according to Jean deBeauque, "were animated by the sound of the bagpipe." In 1594 it wasused at the battle of Belrinnes. By the time of Melrose its position in warwas quite established. But judging from an entr^ of 1630 in the "Councilof Records of Aberdeen," there, at least it was not in high estimation."The Magistrates discharge the common pyper of all going through thetown, at nicht or in the morning, in time coming, with his pype, it beingan uncival form to be usit within sic a famous burghe, and ,,:ing oftenfund fault with, als weill by sundry nichtbouris of the tot.::e also bystrangeris. "

In 1849, Sir John G.Dalyell published "Musical Memoirs of Scotland."The briefest record of an interesting compilation must suffice. Threekinds of bagpipe are recognised in the British Isles:-

1. The Great Highland or warlike bagpipe. It has borne thisname for centuries. In 1623 a charge of misdemeanour was foundagainst a piper in Perth owing to his having played on "the great

28

pipe. " If the meaning of this is inquired into, I fancy, it will befound that he had, while unfitted, presumed to play "the pibroch, "

which was scrupulously limited to a few elect professionals. As itsname imports, this instrument could only be heard on the bens andin the glens, and was too powerful in its blast unless for the openair.

2. The Northumbrian bagpipe - in two forms - the one likethe preceding, but smaller, and of milder tone; the other aminiature of this latter, and related to it as the fife to the Germanflute. Probably the Lowland Scottish bagpipe is identified with theNorthumbrian; but it is regarded with a measure of contemptbecause it cannot reach their criterion of perfection, viz., theplaying of the pibroch.

3. While these are suited for the fields, the Irish bagpipe, bybeing of mellower tone, and having a wider compass, resultingfrom the prolongation of the chanter, holds a greater superiorityfrom its sweeter and more melodious strains accommodating itselfto indoor service.

But another says that the Northumbrian pipes are almost the same as theIrish pipes, which are blown by bellows placed under the arm, instead ofblowing into them with the mouth, as is the case with the Highlandbagpipes. The drones in these, being much smaller, associate themselveswith ours in the fainter melody produced by sounding them.

These are the representatives of the grotesque embellishments carved onthe stalls of the Chapel of King Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey, atHull, at Beverley, and elsewhere.

About the year 1549, in the "Complaynt of Scotland, " the first musiciansspecified there are distinguished by having had "ane drone bagpipe." Soin the household of James IV was Nicholas Gray, and along with him arementioned James Widderspune " fithelar, " and another who playedbefore the Queen of Henry VII at Richmond, all of whom partook of theroyal bounty and "played upon the Drone."

In 1773 Dr Johnson remarks that in Mull and Skye the bagpipe wasfalling into oblivion, and he adds that some of the principal families likethe Macleod, and Maclean of Coll, still kept a piper, whose office washereditary; and beyond all time of memory a college of pipers had beenkept in Skye.

In " Letter from the North," 1727-1736, it is related of a piper to aHighland Chieftain, in a morning, while the Chief was dressing, hewalked backward and forward, close under the window, without doors,playing on the bagpipe, with a most stately, upright, majestic stride. Thestately step of a piper is proverbial in Scotland.

2 9

In addition to the use of the bagpipe in war, it was also devoted toenliven sports and pastimes, and whether or not employed in religioussolemnities, it was a regular concomitant at the funeral rites ofdistinguished persons. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thebagpipe is named as "the principal military instrument of the Scottishmountaineers." The same is confirmed in a dispatch in 1641, from LordLothian to Lord Ancrum, who says, "We are well provided of pypers: Ihave one for every company, and I think they are as good as drummers."They were also in 1708 used aboard the British Navy, at least the"Edinburgh Courrant " had an advertisement calling for the service of abagpiper. At the close of the 15th century pipers are referred to inconnection with Aberdeen, and Dumbarton; and Biggar, Wigton,Glenluce and Dumfries soon after. Perth continued to have a town piperdown to 1800, and doubtless in other places they were similarlycontinued. At weddings in both England and Scotland the piper hadalways a piece of the bride's garter tied about his pipes, while a verymerry wedding in 1732 took place at Preston, in Lancashire, at whichthere were seven bagpipers. Mirth and immortality? were so oftenconjoined that the church authorities in Scotland interposed to prohibitthe presence of above "fifteine persons on both sydes " at marriage feasts,among whom were to be "no pypers." (Perth Kirk Session Register, 1592:and Stirling Kirk Session, 1648.)

It is alleged that when Lord Lovat was tried and condemned forparticipation in the Rebellion of 1745, for which he afterwards sufferedcapital punishment, he desired that his body might be carried toScotland for sepulture, saying "he once made it a part of his will, that allthe pipers between Johnnie Groat's House and Edinburgh should beinvited to play at his funeral." It was a saying of the sceptical Earl ofNorthampton, a contemporary of Shakespeare in 1583, in a treatiseagainst prophecy, that "oracles are most like bagpypes and showmen,which sound no longer than they are puffed up with winde and playedupon with cunning." Thus far Sir John G.Dalyell.

General Stewart, in "Sketches of the Highlanders," says:- "Playing thebagpipes within doors is a Lowland and English custom. In theHighlands the piper is always in the open air, and when people wish todance to his music, it is on the grass if the weather permits; nothing butnecessity makes them attempt a pipe dance in the house. The bagpipewas a field instrument, intended to call the clan to arms and animatethem in battle, and was no more intended for a house than a round of sixpounders. The festivities of the wedding day were generally prolongedto a late hour, and, during the day, the fiddlers and pipers never ceasedexcept at short intervals to make sweet music. The fiddlers performed inthe house, the pipers in the field, so that the company alternately enjoyedthe pleasure of dancing within and without the house as they feltinclined."

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At the Carlisle meeting of the "Royal Archaeological Institute" in 1882,Dr Bruce read a paper on the "Music of the Borders, " with illustrationson the Northumbrian bagpipes. In reference to the vivid expression ofthe music he called on the piper to play the tune, "Take a look atMaggie's Foot." He remarked that the instrument could nearly speak thewords.

It may be with reasonable confidence surmised that an order of publicfunctionaries the calls upon whose services are so varied, as to rangefrom the joy of the marriage feast to the sadness of the funeralprocession, from the gathering of the clan for battle to the triumphantreturn from victory, from the hum drum of daily and nightly burghalcalls, to the junketings and merry-makings which were the chief delightsof their experience, typical representatives would spring up amongthem, and that hits or characteristic strokes favourable and unfavourablewould fall frequently upon their order, in fact, this has enriched ourliterature, e.g., the last to be asked to a convivial party was said to get apiper's "biddin " or invitation. A pale, delicate "shilpit" looking personwas said to be "piper faced": "piper" fou meant very drunk: and so wefind "pipin' fou" - or as "fou as a piper." Stale news were "piper'snews." Pipe skill, or skill in playing the pipes made one a "skilly body."And to "pay the piper" meant loser to pay. Some pipers have earned aplace in history by their wit and humorous ways, and some have hadtheir memories immortalised in poetry and song. Some have a placeamong our Hawick "characters" which cannot be ignored.

But an illustration or two invites us meanwhile to another topic.Ludicrous representatives of the unmelodious sounds of the bagpipehave been the platitudes of others besides Cockneys. Lady Shelly in adiary, 1819, writes probably with equal truth, "That the wife of SirWalter Scott was the greatest bore in Europe, and that Sir Walter himselfspoke with a drawl so tiresome and monotonous that, like the drone of abagpipe, it provoked a yawn even when one is amused by what he wasnarrating." Hintza, a Kaffir chief, said, when he heard it, it made himcry, and always reminded him of his crying children. But more startlingis a recent report of an enterprising farmer at his wit's end by the ravagesof rats in his stack yard, who bargained with a piper for half a guinea toblow a blast with his pipes among his stacks. The contract was not onlycheap but successful, as the whole confraternity of them died ofconvulsions. Very different was the verdict of the Highlander who wasasked how he felt in a room of limited dimensions, when 12 notedplayers were rendering simultaneously a dozen different pibrochs,replied, "I just felt as if I were in heaven."

