The following is taken from the People’s Journal newspaper of November 4, 1893. It is by their ‘Lady Correspondent’ and is headlined ‘An Interview with the Queen’s Bagpipe-Maker’. The subject of the article is Duncan Macdougall, Aberfeldy, renowned pipe maker. The article will be of interest to all those who study or collect or indeed manufacture pipes. It is written in the flowery style of the late Victorian times but that…
Origins of A New Book of Ceol Mor It was not before 1995 that I became interested by the Colin Campbell canntaireachd manuscript, writes Patrick Molard. Before that, the only knowledge I had of it was in the Piobaireachd Society editorial notes in the different books, and I don’t even remember my teachers Bob Brown and Bob Nicol mentioning the Campbell manuscript to me. I was taught ceol mor through singing,…
The National Museums of Scotland film archive have put out some new silent shots of Shotts Highland Games from September 6, 1952. Mostly of smiling faces in the crowd, there are one or two clips of bands. The one up top shows, I think, P/M Tom McAllister Senior leading the Shotts band. Is that JK McAllister right behind him? The other band shown on parade and very smart in their balmorals…
Our North American Correspondent reports a St Thomas Alumni win in Grade 2 at this north Florida games. The picture up top shows adjudicator Ken Eller scoring Dunedin Middle School… In a sun drenched arena, 17 bands took part in the afternoon competition, with over 120 solo performers going through their paces in the morning session. A crowd of around 15,000, with a strong Texan contingent, attended a full day of…
Apart from running Pipe Band Magazine for the RSPBA and reporting on competitions, I have no direct involvement in the pipe band competition milieu. I am essentially on the periphery – the best place for the fourth estate in that fraught world. It was not always so given that I learned piping via the pipe band system in the Boys Brigade and later graduated to Muirhead & Sons at age…
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