Checkout timing mark 01:00 and catch the lyric “…for he goes birling down and down the white water..”.

“Birling”, you’ll know, is the spinning and moving forward of the logs in the water (and is, in fact, now a sport!) but note that birling is an old Scots word for rotating or to move rapidly – the kind of thing pipers’ pinky fingers do in the closing parts of Donald MacLeod’s “Crossing the Minch”.

M.

Hope you enjoy the tunage.

M.

Like the best proverbs, there’s a real feel of truth to it:

“Straightening the bend in old wood is a difficult job.”

(Gaelic: An car a h’ anns an t-seana mhaide, is duilich a thoirt as).

A nice change-up to the old-dog-new-trick, keep-an-open-mind lines.

M.

Here are a few of my favourites:

“‘No! No! A thousand times, no!’ poor Penelope squealed as her pixyish frame disappeared beneath the lust-engorged loins of Hector the hulk, mindful all the while that she still had 997 “no’s” to go.” (p.68)

“‘I always wanted to live in Helena, Montana,’ he said with a faraway look in his eye; ‘I’d open a little bistro and call it the ‘Handbasket’ and the whole world would go there!” (p.97)

and finally:

“Peabo, the cat, washed his fur in the warm sunlight that streamed through the window, thinking to himself as he licked his soiled paws, ‘Why, it’s not so bad having a baby in the house,’ and then coughed up a hair ball and bits of a rattle.” (p.35)

As “Still Game‘s” Tam Mullen‘s wife Frances might say, “What am I like?!”.

M.

Here’s the scoop: After meeting and date number three or so they start talking a little about their families. He says to her something like, “my Mum’s family comes from a little place in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland: Benbecula”. “Yikes”, thinks my sister – or something like that. That’s where my father’s mother comes from!

So it turns out that the Benbecula village, or maybe more rightly stated, “enclave of houses”, that is Torlum, Benbecula, forms a seriously common thread for both of them. On the birth of their first child I have a feeling they were on high alert for overly close eyes – or, worse, only one: mid-forehead.

Of course, all’s well but interesting to learn more of my brother-in-law’s family; most probably, my family.

Here’s a tune he passed to me. Provided here at his courtesy. I looked at this and thought right away that the way to find out more about it was to talk to Reay Mackay, a Godfather of North American piping.

Reay is a veritable fountain of piping knowledge, a child prodigy and so a person who has made music through a good chunk of 20th century piping life. In his insight to this tune, he didn’t disappoint.

This tune, “Alex MacMillan”, is my brother-in-law’s grandfather [**small world alert**born in Torlum one year after my grandmother with the same surname as my grandmother's mother, the 1891 Scottish census shows both families living in Torlum at that time ... I digress]. It was written by Donald Ewen Macpherson from Skye. Reay relayed yet another fascinating back-story to this manuscript [I admit: it's the second back-story that may interest you].

First, the tune is really good. We both agree, it’s full of merit, clearly written by an accomplished musician and completely playable and worthy of competition. Second, **small world alert** the manuscript is from the hand of Murdo MacLeod, one of Reay’s teachers and Benbecula emigrant – and, just by the way, a pupil of John MacDougall Gillies.

Reay said he could recognize Murdo’s hand anywhere and has copies of tunes written in the same stylish pen. So here we have a tune for a Benbecula man, composed by a Skyeman and in the hand of another Benbecula man – all immigrants to the Toronto-Hamilton area, you’d have to think they were all good pals.

But the really interesting thing about this is related to the composer of “Alex MacMillan”.

Donald Ewen Macpherson was something else: a real all-rounder. Not saying the guy could just play jigs and the big music, no, this guy could play the whole gamut of bagpipe music and highland dance, toss the caber and do all the heavy events – and do them well. In fact, as Pipe Major of the Royal Scots he won the wrestling championship of the British armed services [William Donaldson, “The Highland Pipe and Scottish Society: 1750-1950"].

Macpherson was a man cut from the all-rounder rough cloth of John MacColl and D.C. Mather. Though those guys, while Highland dancers [the kind of Highland dancing, by the way, the Gaelic College is so down on], didn’t seem as big on the heavy events. Not like our Donald Ewen Macpherson.

