Category: Letters

Editor’s Notebook: Covid Fears for 2022 Season/ Charity Single/ Talk Piobaireachd/ Results from Yesteryear

Posted on      by      Leave a comment

All the indications are that the restrictions/ recommendations on social gatherings limited to three households, as announced yesterday, will extend at least until March. What impact this will have on band practices here in Scotland I know not. But I am concerned. The knock on effect for the 2022 season could be significant. Already we have had the cancellation of the Scottish Schools contest scheduled for the end of March….

More Editor’s Notebook: Covid Fears for 2022 Season/ Charity Single/ Talk Piobaireachd/ Results from Yesteryear

Editor’s Notebook: US Ship Launch/ Finlay MacRae/ PS Bursary/ Eddie’s New CD

Posted on      by      Leave a comment

Reader Michael Hubbard in the US: I thought to send this fairly dramatic photo from October 2021.  This is the Clan Macleay Pipe Band, Portland, Oregon, USA (in continuous existence since 1912).  We are playing at the launching of a barge at Greenbrier Marine.  As can be seen, we were in our typically rainy period, with pipers and drummers in Inverness capes. The Drum Major, Dan Kelley, decided to stand out…

More Editor’s Notebook: US Ship Launch/ Finlay MacRae/ PS Bursary/ Eddie’s New CD

Donald Morrison Archive: A Letter from Seton Gordon and Donald’s Part in ‘Whisky Galore’

Posted on      by      1 Comment

We continue our excerpts from the archive of the renowned Gold Medallist and composer……… Wednesday evening, August 30, 1972, Upper Duntuilm, Isle of Skye….Dear Donald Morrison, I have just been listening to the wireless recording of the ‘Silver Chanter’ and it has confirmed my feeling that your ‘Iain Garve’ [John Garve MacLeod of Raasay’s Lament] was the best tune of the evening. I think John MacDonald [Inverness] would have agreed…

More Donald Morrison Archive: A Letter from Seton Gordon and Donald’s Part in ‘Whisky Galore’

John MacFadyen and Fair Hill Games / Archie Kenneth Quaich Entries Open

Posted on      by      Leave a comment

An Editor’s Notebook item last week featured results from around the Highland games in the US in 1968. One of the prizewinners mentioned was former professional piper and now senior adjudicator Al McMullin. He writes…. There are always interesting ‘stories’ that are not reflected in results. I offer the following about the ’17 and Under Piobaireachd’ noted in the 1968 results at Fair Hill, Maryland. The late, great, John MacFadyen…

More John MacFadyen and Fair Hill Games / Archie Kenneth Quaich Entries Open

The Transformative Sound of the Great Highland Bagpipe

Posted on      by      4 Comments

This reader contacted us after we published the article from Scotland’s History magazine ‘The Meaning of Bagpipe Music on the Western Front During WW1‘ My name is Robyn M Pio. I am a 70-year-old American woman raised by a German great-grandmother (who was born in Bremen, 1878). I now live in Chicago, Illinois, but my first language was German. I became a Catholic Francophile whilst living in France years ago. I am…

More The Transformative Sound of the Great Highland Bagpipe