[Tune taken from . Peackock 's `Jackey Layton'- Ed]

Jackie Latin(from some traditional verses & 'Ecstasy in Eighteenth Century Kildare' by SeanDonnelly [see C.S. 14.2] edited and gaps filled by Donald Lindsay, Aug. 2001)

Bonny Jackie, Braw Jackie,- [traditional lines : Northumbrian]Bonny Jackie Latin,- [traditional lines : Northumbrian]Struck up wi his fiddle,An' he danced a rincky fada- [rincky fada : long distance Irish dance,

--- (to start of tune again)

Jackie was but twenty years,- [(Jack Lattin : 1711 - 1731?]An' he was fit an' handsome,But three days after he got hame,They laid him in his coffin

Step it, Jackie, set it JackieStep it Jackie LatinTwenty miles, in twenty stylesTae Morristown, frae Dublin

Jackie Latin, dress'd in satin- [traditional lines : Lattin Family]Broke his heart of dancing- [traditional lines : Lattin Family]

Three days after he got hame,Tae Morristown, frae Dublin

When singing the melody the runs of four [semi]quavers should be simplified totwo quavers, hence the first run A-B-C-D which goes with the word 'Jac-kie'should simply be A-C so it fits the words. Elspeth Cowie makes this modificationwhen using the tune to sing 'Gat Ye Me wi Naethin' on the Linn Burns Series, andit's the proper way to treat pipe tunes when using them to sing words to as ScottishTraditional singing usually tries to avoid having too many 'notes-per-syllable'

STOLEN BOOKSMatt Seattle recently sold the book publishing part of Dragonfly Music toDave Mallinson in order to concentrate more on playing, arranging andcomposing.

Unfortunately Dave lost a lot of the stock when his van was stolen. So, iianyone sees a suspiciously large quantity of music or other books thatmight have formed part of Dragonfly's stock, please contact Matt, Dave orthe police.

LBPS still has some Master Pipers in stock, as does Matt, together withhisown CDs. For other items contact mally@mally.corn for availability.

Seen on the netI'm trying to find a song done by Paul McCartney about 10 years or so ago. It hadbagpipes in it and was called "Molligan Tyre" ????????? Not sure of the spelling.Any help would be greatly appreciated. Regards ...

Jackie was a bonny lad,A lad wha liked the gamblin',Wager'd that he'd dance him hame,Tae Morristown, frae Dublin

Step it, Jackie, set it JackieStep it Jackie LatinTwenty miles, in twenty stylesTae Morristown, frae Dublin

Bonny Jackie, Braw Jackie,- [traditional lines : Northumbrian]Bonny Jackie Latin,- [traditional lines : Northumbrian]Wager'd that he'd dance him hame,Tae Morristown, frae Dublin

--- (to start of tune again)

Jackie was a fiddler fine,He fairly liked the dancing,A' the night, at Jack MacLean's,(Jack Mackleans : `The Conniving House')Wi pipin' Larry Grogan- (Laurence Grogan : 1701 - 1729)

Step it, Jackie, set it JackieStep it Jackie LatinTwenty miles, in twenty stylesTae Morristown, frae Dublin

HARMONICPROPORTION TM

Episode 2 - THE BORDER BLUES - Matt Seattle

In Episode 1 [Common Stock Vol 18 No 1] we looked at simple and compoundratios of 3:1 as a harmonic basis for pipe tunes. We need to have a grasp ofharmony - chords - to make sense of the ideas presented here, so if our onlymusical knowledge is based on the sound of the notes of the chanter against thedrones, then we will have to pay attention to the way these notes make upchords, and how these chords move in and out of concord with the drones.

We plunge right in with a well-known pipe tune, Elsie Marley. The tune isnamed after a famous landlady of Picktree, County Durham, and is used for thesong of the same name. Still well known to Northumbrian pipers, it was widelypublished in Scotland and England in the 18th century. This version is based onthe one in Robert Topliff's collection - there are many others, differing a little indetail but agreeing in outline. Seeking The Galloway is from William Vickers'manuscript of 1770, the only known source of the tune. A Galloway is a localbreed of pony, now extinct, though the tune is still played and was included inone of Gordon Mooney's books.

Elsie Marlev

Seeking The Galloway

I've placed chord symbols with the first strain of Elsie Marley only, because therest of the tune and all of the next one share exactly the same 8-bar sequence. Sowhat? If these were the only two tunes based on the sequence, no big deal, butthere are many in the Border repertoire which are based on exactly the samesequence or a close variant of it, which is the reason for my Border Bluessubtitle. The 12-bar blues is the basis for much of blues, most early rock 'n' roll,and some jazz, whether or not it is `blue' in mood. It is a repeated sequence ofchords underpinning 12 bars of music, with many recognised variants andsubstitutions, simple and complex, of the basic I, IV and V chords. The ElsieMarley sequence has a similar function: because it "works" - the main point - itis used over and over for pipe tunes. Let's look at it in more depth.

The 3:1 ratio is easy to see in the first four bars - 3 of A and 1 of G. It isless obvious in the 8 bars as a whole, but if we take the first chord of each 2-bargroup, 3 out of the 4 are A - and one isn't. The last two bars are interesting: as awhole, they are built on the non-drone chords of D and G, but A, the dronechord, takes up half a bar, a quarter of the 2 bars, so that the 3:1 ratio isdiscernible at three levels. As well as the mathematical levels there are levels ofmeaning:

Firstly, it is a "sequence" in time - it begins and ends.Secondly, taken as a whole, it is a "pattern", a more complex version of the 3:1ratio we looked at in the first episode - it recurs.Thirdly, it is an expression of a principle or "law", not in the sense of `this iswhat you must do', but `this is how it is done', or `this is a way that works' - itinforms.

However you view it the sequence, pattern or law can be extracted, learnt,

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absorbed, and used as a basis for variations on tunes which are built on it, or as atemplate for new tunes.

I first became aware of the importance of the Elsie Marley sequence whencomparing Newmarket Races (or Horse And Away To Newmarket or Fenwick0' Bywell) with Johnny Cock Thy Beaver, because the titles were linked inMargaret Gilmore's commentary on Playford's Division Violin. Comparison ofavailable versions showed that the two tunes were related, but not the same, inthat they do have the same chord sequence but it begins at a different place ineach (2 or 6 bars out depending on viewpoint). I'll give one strain of each toshow what I mean:

Johnny Cock Thy Beaver (extract)

Newmarket Races (extract)

Things get complicated because as well as starting in a different place in thesequence, the melody of Newmarket starts on F# rather than E and suggests adifferent chord, D (placed in brackets under bar 1 only, also applies to bars 3and 5). I regard this as a decorative substitute chord rather than a structuralchord, as most of the remaining strains do not use it, but as stated earlier, this isnot a totally watertight system, and this is one of the `permitted deviations'.Nevertheless, there is enough in common between the tunes - and between someof their variation strains not shown here - to link them, suggesting very stronglythat one is derived from the other. This link is also supported by tune titleevidence in some sources.

Notice that the non-drone chord is B minor here rather than G, but that theproportions are the same as in Elsie Marley. The structure of the Beaver tune I

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call `Elsie Marley displaced', simply because I was already familiar with ElsieMarley when it revealed itself to me, not because Elsie Marley is the earlier ormore original structure (the evidence tends to suggest the reverse). There aremany other examples , of the same tune branching off into different versions, butthe surprising thing about this one is that there is yet another branch, calledWatty's Away by Dixon, but Cock Up Your Beaver by Bewick, which is in Drather than A. Here is strain 1 of Dixon's version:

Wattv's Awav (extract)

It harmonises neatly with just two chords, clearly showing the 3:1 ratio onthree levels. In strain 6 of Dixon, and all strains in Bewick, there is somefluctuation between D and B minor as the `home' chord. This `fluid tonic' (seeEpisode 1) is also a feature of some other `Elsie-structured' tunes, such as FairlyShot On Her, and is exploited to even greater effect in early versions of TailToddle.