So what’s the deal with Donald Ewen Macpherson and his buckshot aim at all the prizes on offer at the Highland games?

We only have to look to Donaldson for a little insight. Referring to the early days of the twentieth century he notes the problem [p. 205] of the “same old names” turning up in the solo piping prize lists with the “struggling young player” never seeming to catch a break. I suggest that’s probably an age-old problem. Though pipers like Donald Ewen Macpherson had a solution to covering their travel – and other – expenses: they competed in all the events they were able:

“Given such difficulties, some young pipers preferred to concentrate on track and field events, where arcane considerations of authority and reputation did not predetermine the outcome, where they did not have to bear written accreditation from social superiors before they could even enter (as was the case with piping events at a number of games, including the Northern Meeting), and where victory and defeat were normally unequivocal. Robert Meldrum recalled one of his own pupils, Donald Ewen Macpherson of Skye, ‘who was a most promising piper, playing some splendid piobaireachds, but he preferred the athletics side of the games…”

Indeed he did. He emigrated to Toronto and, according to Reay, opened a gym on Queen Street in Toronto, one of the city’s main streets. Signs, like this tune, point to his continued involvement in the piping world.

So, there you have it: an interesting story and damned fine tune – all courtesy of my brother-in-law.

That’s Brother-in-law: thanks to our small world, with the biggest of upper case Bs.

M.

PS. Interesting to note that on emigrating to Canada Alex MacMillan joined the 16th Battalion (The Canadian Scottish) and in WWI fought at the Somme serving in the same regiment, and battles, as piper James Richardson, VC.

M.

From “Nine Blasted Notes“, the dance remix of “End of the Road” (featuring Paula Lynn Walker). The hornpipe is my tune, “The Anne Spalding Hornpipe” – score here.

End of the Road

Ev’ry road thro’ life is a long, long road,
Fill’d with joys and sorrows too,
As you journey on how your heart will yearn,
for the things most dear to you.
With wealth and love ’tis so
but onward we must go-

Chorus
Keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end,
Tho’ the way be long, let your heart be strong, keep right on round the bend.
Tho’ you’re tired and weary still journey on, till you come to your happy abode,
Where all you love you’ve been dreaming of will be there at the end of the road.

With a big stout heart to a long steep hill,
We may get there with a smile,
With a good kind thought and an end in view,
We may cut short many a mile.
So let courage ev’ry day,
Be your guiding star alway-

Anyway, get out those fancy pumps and dance!

M.

Odd to me (and that upper case “O” would stand even without kicking off a sentence) that the new leadership of the GC, namely Rodney MacDonald – himself a terrific fiddler – should give the big welly boot hoof to piping and, seemingly, Highland dancing. Gone from the curriculum is Great Highland Bagpipe music as played around the world and in its place something called “Cape Breton piping” or “kitchen piping”.

I can guess what is meant by “Cape Breton piping”: it’s essentially bagpipe music that evokes the fiddle and, some might say, the sounds of Gaelic language. But “kitchen piping”? Kitchen piping as we know it today are words used in the wider piping world to describe showy, usually newish, music performed in an informal setting – like the kitchen (hello!). While “kitchen piping” may’ve been a phrase used for eons it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that the phrase has gained any general currency. I’ve never heard it used synonymous with bagpiping in CB.

The best player of piping in the CB style that I know is John MacLean, an old friend who now lives outside of Halifax. John’s Dad was a fiddler but John’s bagpiping was developed in a world of rich history and strong musical discipline: the competitive bagpipe world. I think back to the comment made to me this past summer by the great South Uist piper Rona Lightfoot, “you can’t make much music without some technique”. John MacLean is an example of a piper with strong technique that has easily adapted to the piping-fiddle style needed for supporting music for dancing, or “square sets”. I can tell you: of the relatively few pipers with connections to CB, John MacLean’s technical excellence is not common.

