The Ulster-Scots Agency is an organisation whose aims are to promote the study, conservation, development and use of Ulster-Scots as a living language; to encourage and develop the full range of its attendant culture; and to promote an understanding of the history of Ulster-Scots. Since it was established in 1999 it has funded annual tuition programmes generally promoted by individuals bands of all types with piping, drumming and drum majoring…

The RPSBA has announced that the United Kingdom Championships will be hosted in the city of Bangor, County Down and facilitated by the Ards & North Down Council on Saturday May 18th . I have little doubt that the local NI Branch will have had a major input into achieving this outcome as they would in any event have been discussing the annual local contest which generally takes place either…

Reader and well known amateur piper Dugald Macleod has sent us three striking photographs. He writes: ‘I wonder if you or your readers could help in identifying the pipers in these photos. ‘I think they are of the South Uist Games in the early 1930s, and were taken by Margaret Fay Shaw. ‘I wonder if they show John Macdonald, South Uist, (Seonaidh Roidean) and his brother Ruairidh?’ The editor writes:…