The Elsie Marley structure is a refinement of the 3:1 ratio. It is found(including variants and displacements) in 13 of William Dixon's 40 tunes(nearly a third), as well as in many tunes in Riddell, Peacock, Bewick andelsewhere. The examples here are all jigs but it is also used to make reels, 9/8jigs, and airs. It is not an exclusively Border phenomenon (there are Highlandand Irish examples), nor even an exclusively bagpipe phenomenon, but it iscrucial to understanding the structural sophistication of Border piping.

The small print:

For consistency all jig examples are written in 6/8 and transposed to Achanter range: Elsie Marley (Topliff) orig in G; high Bs, bar 7, note 2, allstrains, replaced by high As here (transposed pitch) - the orig wouldharmonise here as B minor (or G) rather than D, the proportions would not beaffected; Johnny, Cock Thy Beaver (Playford) orig in F in 6/4; NewmarketRaces (Peacock) orig in G; Watty's Away (Dixon) orig in C in 6/4.

PS: A small prize to the first person to identify which Dixon tunes use theElsie Marley structure (including variants and displacements). Answers to

matt@dragonflymusic.co.uk

"Border Pipes"some thoughts on Borders and Piping.Paul Roberts gave this thought provoking paper at the 2003 Collogue, in Melrose.

I want to begin by describing some key aspects of the popular culture of oneparticular county within the British isles, as it was around the mid-18 th century.

In this county the common people lived mainly in single storey thatched cabins ofstone or mud. If they had a vegetable garden or smallholding it was called a croft.Their staple food was oats (or meal) made into porridge or small cakes calledbannocks or bunnocks. On special occasions they might eat bag-pudding, the dishwe now call haggis. They often used peat for fuel, which they called turf Theyclothed themselves in hodden grey and the chequered cloth we call tartan, butwhich they called plaid or plad, and "plaid weaver" was a common occupation. Forrecreation they danced reels, jigs, and hornpipes to fiddles and bagpipes and drankmuch alcohol. Illicit distillation of spirits was an important cottage industry and insome areas something like war existed between the people and the excise. Theycelebrated the usual European calendar customs like Mayday and New Year, whichthey called Hogmana, but almost any occasion was excuse for riotous festivity or arant. A quieter social gathering - a storytelling, a good gossip with the neighbours -was crack. They didn't speak standard English - in the local dialect a phrase like"the pretty young girl didn't know the church over the bridge" "the bonnie weelassie didna ken the kirk o'er the brig". Politically the county was a hotbed ofJacobitism, perhaps more out of regionalist contrariness than any love of absolutemonarchy, for within 50 years it had become a hotbed of democratic radicalism.

It sounds like the world of Rabbie Burns, but as you have probably guessed, I amusing this collection of lowland Scots cultural cliches to try and trick you. Probablyyou think I am describing the far north of England, Northumberland orCumberland. Possibly a few lateral thinkers have plumped for somewhere in Ulster,and I could easily have added a string of Irish cliches to the Scots ones, involvingpigs, potatoes, holy wells, wakes, Catholics fighting Calvinists and the like. In factthe county is Lancashire, the southernmost county of northern England, though inmost respects it could be almost any English county north of the Humber, and Idon't doubt much of this description could be extended southwards. But from thisone example I think you can see that our cur rent ideas of national cultural integrity

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are seriously wanting. I want to try and get you looking at the Anglo-Scottishborder in a different way to the prevailing norm.

Perhaps the first thing to emphasise is that the border hasn't always existed. Not sovery long ago in the grand scheme of things there were no such people as theEnglish or the Scots. Our ancestors had other names for themselves and otherborders in other places. Generations of schoolchildren have learnt that Hadrian'sWall was built to keep the Scots out of England, yet Hadrian's Wall actuallydivides one part of England from another, and at the time it was built England andScotland didn't even exist. Back then there were no people called English or Scotsanywhere in Britain: they came later, first as raiders then as settlers. Those settlerswent on to create numerous small kingdoms, which fought and absorbed thevarious existing polities and each other until only two large kingdoms bearing theirnames remained as serious players for island dominance. The final border betweenthose two kingdoms was in no way inevitable, and it certainly didn't reflect pre-existing cultural divisions: it was the result of centuries of military conflictculminating in military-political stalemate, and there could have been many otheroutcomes. Which is why the border has moved considerably and repeatedly overthe years.

Lowland Scotland - the region south of the Forth-Clyde line - was once northernEngland, and before that the northern half of the English kingdom of Northumbria,though the status of its west was always highly volatile, veering between Englishhegemony and a series of independent Cymric and Norse kingdoms. The wholearea was annexed in the early Middle Ages by the kingdom of the Scots, expandingout of its Highland home. For a long time Scotland also held what is now northwestEngland, Cumberland and Westmoreland, though never very firmly. For some 200years Cumbria moved around between England, Scotland and independence, beforefinally ending up as English around the mid-12 th century. Even after the bordersettled into roughly its current position it remained locally fluid right up to theUnion of the Crowns in 1603. During the medieval Anglo-Scottish wars wholetowns and counties regularly changed hands and nationality, while large areas ofthe border were classed as "debateable land" whose people belonged to neitherkingdom. That is why Berwick, despite being the county town of a Scottish county,has for most of its history been either part of England or classified as neitherEnglish nor Scots. As late as the mid-16th century Dumfries-shire had a briefsojourn as an English county: some contemporary observers believed most of thesouthwest was willing to become , English, but within a few years the Scottish kingruled both kingdoms and the issue was irrelevant.

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The great border riding families, with their habit of changing national loyalties withthe political tide, remain deeply symbolic of this era. Many of these familiesextended across both sides of the border. Some had moved from one side to theother: the most notorious of the English clans, the Grahams of the west march,originally came from Scotland, whilst Scotland's worst bandit family, the

Armstrong's of Liddesdale, were settlers from England. Indeed, many of the leadingScottish riding families were English in origin, but this is hardly relevant whenmost of the border clans had cross-border kin and alliances. In this they were nodifferent to the biggest bandits of all: the English and Scottish nobility were trulyinternational in culture and kinship, and often held land, titles and office in bothkingdoms. In fact the borderers' lax attitude to national identity wasn't thatunusual, when other people had to make these kind of choices they could beequally flexible. Throughout the Anglo-Scottish wars we find both the English andScottish armies routinely included large numbers of the opposing nationality,reflecting cross-border feudal and family ties, the importance of mercenaries, andthe simple lack of the hard national identities and loyalties we now take to benormal.

Cross-border ethnicities were probably a factor too, for the border split self-awarecultural zones that must have retained memories of the old kingdoms ofNorthumbria and Cumbria. In medieval Scotland Lowlanders were still usuallyrefer r

ed to as "the English". In the early days some of them were still occasionallycalled Welsh, a reminder that back then any linguistic or ethnic divide ran on aneast-west not a north-south axis, between a relatively homogenous English eastbetween Humber and Forth, and the linguistically diverse Strathclyde/Cumbriaregion with its mix of Cymric, Norse, English and Gaelic. Cross-border ethnicloyalties may explain the behaviour of the Scots after 1066 when William theConqueror laid waste England north of the Humber. According to Simeon ofDurham: "those who escaped death fled to the south of Scotland, which was sostocked with English, both men and maidens, that they were to be found in all thefarms, and even the cottages". This isn't the sort of hospitality normally awardedrefugees, but in 1066 the Lowlands had only been part of Scotland for around 50years, and the northern English were still "kith and kin".

