Category: Solo Piping

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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History: ‘Scotch Piper and the Dancing Girl’ – Part 1

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We are grateful to reader Francis Chamberlain for his research and for forwarding this article to us. It is a historically interesting account of an interview by a Victorian age journalist Henry Mayhew. Mayhew was a ‘street journalist’ who approached and interviewed street musicians, vendors, costers, thieves, prostitutes etc. of the period. This article appeared in ‘London Labour & The London Poor’, 1851. It features an (unfortunately) unnamed piper of…

More History: ‘Scotch Piper and the Dancing Girl’ – Part 1

History: ‘Scotch Piper and the Dancing Girl’ – Part 2

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We continue with the second part of Victorian journalist Henry Mayhew’s interview with an unnamed itinerant piper of the 1850s and a veteran of the 93rd regiment. Here our hero tells us of the money he can make in various parts of the kingdom, how it is cheaper to live in Scotland than London (some things never change), how he has kept poor health since leaving the Army, how best…

More History: ‘Scotch Piper and the Dancing Girl’ – Part 2

Review: Piobaireachd Society Conference – A Successful Return After Fallow Period

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This was the first Piobaireachd Society Conference for four years. It was held in the Fair City of Perth. If we’d listened we might have heard the Bells.  But there was never enough silence so enthusiastic was the chatter and the tunes.  The Royal George Hotel proved an ideal venue, a stone’s throw from St John’s Church where those bells still ring. Friends old and new gathered on Friday evening. …

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Outstanding Recital and Increased Entry at Lochaber Junior Piping and Drumming Competition

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Thanks again from Lochaber Piping Society to our sponsors including the Piobaireachd Society, Pipe Dreams, McCallum Bagpipes, the Piping Centre, Sabhal Mor Ostaig and RG Hardie, for their really generous support for our Youth Piping & Drumming Competition, held last Saturday, March 25. Without the support of our sponsors, whether financial or with prizes-in-kind, we could not contemplate holding an event of this nature. Likewise, the work put in by…

More Outstanding Recital and Increased Entry at Lochaber Junior Piping and Drumming Competition