Author: Duncan Watson

Donald Cameron, Inverness 1841 and a Letter from the North

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By Duncan Watson Hello Robert the Editor. Amidst all this stuff on the Northern Meetings of past years I’ve been reading on Piping Press, I am wondering if you could cast your memory back to about 1841, one of your earlier attendances there? The results were interesting. Piobaireachd: 1 William Smith , Gordon Castle, Piper to The Duke (Macdonald’s Salute) for which he was awarded a set of bagpipes valued 10 guineas. …

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Norman Matheson MBE 1932-2022

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It is with sadness that I report that Norman Matheson MBE passed away at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary yesterday, 10th January. He was 89. Norman was born in Inverness. He spent his formative years in Avonside a few miles from Tomintoul, the Moray-shire mountain village where he had his early education.  His father was, for a while, a garage manager in Inverness and his mother a district nurse in the village. Norman was…

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Review: Piobaireachd is for Everyone by Dan Nevans

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Reading of this book, I imagined it would make ceòl mòr more accessible to pipers who had little interest in it, hopefully inspiring them, and that it would help listeners gain greater enjoyment from performances. This has been attempted in the past and proved a tall order. There have been publications on the theme of piobaireachd appreciation before and Seumas MacNeil’s ‘Piobaireachd’ [available here] is one of the more successful….

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A Reset of Silver Medal Qualification is Required Post Pandemic

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The last major piping events at the Argyllshire Gathering (AG), Oban, and the Northern Meeting (NM), Inverness, were in 2019 and the next such events will be, hopefully, in 2022. We will all be three years older by the time we sit down to listen once more to these great competitions.Looking at past programmes of the Northern Meeting it is surprising how the names of the players change in a…

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Review of Online Bagpipe Music Book: ‘The Fyrish Collection’ by Niall Matheson

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The title of the book comes from Fyrish Hill (Cnoc Fhaoighris, in Gaelic), near Evanton in Easter Ross. On the cover is the depiction of a summit monument built in 1782 on the orders of the laird, General Sir Hector Munro of Novar, who had served in India. At the time the population was being expelled from the land in favour of sheep and human survival was a under threat….

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