The Anglo-Scots border was determined by the sword not by culture, and onlyslight changes in the actual course of events could have given us very differentpolities and borders. If Northumbria had remained intact a unified English kingdommight now reach up to Edinburgh, Stirling and Glasgow. If the Kingdom of theScots had succeeded in its long-term aim of annexing southern NorthumbriaScotland would now end around Hull and Manchester. If Northumbria had retainedits independence we might now have a middle state between Forth and Humber. In

40

fact, Northumbria sometimes seems like a phantom presence in medieval politics,lurking in the shadows, never quite going away. There is evidence that some of thepeasant rebels of 1381 planned to restore the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and 25 yearslater England again came close to dismemberment when the rebel lords - Mortimer,Northumberland and Owen Glendower - agreed to divide it into separate northernand southern kingdoms, and to extend Wales over much of western England.Interestingly, this Northumbria followed not so much the line of the old Kingdomas of the Danelaw, and included most of the north midlands, a reminder that wehaven't even considered the impact of the Vikings yet. Remember that for much ofthe so-called Anglo-Saxon era most of England was actually ruled and heavilysettled by the Vikings, and that during the short life of the unified pre-Normankingdom it had Danish as well as Anglo-Saxon kings. Given that much of coastalScotland also came under heavy Norse influence and settlement it is quite likelythat but for the Norman invasion England and Scotland would have disappearedwithin a series of Scandinavian provinces.

This kind of speculation is fun, but it does have a serious point. If the border hasmoved considerably over the years, if whole populations have changed theirnational and ethnic identifications, if whole areas have belonged to neitherkingdom, if a slight realignment of events could have made the English intoScandinavians, most Scots into Englishmen, and Brummies into Welshmen, howcan we reconcile this with conventional Nationalist thought categories that wouldgive us all an "essential", eternal, unchanging Scottishness or Englishness? Fornationalists the fluid border presents real problems, and at various times in the pastpeople have seriously suggested that the lowland Scots are "really" English, thatthe northern English are "really" Scots, or that the northern and southern Englishare "really" two nations. The truth is that nations are simply political-militaryconstructs and they consist of what they consist of. I know of no other definition ofnationality that actually works. The citizens of Dumfries are Scots because theylive within the Scottish border and the citizens of Carlisle are English because theylive in England: attitudes to tartan, haggis, Morris dancing and the Tebbitt crickettest are simply irrelevant.

Shifting borders and national identifications are only problems if you accept theerroneous but widespread equation between nationality and culture. Modernnationalism typically involves a highly restrictive view of society in which nationalidentity is presented as something homogenous, static, unique, clearly andabsolutely bounded. As nowhere has ever actually been like this, nationalistscontinually find themselves trapped in an unwinnable struggle against the"corruption" of their culture, whose allegedly "correct" form is always locatedsome time in the past, and whose present is always threatened by the young, the

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innovators, the neighbours and the incomers. In reality culture is a processwhichwe live, not a fixed thing that we own, and all of us are continually involved in itcreation. National identity is simply what a given people think and do at any givemoment in time, in all its variety, fluidity and unpredictability. But I don't want ttalk about change over time so much as change over space, and here thecolourspectrum seems to me a good basic analogy. The spectrum of light visible tothehuman eye is continuous, it has no borders - these are arbitrarily imposed byhumanbeings, and different cultures have placed the breaks in different places. I think ihelps to see human culture, viewed geographically, as a spectrum. Like colour ialso changes gradually and without sharp breaks, and the borders we impose on ican also be fairly arbitrary.

The spectrum model means that wherever you draw the political boundaries thepeople on the other side will always be different. It also means they will not beverydifferent within the immediate area of that divide. If the proverbial Martian weretovisit Caithness and then Kent he could easily see the differences. But if he were tovisit Berwickshire and Northumberland the situation would appear less clear-cutAfter a while he would start noticing subtle differences, but these would not be atgreat as the differences between Berwickshire and Caithness orbetweenNorthumberland and Kent. The spectrum gives us greater differences within eachnation than exists between them at the border.

Colour isn't a perfect analogy. For one thing the cultural spectrum is overlaid withvertical divisions along lines of class, gender and age which tend to transcendnational, regional and ethnic frontiers. And we can also detect horizontal fissures -between language groups for example, or where cultural contact is disrupted byphysical barriers like the sea. Even so, the breaks are rarely as dramatic, sudden,thoroughgoing and clear-cut as people like to think, and they rarely match thepolitical frontiers. Historically the two most important breaks in the Britishspectrum have not included the Anglo-Scots border: they have been Scotland'sHighland line and England's Humber-Mersey line, and neither has ever been aliteral line.

The Highland line .was really a vaguely defined zone of mixed speech and culturewithin a string of border counties. But it was till recently the most important ethnicrift in Britain - not simply because of the intensity of the culture change, butbecause of its sheer longevity and the depth of the mutual antagonism involved.Highlanders used to describe relations with the Lowlanders as simply "the greathatred". When King James set out to centralize, unify and subdue his joint realm heused the full might of the law in the borders, but in the Highlands he simplyignored the law, imposing "civilizing " colonies of lowlanders exactly as in Ulster.

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The Highlanders were "savages" like the Irish: people to be culturally remade ordriven out. Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently of Scotland's ethnic rift thanJames' readiness to use the very worst of the border bandits as "civilizers" inGaeldom. George IV's famous donning of Highland dress in 1822 is often seen as asymbolic turning point in attitudes, but at the time one Highlander simply observedthat it was "a great mistake that offended all the southron Scots" and it is worthremembering that it occurred in the middle of the Highland Clearances. Perhaps the"great hatred" tells us something about the original annexation of the Lowlands,when colonization, clearances and contempt must have operated in the otherdirection.

The Humber-Mersey Line is really a vague region of accelerated change around theold Northumbrian border. It has been of particular interest to students of dialect,and they conventionally divide English (including Scots) into northern andsouthern zones along it. In reality the different isoglosses or breaks which linguistsstudy never match the old Northumbrian border perfectly, nor do they match eachother - the flat A follows one line, the change to the hard G another, and so on.Moreover, it's now known that some of these isoglosses have moved considerablyover time. Many of the most distinctive features of northern English/Scots aresimply archaisms that have retreated northwards - the flat A, the rolled R, bairnsand the crack. The truth isn't that dialect suddenly changes the moment you crossthe Humber, rather that throughout the English north midlands there is anaccelerated but complex change in many aspects of vernacular speech and culture.But it is a phenomenon reasonably consistent over time, and significant enough forus to treat northern England and lowland Scotland as a discernable historical entitywithin the island, as a kind of quasi-ethnicity. If we look back to the 18 th century,the golden age of bellows-piping, it's quite clear that in ethnic and historicalorigins, language, religion, literacy, social organization, folklore, music,architecture, and almost every aspect of vernacular culture, Lowland Scots had farmore in common with the northern English than with their Highland countrymen,which is why one Scottish clergyman could write in the 1770s that "to pass fromthe borders of Scotland into Northumberland was rather like going into anotherparish than another kingdom"

Of course, the political border, manifest in things like different legal andeducational systems must have always had some impact on popular culture andcreated some cracks in the spectrum. For example the Scots were far more lawabiding than the northern English. But the most powerful force for creating nationaldifferences and internal homogenisation is nationalism itself, historically a fairlyrecent phenomenon. Nationalism seeks to exaggerate national differences to moreclearly demarcate "us" from the nearest "other". This inevitably entails emphasis

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on cultural forms which are thought to not exist over the border, and given thenature of the cultural spectrum these tend to be regional forms from districts fardistant from the border. We can clearly see this in Scotland with the modememphasis on all things Highland and Gaelic, on those things that are mostobviously NOT English. We can see it in England too, where the banal cliches ofnationality tend to reflect the world of the midlands, far from both Scotland andFrance. It is Warwickshire thatched cottages and Shropshire half-timbered housesthat adorn the chocolate boxes. It is a southwest midlands ceremonial dance - theCotswold Morris - that has been turned into a national symbol. Nationalistsfrequently complain about the spread of American music and Australian soaps, butpeople have always shared tunes and listened to the same stories, interpreting themin a local way. It is kilts in Roxburgh and Morris dancing in Durham that are reallyworrying.

