Author: John Nevans

Responses and Conclusions in My Search for the Origin of My Historic Pipes

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A few readers got in touch after yesterday’s story on the pipes. Jim Robb: ‘Alan Bain maintained that his family’s ‘Avernish Pipes’ were made from hazel wood and had been bored with a red hot rod. They could still be played with a fairly modern chanter and were known in the family as ‘The Auld Sticks’. He said they had been made in Avernish, Kintail, and were about 200 years…

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A Fanciful Tale On What May Have Been the Origin of My Old Pipes

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On a bright spring day in 1794 Robert Burns would open the Edinburgh Morning Chronicle to see his song ‘Scots Wha Ha’e’ published in its pages.   On this morning in that nondescript year in the Clachan at Glenfarse it is recorded that absolutely nothing happened of any merit whatsoever.  Eight year old Alexander Donnachie was waving a bunch of docken leaves at a new lamb. Said ruminant saw the greens…

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Can Anyone Help Me Identify My New But Ancient Bagpipe?

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It was always a dream of mine that one fine day up in Highlandshire, when it was pouring down and I am making my way through the 43rd charity shop of the holiday, I would spot a manky old wooden box holding up a tea set in the display window.  Removing the china, I would fish out and blow the dust off the box to reveal on the lid the…

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An Unsung Hero of WW1: Piper Harry Stott, KOSB

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John Nevans is the current piping instructor at Lathallan School’s pipe band, having held the post for fifteen years. In this article he reveals the war herosim of the band’s founder, Mr Harry Stott…. Lathallan School sits at the base of a sloping coastline surrounded by natural woodlands, yards away from the rocky shoreline of the North Sea. Close to the fishing village of Johnshaven, the school occupies the building known as…

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The Glenfiddich Championship – A View from a Rookie Piobaireachd Player

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For those of you who are regular readers of Piping Press this will be something of a departure from the usual informed reporting you might read here. However I would hope that it is an opportunity to consider a refreshing vision of last weekend’s Glenfiddich championship. Over a long period of time I have had a passing acquaintance with piobaireachd. I have always listened to it and in the 80s…

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