In early 1972 Donald received the following letter from Bob Brown resident at Balmoral. It was prior to Bob’s trip that year to Australia to ‘check on what I taught them last year’ [1971].
During the tour he took ill and had to be flown home. Bob, pictured above left with Donald, died a few days after arriving back on Deeside.
As the letter explains, Bob had been booked to play at a ceilidh in Garve, Ross-shire, but discovered a clash of dates:
[wds id=”2″]
Donald was never slow to correct misrepresentation. Here’s his letter to the Oban Times after its correspondent’s comments on the playing of the piobaireachd the Battle of Waternish at the 1987 Glenfiddich competition. [Covering piping for the Oban Time at this time was Alfred Morrison.]:
The next clipping is from a 1973 newspaper report on the Bratach Gorm in London:
The caption reads: ‘Holding the Bratach Gorm (Blue Banner), the highly coveted piping prize awarded annually by the Scottish Piping Society of London, is this year’s winner, Donald Morrison (second right), a former pipe major with the Aberdeen City Police Pipe Band.
‘Other prize-winners are (left to right) Mr John D Burgess (fourth), Easter Ross; Mr John MacDougall (third), Inverness-shire; Mr Roy Spencer, a Scotch House Ltd. director who presented the prizes, and Mr Iain MacFadyen, runner-up and last year’s winner.