Perhaps we need to distinguish between homogenisation and cross-fertilization.People and ideas have always moved around, and against the backdrop of historythey have done so on a big scale. If they hadn't we would still be hunter-gathererscrammed into central Africa. This is perhaps the most important qualification to thespectrum model. It only takes minimal interaction between communities for an ideato spread rapidly, though it helps to speak the same language. All it needs for ajoke to reach John O'Groats from Lands End within hours is ordinary day-to-daycontact between one local community and the next, and so on along the chain. Andin the golden age of British bellows-piping whole segments of the population livedon the move: sailors, soldiers, peddlers, packmen, journeymen, the unemployed,not least of all professional entertainers and musicians. Such groups. could travelconsiderable distances, but most lower class people moved around regularly withinsmall, roughly defined, economic-cultural regions, and many travelled muchfurther afield. It is estimated that in the 17 th century 1 in 6 English males spent partof their lives in London (think about it: that's probably more than today) while thenumber of Britons who moved permanently to Ireland and America in the 17 th and18th centuries ran into millions. And unlike today travel back then involvedcontinual contact with new people in new regions. Travelling on foot, horse orcoach, passing others on the way, stopping nightly at wayside inns, the spread ofideas and culture was rapid and easy. Nowadays we travel insulated from eachother, and move so fast that I can reach Edinburgh from the south Pennines in amatter of hours rather than days, in terms of personal experience and humancontact missing out the entire area in between.

So - what does the model I have outlined suggest as regards bellows-piping in itsgolden age, about, for example, changes in pipe construction, tune types, playingstyles, or levels of popularity, across the island? The basic spectrum idea suggests

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that changes overall would tend to be gradual and not sharply defined, with thegreatest contrast at the geographical extremes, and little real contrast anywhere wechoose to randomly draw a border. But the areas of accelerated change we call theHumber and Highland lines would modify this, giving us three main macro-regions(excluding Wales): southern England, the Highlands, and old Northumbria inbetween. We could expect noticeable differences between these regions, and acertain homogeneity within them. The habitual movement of people within smalleconomic regions would inevitably create numerous micro-cultural regions withinall this, though undoubtedly ill defined at the edges, and would give us distinctlocal slants on more general models. The Chinese whisper of everyday humancontact linking the entire island and the continual movement of certain sections ofthe population over quite large distances, would encourage rapid and productivecross-fertilization and also help create a certain overall homogeneity, especiallywithin the English-Scots language zone - and it could also lead to a few glaringexceptions to general rules. We might also expect to find personal networks andpatterns of transmission following particular lines of communication, especially themain roads and coastal sea lanes.

When we fit together the known facts about piping in this period they fit this modelextremely well - much better than the crude nationalist model we all grew up with.More than that, I believe this model can help us fill in some of the gaps in thebellows-pipe narrative. I hope to develop these ideas in a later paper, for now thereis no time. But as both preview and finale, let us look again at George Skene, theI8 th century Aberdeenshire gentleman who not only left us one of our earliest tunemanuscripts, but a diary which includes unique references to the piping culture ofthe early 18th century. I don't want to duplicate too much of Iain's [Maclnnes]talk! To that end I'll avoid a proper look at Skene's tunebook, but his diary is toovaluable to ignore.

This describes a journey he made to London in 1729. Back then the easiest way totravel between northeast Scotland and London was either by sea, or down the GreatNorth Road, the direct route and the best road in 18 th century Britain. To first travelto northwest England was a major detour and a difficult journey. Yet this isprecisely what he does, because he is keen to meet and play with an English piperin Penrith, James Bell. Bell appears to play small-pipes, double small-pipes and"big pipes", which seem to be Border pipes. Our Aberdeen visitor seems perfectlyfamiliar with all these instruments and with closed and open playing styles, and isable to comment knowledgeably on many aspects of the Cumbrian's playing. TheCumbrian seems to have no problem playing the Aberdeen man's pipes. Skene istaken with some of Bell's self-created decorations and buys a set of his doublesmall-pipes. It looks a bit as if Bell may be a pipemaker as he has brought several

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different sets with him: that may be one reason why Skene has come all this way.Skene tells us that Bell had been crowned King of the Pipers in Newcastle afterbeating "the famous fellow" and in a London competition he beat "Humphrey" anda "High German", which means a Dutchman. For what it is worth, Humphrey ispredominantly a surname of London and southeast England, so Humphrey couldwell have been the local boy.

In other words, a piper from northeast Scotland was sufficiently aware of pipingdevelopments elsewhere in Britain to go well out of his way to develop contactswith a piper in northwest England, whose own- experiences link to piping innortheast England, London and Holland. Some knowledge of locally createdCumbrian pipe decorations plus a set of probably Cumbrian made pipes thustransfer to Aberdeenshire - and doubtless Bell absorbs a bit of Aberdeenshire inreturn. There is no hint in the meeting between these men that their instruments ormusic are in any way alien to the other party, and Bell's competition historysuggests pipers in northeast and northwest England, London and even Hollandwere playing music that was similar enough for judges to make meaningfulcomparisons.

However, if you then compare Skene's tune book to material from northernEngland and southern Scotland we see it does have a very strong regional flavouras regards favoured tune types, the way variations are constructed, and the relativeimportance shown to gracing: these all show strong similarities to period Highlandpiping. As predicted, such comparison suggests piping in the Scottish borders wasmore like piping in northern England than it was like piping in northeast Scotland.But Skene's music, though showing strong Highland links, is overall closer to thatof the southrons. It is basically the same kind of music. You could use a linguisticanalogy: Skene, is speaking the same language as the southrons but a differentdialect. The dialects are mutually intelligible, but Skene has a strong Gaelic accent.

This was a world of regional variety, but not of isolated, clearly bounded, separatecultures, and the political border seems to have been fairly irrelevant. Skene'smusic has a strong local flavour but its context was British, and even European. Heappears as part of an island wide piping culture and network with European links.His story provides an excellent illustration of my model. But if you want furtherelaboration - and hopefully some possible answers to such old chestnuts as "whatwere the Lancashire and Lincolnshire bagpipes" - you will have to wait!

Exploring the Skene Manuscriptsof 1717 and 1729Iain Maclnnes illustrated his talk with examples played on the smallpipes.Obviously a written account cannot do such a presentation justice, but readerswho have the CD-ROM that accompanies the manual "More Power to yourElbow" may hear one of the tunes played by lain - `Wat Ye what I got lateYestreen ' - with the music printed on page 98 of the manual

The subject here is George Skene, who was an Aberdeenshire Laird. Born in1695, he died 1756. So that's the time scale, the period. So his manuscripts,which were written quite early in his life, take us back quite early in terms ofScottish piping. George Skene was a highly respected figure in his nativeAberdeenshire - the kirk town of Skene is a little village about 10 miles outsideAberdeen. They were extensive land owners there, and various branches of thefamily were well known, particularly the historian and Gaelic scholarW.F.Skene. I wouldn't profess to be a particular expert on these manuscripts,but I've worked on them and I've looked at them in great detail. Keith Sanger,for instance, has published an article in Common Stock [Vol 4 No.1 Jan 1989],and Matt Seattle has discussed the music MS in the context of his Dixon work.

Let us start with his travel log, a sort of travel diary. This survives in theNational Library of Scotland. He titles it "An Account of a Journey to London".At the time George Skene was 34. He went on to be a rector of Marshal College,so besides his land owning he had plenty of other interests. One of them wascertainly music. With him on the road were his brother, a friend who was anAberdeen Lawyer, and a servant identified in the journal as R. Walker.

