Who gets to lay prior claim to this brilliant Donald Macleod composition; Malcolm Ferguson, or my granny?
My name is Ben Maclennan, I live in South Africa, and my grandfather Don was a stalwart of the Scottish and piping community in Johannesburg in the 1960s. He played host to a number of visiting pipers, among them Donald Macleod, who expressed his gratitude with this hand-written tune:
As you see, it’s titled ‘Mrs Donald Maclennan’, and along the bottom Donald has written: ‘With Greatest respect to the Lady of ‘The Farm’ and in Gratitude for her real Highland hospitality.’
The farm was the rural smallholding north of Johannesburg where my grandparents lived. Mrs Donald Maclennan was my warm-hearted grandmother Elsie pictured below:
I grew up with the tune, believing it to be a unique part of my family’s heritage. But decades after my grandparents’ death, I for the first time heard Donald’s Malcolm Ferguson, which of course is virtually identical, give or take a gracenote or two, to my grandmother’s tune.
And therein lies the rub: why did Donald give two titles to the same tune, and which title came first?
I’m fatally handicapped by knowing neither the date of Donald’s visit to South Africa, and therefore the date of composition of Mrs Donald Maclennan, nor when Malcolm Ferguson was penned.
I’m hoping Piping Press readers may be able to shed light on the matter. I’m rooting for my granny.
- Malcolm Ferguson is reprinted at the head of this article. It is from Donald’s Book 4 from 1967. It is highly unlikely that he would have re-dedicated the tune after publication so I think it fair to say that his visit to South Africa was a few years prior to that Ben. Perhaps someone with access to the annals of the Scottish Piping Society of the Witwatersrand can confirm when Donald visited. The solution is probably quite straightforward – a simple slip of the mind. Donald was the kindest and most genial of men. The last thing he would have wanted was this sort of confusion. Does anyone have further information, or indeed anything on who Malcolm Ferguson was? Ed.