From my earliest experience journeying through CB I could feel a strong sense of the bagpipe as made for steerage and the fiddle first class. Yes, CB experienced great luck in landing expert old-school (nineteenth century) pipers on her shores, but that excellence was never sustained. Perhaps the fiddle co-opted the greatness of the old pipers. Certainly without bagpipe music the Cape Breton fiddle repertoire is but a hollow stump. And not just old bagpipe music: we commonly hear the brilliance of “competitive military-style pipers” throughout the CB fiddle repertoire: “Kintara to el Arish” (William Fergusson, 7th H.L.I), “Inverary Castle” and “John MacDonald of Glencoe (Willie Lawrie, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders), “John Morrison, Assynt House”, “The Conundrum” (Peter R MacLeod, Scottish Rifles) – this to name but a tiny few.

There’s great glory and tradition and, dare I say, Gaelic-ness to today’s “competitive” bagpipe music. It’s a rich, lively tradition with huge vibrancy. It evolves. It moves forward. It influences, even CB fiddlers – whether they know it or not.

A shame the GC has sought to look further inward as the institution, assumedly, seeks to grow and move forward and be acknowledged as relevant both to CB pipers — and those beyond the Causeway.

St Ann smoke signals suggest this is unlikely.

M.

From left we have Julie Wilson (who today looks very much like this young girl), Andrew Berthoff (Julie’s hubby and resembling, here, a Simon Le Bon wannabe), me (in turn, resembling a corpulent sort of forshadowing of the Harry Potter character), a bearded Jim McGillivray, the ever-smiling Lillian Livingstone and Bill Livingstone, showing just a hint of hockey hair.

Forget T S Eliot and his crappy April, I say November is the cruelest month – at least for us in the northern hemisphere. We’re surrounded by nothing but grey (and not the good kind): short days, long nights, and not much in the way of shimmery snow and invigorating crisp cold. Cheery? Not so much.

So, rotten November, my mucky motivation for today posting this happy pic; I’m sure November exists as it does to encourage our yearning for times like long August days and for places like Cafe Gandolfi (and, by the way, for their unsurpassed Stornoway black puddings – avec champignons [of course - just sayin']).

We know you can’t have your peaks without your valleys and November – and, um, early December – counts as a valley!

On reflection, I’m reminded, too, in part from this photo, that friends and family are everything.

Bring on the Yuletide season!

M.

Today, with battles happening in places like Afghanistan (for instance), I imagine it’s much clearer for kids to get what Remembrance Day means. I hope so. Anyway, while not the statutory working person’s holiday it should be, it strikes me we are much better at marking the day – and remembering.

Members of my family, like many others, were active freedom fighters: many served their country. Today we often think of “freedom fighters” as a bad thing. “Freedom fighter” has a connotation of subversion. We so often read in the news of “freedom fighters” as coming from a terrorist cell or terrorist block along with their (sadly) explosive and awful destructive ways.

Today we live in one of the greatest places in the world, and that – we should always be reminded – is what our freedom fighters fought for.

So today I think of my Dad’s father, Robert; the handsome, strapping young fellow [pictured here] who spent four of the prime years of his life living through WWI in the dank, soul-destroying trenches of France. A Sergeant in the 11th Hussars (Dublin based) and the Leicestershire Yeomanry (England) ["there were a lot of Irish lads in the Regiment"] he learned to ride a horse rein-less, with his knees, in order to hold a “firearm” – as they say today.

He beat the odds only to live the rest of his post-war days with bullet scars through either sides of the right side of his neck. One can only imagine the scars that couldn’t be seen.

I never knew him, he died before I was born, but I did know my Uncles, his sons. Three of my Dad’s brothers served (my Dad, not part of the fighting war story, due to the fate of his birthday). Two of my Uncles, Bob, a Grenadier Guardsman, and John, a member of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers, were part of Débarquement de Normandie, D-Day. Amazingly, they both survived – and lived long lives.

I recall, after one long night on the town in Edinburgh not so long ago, with Edinburgh friends. It was no earlier than three or four in the morning. We talked.

The subject came up: what made our fathers, what made their fathers – and – what made us. A classic boozy talk, I know.

We all agreed that the war to end all wars, World War I, while predating us by scores of years, had a huge impact on who we were. After all, the trenches influenced our grandparents, that, in turn, touched our folks (in a big way) and well, the rest is history. Our history.

And that’s all to say the obvious: war is awful, insidious and beyond horrible: What happens in war echoes and reverberates through generations.

Still, even knowing that, I am grateful for the sacrifice of my fellow citizens – and family.

I do my best to remember.

M.