The journal covers the 30 days of a journey from Edinburgh to London, and it iswritten in a very neat, tiny hand, in a leather note-book designed to slip into agreat-coat pocket. It also contains financial records and little potions andrecipes; things like baking bread, cures for smallpox, cures for scurvy, makingeye-drops, making plaster for broken limbs - things like that. A transcriptionwas published by the Third Spalding Club [Vol II] in Aberdeen in 1940, and thisis a very accurate transcription. Whoever did the work did it very well. Thehandwriting is quite hard to read. There are certainly one or two words in it I'dhave been unable to make out without the benefit of the 1940 publication,although there are one or two small omissions in that publication.

The travellers made their own entertainment as they took the road south throughthe Borders to Carlisle, then to London by way of Penrith, Liverpool, Lancaster,Bristol, Bath and Windsor. And references are given en route to piping, music-making, meeting other musicians - and Skene has plenty to comment on. Likeany travel diary of the period, he talks about the roads, about the state of thecrops, the Inns they were staying in, the chamber maids in those Inns - he's notprudish in any way, just a good red-blooded young bloke on the road!

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Pipes feature in the journal on the group's first night out from Edinburgh whenthey stopped at West Linton, in the lea of the Pentlands.

"September 8 th 1729 We were plagued here by my Lady Murray'sChaplain. I say `my Lady's', because my Lord is only her echo. Theparson prayed when I played on the pipe and reckoned us reprobates,prayed audibly two or three times by break of day and drank some threechopins of wine."

(That's three bottles). And there's a payment to the Linton piper also recorded.So they all had a bit of a session, and the local piper came and they paid him 3d.

He also plays at Beild on the Tweed, the following day, in Carlisle, and then hegoes on to Penrith. And it is this description of Penrith which is the significantone that came down to us.

So he's reached Penrith with his travelling companions."Fifth day, September ye 12 th 1729. We see on a little round hill ninemiles off a pillar called `The Beacon of Penrith', just above the town,upon which we steered, it coming several times into view. We alighted atthe Crown in Penrith, Mr Nelson, a very good quarter, and here we got thefamous piper James Bell, who plays exceedingly fine upon the small pipeclose hand but plays beyond the whole world I may say on the doublesmall pipe, he following the small pipe manner, and not winding themeven, thinking it a grace on the big one, tho' he winds the small one fine,yet he has some very clever touches and graces on the big pipe, and uponthe small one a great many beautiful ones peculiar only to himself. Hebrought with him besides his big one which is so flatt that it tunes to thevioline, two sets of double small pipes and two sett of single ones, eachdifferently key'd. I bought his sharpest double one for David which hasthree burdens for which with a bellows pay'd half a guinea. He admiredthe burdens of my pipe but did not fancy the chanter so much however Iobserv'd that he played better and sweeter on them and with greatervariety than on his own. In a word he makes more out, of variety in allparts with the double small one, than I thought cou'd possible have beenmade of any small one. He beat Humphry at London and a high German,being sent for express on a wage of 1000Libs sterl. And beat the famousfellow at Newcastle and was formally crowned King of the pipers there."

It's a dynamic account. It has grudging (perhaps) admiration in places - interestin this other piper and interest in his instruments. And the accounts do record apayment of 11 shillings and 6 pence for that set of double pipes.

Now if I can just comment briefly on a couple of points that come out of this.Clearly all these instruments are bellows pipes. They are pipes of our tradition,of the Lowland Borders/cross Borders/NE Scotland tradition. The single pipewould appear to be an instrument common to both sides of the Border. We canassume it was a cylindrically bored instrument from which the modernNorthumbrian pipe has evolved, but without the modern keywork which isthought to have been introduced by John Dunn of Newcastle in about 1800.

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Skene refers to Bell's `close hand' style, which might suggest that the end of thechanter was sealed, or certainly that he was using a covered, if not a closed,fingering system. He also describes four sets of small pipes, each differentlykeyed (we're not talking here about mechanical metal keys, we're talking aboutpitches), of which he bought the sharpest double one. The indications are thatthe bulk of early smallpipes seem to have been pitched roughly between E andG. So they were small instruments - quite different from the modern instrumentsthat we've developed in the last 20 years.

Skene's reference to double small pipes is, I think, a very interesting one. One ortwo depictions of double-bored chanters have survived, but there appear to be noworking specimens from the 18 th century The principle is that the chanter ismade with two bores and two reeds, with the right-hand bore incorporating justthe bottom four notes of the scale. With the closed fingering system (in otherwords, just a single finger off the chanter) the piper can play the melody with theleft hand while producing chords or counter melody with the right. This isclearly complicated and would appear to have been superseded in Northumbrianpiping by the introduction of extended melodic range through key-work. In thehands of a master, though, you can imagine this could be quite a funky andinteresting sound. And I think that's what the allusion in the bottom line is "in aword he makes more out of variety in all parts with the double small one, than Ithought cou'd possibly have been made of any small one."

I think the third point is the `big pipe' which he mentions - I don't imagine it isthe Great Highland bagpipe, the piob mor; I think it is the bellows blownLowland/Border pipe, conical bored chanter and so on. These instruments couldbe of considerable girth, and Skene describes Bell's big pipe as '...so flatt that ittunes to the violine...' which sounds to me like a long chanter tuned to A or G.That he considered this worthy of remark might imply that other pipes of similardesign were of higher pitch. Surviving specimens indicate variable tuning of the7 th (top) note of the scale, and it seems likely that cross-fingering would haveallowed players to produce top G sharp and G natural on an A chanter.

A couple of other points to emerge from the text: he uses the term 'burdens' fordrones consistently, and I think this was in regular use. The modern French termis Boudon. There is an old bass line singing style called Folk Bourdon. Andinterestingly enough Duncan Fraser, the bagpipe collector, is still using the termBurdens for drones on bellows pipes iii 1907 when he published hisreminiscences. And Skene also uses the term `winding the bag', which is quite amodern sounding term. Competitions for wagers is also a recurring theme inearly piping accounts from both sides of the Border - often with strong mythicaland sometimes super-natural elements.

Of course Skene's description of the meeting with James Bell leaves a great dealto the imagination, and poses as many questions as it answers. In particular.what does it tell us about repertoire and fingering style and embellishments?Skene is really silent on these points, other than alluding to Bell's '...very clevertouches and graces on the big pipe...' He has however left a small manuscript of

fiddle and pipe music which he started collecting in his native Aberdeenshire in1717, when he was aged 22, and this provides intriguing pointers. Themanuscript is referred to as "George Skene, His Book." It is in the NationalLibrary. It has 53 tunes or bits of tunes - some just 8 bars and not the completetune - but of those 53 tunes, four are clearly marked for the pipe. A further sixor so tunes fit the pipe scale quite comfortably. Tunes like "You are the Lassthat has the Gear, and I'm the Lad that Loves You" - which was page 1 in thebook, so quite possibly a tune he has written himself. It could almost be a pipetune if you had a set of pipes that could play a top G sharp and high B - whichis quite possible of course if you had a Lowland chanter. That's a nice tune.Tune titles in these early collections, like Dixon, are earthy on the whole. In preVictorian days there was no squeamishness about being earthy.

Of particular interest are four tunes which he says are for the bagpipe. He's notclaiming any other tunes in the collection as pipe tunes, and he was a fiddler aswell as a piper. He uses terms like `bagpipe setts' or `bagpipe humour'. "Wat Yewhat I got Late Yestreen - Bagpipe Set", "Cauld Kale in Aberdeen", "MalcolmCaird Come Again", and "Gird the Cogie, for the pipe Ingram's Set".

Three of the tunes are written in A, and the 4 th , "Malcolm Caird", is in G, whichis the key favoured by Northumbrian pipes. Significantly all the tunes werewritten in this style of melodic ground with variations, each featuring between 8and 10 measures. This approach to tune development will certainly have beenfamiliar to fiddlers of the period who were busy experimenting with multi-parttune settings including fiddle Pibrochs of the type contained in David Young'sMacFarlane manuscript of 1740. In terms of piping repertoire, the closestcomparisons were, I suppose, William Dixon's 40 tunes compiled in theNorthumberland in the 1730s, and Robert Riddell's collection of Scotch,Galwegian and Border Tunes in 1794. Together these might be seen as localisedexpressions of the Border, indeed as a broader Border pipe repertoire built onvariation sets of the type that have survived in modern Northumbrian pippingwhich don't really exist in Highland piping, though you could argue that ceolmor adopts similar principles but obviously using a different melodic canvas.Matt [Seattle], who has edited the Dixon collection, points to comparisons withearly ground and division music composed for violin, lute and keyboard, andsees the Skene manuscript possessing a significant Northern accent in the broadlanguage of Borders and Lowland piping.

