Category: Letters

Clan MacRae History – Readers Respond

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Matthew M Farrigan: Long time since we have chatted. If you remember, I don’t like to stick my big American nose where it doesn’t belong. However, on this occasion, I felt I might have some info (not 100% sure) to ID another chap in the photo.  In the mid-90s I traveled from Schenectady, NY, to Worcester, Mass, to play with the Worcester Kiltie PB. The band had rounded up all the…

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Editor’s Notebook: Worlds Winners/ Glasgow Skye/ SPA Professional/ Charles Dunbar Pipes/ WW2 Tunes Search

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Thanks to the RSPBA and their Chairman Kevin Reilly for the positive response to our mini-campaign to have the World Pipe Band Champions 1906 – 1946 recognised by their inclusion in future Worlds programmes. Mr Reilly has been in contact with the RSPBA’s Media and Marketing committee, so fingers crossed we will see the names of these somewhat neglected champion bands and their pipe majors in the 2023 Glasgow Green…

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Putting the Record Straight on Our World Pipe Band Champions

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I am grateful to reader Trevor Clydesdale for forwarding this list of winners from the first Cowal Championship in 1906, writes the Editor. These bands were considered the World Champions of their day and deserve to be showered with the same accolades as the champions of today. Yet they feature not in the official RSPBA Worlds programme produced for that championship each year. Perhaps these winners did not have the…

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Editor’s Notebook: Clan MacRae and the Worlds/ Donald’s Fingers/ Bellows Pipes Sale/ PS AGM

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Kenny Macleod has responded to this week’s story on the Clan MacRae band. Kenny: ‘My uncle Alec Macleod was the P/M of the Clan MacRae when they won the Grade 1 Worlds in 1953 [left of the trophy, facing], and my father Jimmy, pictured third from the left, was the pipe sergeant. ‘He left the band in 1968 and started the Glasgow Skye Association band along with Eddie MacLellan, who…

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Bid to Save Bonnet Maker Tradition/ RSPBA Summer School Announced

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Businessman Philip Pass has been in touch about an unfortunate development regarding Highland dress….. ‘Dear  Kind  Piping  Press Folk, If you haven’t already heard, recent changes at Robert  Mackie,  manufacturers of traditional Scottish bonnets since 1845 means that  Scotland has  just lost  its  last  bonnet production line  and  Stewarton, in Ayrshire,  known as  ‘the  Bonnet Toun’  since the 1600s,  its  last  and only bonnet maker. ‘And if the collective ‘we’ do…

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