Some Thoughts on Ceol Mor and Its Study

A manuscript sample of the well-known tune Lament for the Viscount of Dundee, aka Cumha Chlaibhers or Lament for Claverhouse, has been forwarded by Dr J David Hester PhD of the Alt Pibroch Club website. (There is new a letter from Mr Hester in our Letters column.) I believe the sample may have come via piobaireachd analyst Barnaby Brown and has the comment ‘We’re playing it wrong’ attached. The music…

Argyllshire Gathering 2015 – A Reprise

It is now just over a month since this year’s Argyllshire Gathering …. gone but not forgotten, certainly not by those who had a successful visit to Oban. In this report, the piping correspondent of the London Times, Angus Nicol, gives a comprehensive round up of all the winners and the background to the Gathering. His report also affords us the opportunity to run some photographs we missed first time round. Those wishing to…

Iain Dall MacKay Memorial Ceremony 2015

Leading on from yesterday’s contest (new pic of the junior winners added by the way) we had a ceilidh in the Old Inn, Gairloch, with plentiful food and comfortable accommodation provided by sponsor/proprietor Alastair Pearson, writes Robert Wallace. The music was sustained by the hugely talented MacGillivray family with Iain on fiddle and bodhran, Anya on clarsach and songs (beautiful voice), and dad Duncan on guitar, pipes, low whistle and…

Daniel Laidlaw VC/ Inverness Junior Piping/ Blackthorn Pipers/ Whisky Galore

As part of its WW1 commemoration series, the BBC has published a good wrap up on Piper Daniel Laidlaw VC, KOSB. There’s an interview with his grandson Kevin Laidlaw. Kevin, also a piper, went to Loos in 2005 for the 90th anniversary of the battle. He says: ‘I stood out and played The standard on the Braes o’ Mar which was the regimental charge of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, which…

PP Editor’s Blog: Whisky Galore, Compton MacKenzie, Calum Johnston, Neil Angus MacDonald

Thanks to everyone who responded to our Whisky Galore article at the end of last week. Not possible to respond personally to everyone’s emails so a collective ‘thank you’ to you all. I asked for the name of the piper pictured and then posed a quiz question: ‘Who wrote the book and who was his piper?’ A few were caught out by that, assuming that the piper in the film…