I want to reinforce the notion that the NE of Scotland had a distinctive pipingstyle definitely related to the Border/Lowland tradition. And just to dip into acouple of historical references to support that view: One is the music collectionof Alexander Campbell, who visited the Borders in October 1816 collectingmusic. And one of the first people he encountered was an itinerant wool gathererfrom Banffshire, named James Copburn. "And James", he writes, "had threevarieties of bellows pipes, one, an Irish pipe on which he performed butindifferently. I prick'd down his set of `Malcolm Caird's Come Again'."Campbell included a setting of Malcolm Caird in his song collection, with newwords written by Walter Scott. The title I think is significant, because Caird is

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the Anglicised version of the Gaelic word `Ceard', or Tinker, and there is everyindication that the tinker families travelling far and wide, following seasonalwork, were major bearers of folk lore and tradition. And certainly Walter Scott,James Hogg and others of their type supported that viewpoint. Clearly the tuneitself, Malcolm Caird, had pedigree, because George Skene had collected it acentury earlier than Alexander Campbell.

Another point:- Alexander Campbell visited Thomas Scott at Monk Hall, nearJedburgh. Thomas Scott, born in the 1730s, was Walter Scott's uncle, and hewas a well known Border piper. And Thomas Scott gave Alexander Campbell alist of famous Border pipers - the Hasties, the Forsyths and so on. And he makesthis point; "Mr Thomas Scott" says Alexander Campbell "is decidedly of theopinion that the Border bellows bagpipe is of Highland or at any rate the NEcoast origin, as all the pipers with whom he was acquainted positively declared."He goes on to say this sounds a bit improbable, but it would suggest that even inthe Borders a distinctive NE piping accent and tradition was recognised. Andthat tradition certainly came down to us in the last century via people likeFrancis Markis [see CS Vol 1.1, 5.1 and 10.1], the well-know farm-labourer,athlete and musician, who was born in 1823 and died 1904.

Duncan Fraser (the well-known bagpipe music collector) from the Black Isle,writing in 1907, when referring to bellows pipes says `it certainly still lingers onin these islands in Northumberland and Aberdeenshire.' And you might beinterested in his reasoning for the bellows pipes dying out. He says "The reasonfor the decline in the bellows pipes is not far to seek. What it gains in sweetnessit loses in power, and is no longer a useful instrument. With its correct sharpsand flats and its numerous keys giving the scale a greater range of notes, it lendsitself to other than pipe music, and is at once brought into competition with themore precise, more powerful and more modern instruments." I should mentionRobert Millar as well, who was a music collector from the North East.

One final point about the four tunes. Skene introduces an interesting piece ofterminology which I hadn't come across before - `gatherings'. He uses it as aterm to indicate grace notes - little clusters of grace notes. And here's one wherehe does it [example in CS 4.1 p.14]. So the 'gr' symbol crops up in the fourtunes he labels as pipe tunes. And the other symbol he uses quite a lot is thedouble dash (II) which appears in fiddle collections (I think that was discussed insome detail in 1995). He also used occasional single grace notes as quavers.

Conclusion - In both style of presentation and melodic line, Skene's pipe tunesdiffer substantially from the familiar jigs and reels which have come down to usfrom collections such as Patrick Macdonald's Highland Vocal Airs, 1784. Itwould seem the Northeast Scotland in the early 18 t century was able to sustaintwo piping traditions, one firmly grounded in the musical legacy of the Gael, theother with an eye to the south and the musical conventions of the Border pipers.

REVIEWSFrom Other Shores

100 original tunes for bagpipesGreat Highland BagpipeLowland pipes,Scottishsmallpipes and othertraditionalinstruments. Bob Cameron.

I never cease to be amazedthatthe bagpipe nine-note range canallow new tunes to begeneratedyear after year, century aftercentury, without repetition. Now .Bob has `prick'd' down ahundred more for us to try.

Most of them were writtenfor the Highland bagpipe, withdetailed gracings included. Butin the "Notes for Pipers andother Musicians" he explains thekey signatures used, the tuningrequired by the harpist, and thenecessity to cross finger C and Fnatural when playing tunes in Aminor - written specially for theLowland/Border pipes.

Bob has a wide range ofmusical experience (he mentionsplaying the tuba, and studyingmusic theory), and it shows. Forinstance the hornpipe "CaptainTimothy Driscoll" is the firstpiece of pipe music I've everseen with double dotted quavers(8th notes) combined with demi-semi-quavers (32

ndnotes).

Bob has arranged the 100tunes (spiral bound quarto size)into 11 major categories, each ofwhich has a page of paragraphstelling something about eachtune. There are 6/8 rnariches, 2/4marches, strathspeyes , reels, 4/4

52

marches, hornpipes, jigs and slipjigs, slow airs, slow marchesetc. The final section hassettings for Scottish smallpipesand Lowland pipes.

The tunes were set on anApple Mac computer, and insome respects the Lime MusicNotation Software has let Bobdown. For instance the melodynotes don't always sit centrallyon or between the stave lines,and some of the notes get almoston top of one another.

When it comes to tuneseveryone has personalpreferences, but it is safe to saythere is something here forevery piper. When goingthrough the tunes I put a markagainst the ones I'd like to comeback to and learn. Here Imention a few amongst themany:- the 2/4 march TheMooneys of Lauder (whichrequires the use of high B); thestrathspey Dancing At Corpach;the reel Ice Cubes In TheCoffee; hornpipe AngusCameron of Creignish (whichhas both a major and minorsetting); the jig Paddy'sMelodeon; slip jig Dorothy'sFamous Hat, slow air The Firstof May; and most definitelyLockerbie R membered.

I can recommend this bookas a good source of new andoriginal tunes. I shall certainlycontinue to enjoy them.

Jock Agnew

[Obtainable from Bon Cameron11 Totnes Rd, Braintree, MA02184-401 USA price $20 plushandling & shipping]

RODDY MACDONALDGOOD DRYING

The sight of a small cardboardpackage in the post is always met withanticipation, because it heralds thearrival of Greentrax Recording's latestCD for review. In this case it wasRoddy MacDonald's "Good Drying"album - an unknown quantity initially- but which has since been played andplayed and played.

Despite Roddy's impeccablepiping background - son of renownedplayer, composer and judge, WilliamMacDonald (Benbecula) - he isperhaps not well known on theScottish piping scene, probably as aresult of having lived for many yearsin London, and now in Japan. I haveoften heard his tunes ascribed to otherpipers (particularly Gordon Duncan),by session players who haven'tbothered to check whose music theyare playing. I sincerely hope that thisCD goes a long way to changing thissituation and enhancing Roddy ' sreputation in this country.

The album is designed to appealto other musicians as well as pipersand it offers a range of styles from"straight" Gaelic slow airs andstrathspeys, to salsa and techno funkproving Roddy to be an accomplishedand versatile composer, and it featuresmost of his best known tunes such asthe title track, Electric Chopsticks, 11Paco Grande and Last Tango inHarris.

One area which is increasinglyattractive to listeners, particularlyother pipers, is the sleeve notes whichaccompany such a production, oftengiving background information about

tunes, or the characters behind thetunes. I knew little of the backgroundto many of Roddy's tunes, exceptGreen Day strathspey whichcelebrates the national day of Japan(and in fact started out life as a reel!)so it was a bit disappointing that hehad decided on a minimalist approachto sleeve notes. Having spoken to IanGreen, I decided to e-mail Roddy forsome more information - and such isthe wonder of modern technology thathis reply was back in a few shorthours!

