It was extraordinary to stand on the ground which cradled our modern piping tradition. This we did last week when the Piobaireachd Society’s Summer School participants struggled over fences and dykes and cow pats to reach the croft of John MacKay, Raasay. Here were the very stones that nurtured his son Angus, and the hills and fields that heard the boy’s first notes on the chanter. How incredible that only…

There are so many old makers that we have yet to positively attribute works to, that short of carefully removing all of the lacquer in the hope of trying to find a maker’s stamp, we may never really know who made this set until something very similar surfaces. Not just one or two of the features being similar, but all. By George Hannah Some of the features that stand out…