Category: Letters

St. Mary’s Anti-Communist Pipe Band and a Sojourn to Spain in Support of General Franco

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On Monday we carried a request from a reader in Spain for information regarding the visit of an Irish band to Spain in 1937. We are grateful to Dublin-based piper Ronan Maguire for alerting us to the following information about the band and their controversial trip…… According to an article in ‘Dublin Life and Culture Magazine’ the majority of Irishmen who fought in the Spanish Civil War did so on…

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Rare Picture, Campbells of Kilberry and the Founding of the Piobaireachd Society

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Together the two individuals in the above image helped change the course of piping history. Can you guess who they are? The handsome woman on the left is Lady Elspeth Campbell, and on the right John Campbell, Kilberry. I am indebted to his great-grandson, also John, and now the Piping Steward at the Argyllshire Gathering, for forwarding the photograph from his family collection. By Robert Wallace ‘It shows Lady Elspeth…

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Editor’s Notebook: ‘Missing’ Majors/ Irish in Spain/ Split Stock / Wiltshire Piper/ Edinburgh Police Solos

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Thanks to the many readers who have contributed to the debate on the RSPBA’s ‘missing Majors’. I agree with much of what has been said, in particular that the Association need to be pro-active in encouraging Cowal and the All Ireland promoters to help out. They may already have been in touch, I don’t know. With only the Worlds and the Scottish secure for next summer, we should not be…

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Editor’s Notebook: Peter MacFarquhar/ Joint Committee/ J MacDonald Chanter/ Solo Drumming

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Reader Lawrence Macduff has forwarded this fine picture of Peter MacFarquhar, subject of our earlier story, and well known to pipers as the composer of the popular jig, Kenny Gillies of Portnalong. Lawrence writes: ‘Here’s the image of Peter and his second wife Jean, taken as I recall near Kensaleyre on July 4th, 1970, when I was visiting them at their home. ‘Peter, having retired from seafaring around 1969 (I…

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South African Brothers to Publish ‘Binneas is Boreraig’ Using Conventional Stave

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Piobaireachd or Ceòl Mòr, often thought of as the classical music of the Scots Highland Bagpipe, was for centuries passed from master to pupil by chanting the tunes to one another, writes Pat Terry. From about the year 1800, attempts were made to find suitable variations on conventional staff notation to record the music for posterity. One of the more highly regarded of these attempts was published in the 1960s…

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