MacLeod Piping Stories &
Traditions
(and some of Donald
MacLeod's Music)
Tune: Eighd
Och, aye … what can one say about
Skye and MacLeod Piping Traditions?
Warmth of the people on the Isle of
Skye, inner Hebride, in Scotland
It's a large island among the Hebrides …
MacLeod identity, with Dunvegan, our
remarkable history, and of course the MacCrimmon's as hereditary
pipers to the chief of the MacLeods'
coming home
There's the language – Scots' Gaelic
is still spoken on the Hebrides. There's a particularly large
community of Gaelic speakers in community of Ness on Lewis, long a
MacLeod Hebride.
And what we can learn from our 800 year
old (at least) history and especially our music … ?
But before we begin,
I'd like to bid a warm farewell with a
hearty thank you to the retiring president of MacLeod Society USA,
John B MacLeod
and further bid a warm welcome to John
Norman … incoming president, of MacLeod Society USA …
And I'd like to salute John See
previous past president.
And thank you to Tammie Vawter,
organizer first class, whom I first got to know in the MacLeod
Society tent at the Pleasanton Highland Games near here, for so
wonderfully organizing this gathering of the MacLeods in the San
Francisco Bay Area this June 2011.
I'd also like to extend a warm greeting
to young Macleods active in the woodwork of the Clan MacLeod, such as
Tammie and her husband's son, Ian, who is 20, and daughter, Megan,
who is 18. Please welcome more young MacLeod's into the Society.
1
Personal piping and Scottish anecdotes
2
Potted MacCrimmon piping history
3
And then touch on Piobaireachd,
MacCrimmon's and Donald MacLeod
sprinkling a few piping tunes
throughout …
1
Personal piping and Scottish anecdotes
Some personal MacLeod piping stories …
How did I start to play the bagpipe?
I was playing the piano from 6- 12 and
was struggling a little with my mother about practicing, - and she
said if I stopped playing the piano, I had to choose another
instrument, so I choose the bagpipe, thinking she might not be able
to find a teacher for this.
So at my father's suggestion, I think,
I wrore to Dame Flora MacLeod of MacLeod on the Isle of Skye around
1972, to ask how she would suggest beginning to play.
And surprisingly for a little 12 year
old yankee from Connecticut, she wrote back and said,
what don't you contact Seamus MacNeill
who began the College of Piping in the 1930s in Glasgow … whom I
think Dame Flora knew.
I think we may still have this letter
from Dame Flora MacLeod of MacLeod.
Tune: Seamus MacNeill by Bobby MacLeod
There was also a man, Archibald
MacLeish, who lived up the street in New Haven, Connecticut, where we
were living at the time, who played the pipes, which I enjoyed a lot.
And this was an inspiration.
Bethesda, MD
But we moved to the Washington DC area
at the time, and it was my mother contacting the Smithsonian Museum
that eventually lead me to getting in touch with Sandy Jones, a
significant piping influence on the East Coast for many decades now,
who then recommended Ed Krintz, the then Pipe Major of the Denny and
Dunipace Pipe Band in Washington DC around 1972.
Pittsburgh, PA
I took lessons for a few years in
Bethesda, MD, and we then moved to Pittsburgh, PA, where this young
MacLeod started to take lessons with Joyce MacFarlane, who was
involved with the Carnegie Mellon University Pipe Band.
I think it was during the mid-70s that
I first became a member of the Clan MacLeod Society for a few years.
I recall receiving the magazine.
Edinburgh, Scotland
I got this kilt before I went to
Edinburgh for the first time, and it still fits. It's also one of my
longest possessions, interestingly.
About 2 years later, I went to
Edinburgh, Scotland to study at Fettes College, and was a good enough
piper to play in the school pipe band. Because I was to be in the
Pipe Band, I was also assigned to the NCO Cadre, which was nominally
for budding officers … Kids at Fettes paraded around the campus on
Wednesday afternoons, and I, coming out of liberal American, and who
had no experience in this kind of kind of normal British 'ROTC /
military training' for kids in high school, was assigned to the
officers' corp – the NCO Cadre.
Marching like this was a a little bit
strange for a kid without experience, but it was good training for
being a MacLeod piping in the Fettes College pipe band.
That spring of 1977, I went up to the
Isle of Skye and Dunvegan Castle, and saw our ancestral seat at
Dunvegan for the first time in my life. My parents had been there for
their honeymoon in 1957. But I didn't see Dame Flora who had written
back to me just a few years earlier.
While at Fettes, we were required to go
to church, and because I didn't have a suit, but did have a kilt, and
this was Scotland, I could wear this instead. I suppose this is an
example of being a thrifty Scot.
I also started Scottish Country Dancing
while in high school in Pittsburgh, before and after I went to
Edinburgh in 1976-77.
Scotland in 1982
I returned to Scotland in the spring of
1982 on a ZIS stipendium (a monetary grant for college students to
student something of their choosing UNESCO – United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to study
“Bagpiping in Scotland” for which I received something like the
equivalent of $800 to get to and from Munich, West Germany, where I
was studying at the University of Munich.