Readers may be interest in thefollowing notes from the man himself:

GOOD DRYING: relates to asaying I heard as a young boy inInverness where there would be "gooddrying" days and "bad drying" days.This was in the days beforeLaundromats and tumble driers!

BULLET TRAIN: This is theopening tune of the CD relating to theShinkansen (bullet train) in Japan.You can hear my son standing on theplatform at Osaka station asking if thetrain is going to Kobe.

SMOKIN THE WASPS: Myhome is a smoke free zone and when afamous piper was visiting me inLondon, he had to stand on balcony tohave a cigarette. Unfortunately I hada wasps nest in my roof at the time!

THE PIVOVAR EXPRESS :During a visit to the Czech Republicwith the Neilston Pipe Band, we wereinvited to a brewery and theproprietors kindly filled our bus upwith cases of the local beer (Pivovar!)

MEAL FUAR-MHONAIDH:Named after the hill on Loch Ness-side I used to visit regularly as ateenager.

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THE FAMOUS FOURTH: My Boys'Brigade Company in Inverness.

All in all, this is a highlyentertaining selection of music; "alifetime of musical excursions" Roddycalls it, from the pen of a composer athome with a variety of styles,traditional and otherwise, musicenhanced by sympatheticaccompaniments, recorded inAustralia by Murray Blair - and I amsure it will be a huge hit.Furthermore it is another addition tothe Greentrax stable of thoroughbreds- as if they needed to work atenhancing their reputation forproducing quality recordings, andseeking out something a little bit outof the ordinary. Full marks to IanGreen and his team again.

Available from GreentraxRecordings and all the usual outlets.

Rona Macdonald.

More Power To Your ElbowA practical guide to acquiring,playing, tuning and maintainingScottish bellows blown bagpipes.With over 50 tunesPlus a tutorial CD-ROM

.

When our dynamic editor asked me toreview this "manual", I expected tofind yet another `tutor' for the pipes.How wrong I was. Jock has compiledand edited something very much morethan this. The beautifully produced106-page A4 book could certainlystand on its own as the best of itskind, but it is further enhanced withthe additional CD-ROM. The disc and

54

book function together as an integrallearning experience.

As suggested by the sub-title"A practical guide to acquiring,

playing, tuning, and maintainingScottish bellows blown bagpipes"every novice or learner player will dowell to acquire this package. Ofcourse we are all "learners", andpipers of any level will find that itserves as a superb one-stop referencesource, a veritable compendium ofaccumulated wisdom. The 50 plustunes alone, make this a worthwhileinvestment. These include pieces fromoft-referenced but little accessedsources such as Robert Millar'smanuscript and Riddells Collection ofScotch Galwegian and Border Tunestogether with some modemcompositions in the Border traditionby contemporary players. All arehelpfully categorised as either Easy,Medium or Hard.

A preface by Gordon Mooneyincludes a reminiscence of theexcitement of the early uncertain daysof the bellows pipe revival at thebeginning of the '80s and reflects onhow far we have since come. AHistory of the Pipes by JulianGoodacre all add to the quality of theproduction.

The differences betweenBorder/Lowland . Pipes and smallpipesis well explained as are the relativemerits and applications for pipes ofdifferent pitch. This section mighteven be of assistance to sufferers fromAcquired Bagpipe DeficiencySyndrome - those who, havingalready acquired one or more sets ofpipes have become hopeless addictswondering which next of these

marvellous musical instruments theycan afford to buy!

The all-important learningprocess is thoroughly expounded asare the principles of tuning-and here iswhere the CD-ROM comes in. Manynew admirers of these pipes live infar-flung corners of the earth. Theyfind themselves trying to learn inisolation and often suffer endlessfrustration because explanationswritten on the page are no substitutefor seeing and hearing how somethingis actually done. Even the simplebusiness of strapping on the bellowscan seem a strange and awkwardbehaviour at first, especially if you'venever seen it demonstrated. Enter IainMaclnnes to demonstrate in a series ofclips every step from strapping on thebellows, through drone tuning,performing a series of exercises, andon to demonstrating a selection oftunes from the book. The film clipsare clearly cross-referenced with on-screen and on-book contents pages,and the user can repeat, replay, or re-visit earlier sections with the greatestof ease. The CD is not an audio CD tobe played on your CD player. Ratherthe participant in this multi-mediafeast should sit, (ideally with pipesand bellows at the ready) in front ofthe computer with book on a standbeside him/her, pop the disc into theCD-ROM drive, and off we go.

There are sections headedPlaying a tune for the first time;Playing style; Getting the most out ofyour practice time; Playing in front ofothers. These tips and reminders canbe as valuable to an old hand as to thebeginner.

The extensive appendix dealswith gracing, notation, reeds and reed-

making. It is good to see several top-notch makers each providing theirown versions of the black art. Acomprehensive and up to dateresource section lists books,recordings, pipemakers, etc. There iseven an extensive glossary andalphabetic index. Nothing has beenforgotten.

One cautionary note: havingbeen advised in "Acquiring a set ofpipes" on the various pitches. etc., thepipes used by Iain Madness turn outto be an A set of smallpipes. Nosurprises here, as these reportedlyhave become the most popular choiceamong new recruits to bellows piping,(regrettably to my mind, the Dsmallpipes being my favourite andmore in line with original 18 '' centurysmallpipes in pitch and character).This means that if you had acquired aD or a C set, you can't really playalong with Iain or learn the exercisesin unison with him. Also it is a pitythat no demonstration ofBorder/Lowland pipes is included.However this is hair-splitting and thecost constraints of adding a parallelCD in D and another one featuringBorder pipes would be somewhat overthe top. Also those wanting to hear Dsmallpipes or Border pipes played canrefer to the commercial recordingslisted in the Resources section.

Bill Telfer

Obtainable from Jock Agnew (£25, or£20 LBPS members) plus postage andpacking. Also from various retailoutlets and pipe-makers world-wide.

Meetings and EventsBums Supper. 24th January. Deacon Brodie's Tavern, Royal Mile,Edinburgh. Contact Jim Gilchrist

Florida Smallpipe School for 2004. Feb. 23-to 27th . Tutor FinMoore. To learn more, please e-mail terride@sanctum.com

Melrose Teaching weekend. Dates to be confirmed. Tutors HamishMoore, John Saunders and AN Other.Contact Rona Macdonald 0141 946 8624

Annual LBPS competition, St Anne's Hall Edinburgh. EasterSaturday. Contact Rona Macdonald 0141 946 8624

Summer School. 2 nd to 6th August 2004, in conjunction with`Common Ground, Scotland' at the Scottish Agricultural College,Auchincruide, near Ayr. Tutors lain Maclnnes and Jock Agnew -smallpipes and Border pipes, with pipe maintenance and reedmaking. Contact David Hannay 01 557 840 229

EDINBURGH - the ALP (adult learning project) at BoroughmuirHigh School, Bruntsfield on Thursday nights. Smallpipe tutor EwanBoyd. Visit the ALP website www.alpscotsmusic.orgor phone 0131 337 5442

NORTHEAST ENGLAND. 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month at theSwan pub, Greenside. Contact Steve Barwick 0191 286 3545.

NORTHWEST ENGLAND. Last Friday in the month at ArmathwaiteSchool, 1900 - 2130. Contact Richard Evans 016974 73799

LONDON.3rd

Thursday of every month, except July 8th August.95 Horseferry Rd. Contact Jock Agnew 01621 855447

LBPS Publications for saleMore Power to your Elbow. Manual/tutor with CD-ROM. £25 (£20 mbrs)

Suggested Session Tunes £8 (£6 members)A Collection of Pipe Tunes (Peacock etc) £7 (£5 members)

50 Lowland and Border Tunes £4.50From Niall Anderson or Jock Agnew. Trade prices available on request.

LBPS WEB SITE www.lbps.net