The Piobaireachd Society Summer School ended last weekend. It was the fourth time we had travelled to Skye for the week-long class. We had 25 students.
They came from the Phillipines, Thailand, USA, Canada, Liverpool, the isles of Bute and Mull, the Borders, Bellshill, Norwich, Glasgow, London, Aberdeen, Caithness, Austria, Germany and Brittany. They all appreciated the accommodation and food at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic College on the Sleat (pronounced Slate) Peninsula.
By Robert Wallace, President
We split into four classes. If it didn’t suit, students were given the option of switching. None did. They had one-to-one lessons at which they could dictate what they wanted to learn or revise.
The school tune this year was Chisholm’s Salute. Once we had mastered the rhythms of the dre and dare we were able to play the ground and thumb variations as a group on the pipes. We did so on our off-campus visit to the nearby Torabhaig Distillery:
The tourists were pleasantly surprised at this kilted, musical bonus attraction. We enjoyed a dram and a coffee. Torabhaig are the sponsors of the Society-run Silver Chanter and it was a pleasure to cement our relationship further. In other trips students headed for the MacCrimmon Cairn at Boreraig and braved ferocious winds for a tune:
It was bit more clement for those who went off to the mystical Fairy Pools one morning. A couple stayed on to visit John MacKay’s ruined croft on nearby Raasay. As you can see, the Skye school has much to offer aside from expert tuition.
No one can deny the link between Gaelic language, song and piobaireachd. Sabhal Mòr’s Dr Decker Forrest and Professor Hugh Cheape kindly took time out from their other duties to tell us stories of tunes, their nomenclature and how to pronounce it. Decker took us to the SMO library where the Silver Chanter trophy was on display and where he was able to elucidate the remarkable story of the Ardvasar Blacksmith, John MacDonald, the teacher of P/M Evan Macrae. (See Evan’s book ‘Over the Chindwin to Lochaber’.)
Each evening we had our piobaireachd ceilidh at which the students were encouraged to play. Most did. We heard the Marquis of Argyll’s Salute, the Desperate Battle from 86 year old wonder woman Catriona Hill, Munro’s Salute, Beloved Scotland, Too Long in this Condition, and about half a dozen others. Each instructor played too but never hogged the show. This was about the class. We had workshops on reed making from Brian and Campbell Canntaireachd from Peter.
On the last night we danced the evening away, and thanks to Breton Yann for the An Dro instruction and to Bill Geddes for his fourteen jigs in a row for Strip the Willow. In my closing remarks I reiterated that the greatest reward in the art of teaching, and it is an art, is seeing and hearing the progress of your pupils. This was manifest among the class of ’25. They each earned their school certificate, be in no doubt.
My thanks to tutors Peter McCalister, Brian Lamond and Bill Geddes for their hard work and support, and of course to the staff at SMO. My thanks too to the students similarly. Next year’s school is May 31 to June 5. Registration on the PS web shop in due course.