This bagpiping PAPER, by me as a 21
year old MacLeod, is still in Schloss Salem, which is an old castle
and one of the few private Gymnasiums, or high schools, in Germany,
and which is the library for all such ZIS student papers …
On this trip to Scotland from Munich, I
both took a workshop with Duncan Johnstone, a very piper who composed
lyrical tunes, like Donald MacLeod's, but also went to the Isle of
Skye again. When I arrived on the bus at Dunvegan, I saw John MacLeod
of MacLeod in the arrival area, but being a little too shy to go up
and meet him, I perhaps missed an opportunity.
This MacLeod played a little in the
City of Roses Pipe Band in Portland, Oregon, in the early '80s.
Scotland 2003-2004
I lived in Scotland in 2003-2004
studying at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Celtic and
Scottish Studies on the very picturesque George Square at the
University of Edinburgh.
Gary West, who does the BBC Pipeline
Radio show was my adviser.
My focus of study in Edinburgh was St.
Kilda, the island archipelago off the west coast of Scotland, for
which the MacLeods were the factors, or tax-collectors. I was
interested in studying St. Kilda as a kind of virtual place on the
world wide web, which people could visit at the National Trust for
Scotland's web site. I wanted to think through whether people were
visiting a virtual site via the internet.
So when I went to visit actual St.
Kilda, which is the largest island archipelago at the greatest
distance from Britain, which you can only get to by hiring a boat, I
also went to Dunvegan Castle again, for the 3rd time.
There's no ferry or anything to St.
Kilda, it's so remote. St. Kildans, many MacLeods included, were
birders. They made their living by rappelling from the steep cliffs
of St. Kilda, and capturing Gannets, Puffins and Fulmars, by hand I
think – at least back 2000 or so years.
And St. Kilda, was evacuated by the
British government in 1930, when its population had dwindled to
around 30 people. At its most populous, St. Kildans numbered around
180 in the late 1700s.
What the MacLeods as factors came over
a rough sea annually to collect was a share of these oily birds.
So, in going to Skye this time, I had
the good fortune of meeting John MacLeod of MacLeod, and of sitting
and talking with him in the living room at Dunvegan, of talking about
Dame Flora, and of hearing of all the records of St. Kilda in
Dunvegan, something for future possible study.
But I have not yet learned of any
pipers in St. Kilda's MacLeod history, although it wouldn't surprise
me.
Pittsburgh, PA again
From 2006 – 2008 I returned to
Pittsburgh to live when was father was ill, and played a little again
in the Carnegie Mellon Pipe Band.
San Francisco, CA
So now this MacLeod is beginning to
pipe in the Grade 2 Prince Charles Pipe Band of San Francisco.
And I continue to be fascinated by this
amazing unique music of Scotland, which is so entwined with the Clan
MacLeod via the MacCrimmon's, as hereditary pipers to the chief of
the Clan MacLeod
Some thoughts:
In a somewhat unique way of thinking
about piping, I'm curious how practicing Bagpipe music can become
like drinking a kind of lager, or beer – where the series of tones
kind of elevate you, naturally.
And I'm also musing in what ways the
beautiful, slow and stately Piobaireachd, can be even a kind of
meditative practice, the drones expressing a kind constancy, which
the piper attunes to with his / or breathing, and the notes
themselves become a kind of expression of the piper's meditative
state.
Potted piping history …
especially v-a-v the MacCrimmons
MacCrimmons were a line of pipers who
were hereditary pipers to the chiefs of the Clan MacLeod, for
possibly many more than 10 generations, and created composed and
gave form to the classical music of the Scottish Highland Bagpipe
called Piobaireachd or Ceol Mor, meaning 'Big Music.'
They also started a piping school on
Skye – possibly no more than a croft at times, but a school,
nevertheless
There's a cairn on the Isle of Skye at
Borreraig to commerate the MacCrimmons and this college of piping.
In many ways, their college has been an
inspiration to many successive colleges of piping.
*
(The following notes and quotes are from Wikipedia and from P.M. Donald MacLeod's audio cassette "Piper in the Nave")
"In the 20th century the chiefs of Clan
Macleod instated two MacCrimmons as hereditary pipers to the clan.
Origins
The origin of the MacCrimmons is vague
and has long been debated. One fanciful theory originating from
Captain Neil MacLeod of Gesto was that the MacCrimmons descend from
an Italian from the city of Cremona. Gesto was an intimate friend of
Black John MacCrimmon (d 1822) the last hereditary piper to MacLeod,
and it is reputed that from him Gesto received the "Cremona
tradition". According to Gesto, the founder of the MacCrimmons
was a priest from Cremona named Giuseppe Bruno, whose son Petrus (or
Patrick Bruno) was born at Cremona in 1475 and later emigrated to
Ulster in 1510. On Patrick's arrival in Ireland he then married the
daughter of a piping family and Gaelicised his name.[5] Gesto's
origin for the MacCrimmons is not taken seriously today.
It is generally accepted that the
surname may be of Norse origin. With MacCrimmon being an Anglicised
form of the Scottish Gaelic Mac Ruimein meaning "son of
Ruimean". Ruimean is possibly a Gaelic form of the Old Norse
personal name Hroðmundr which is composed of the elements hróð
(meaning "fame") + mundr (meaning "protection").
While this name origin would seem to
tie in with the MacCrimmons' association with the MacLeods and the
Isle of Skye the earliest references to a MacCrimmon (who were also
pipers) appears in Campbell lands. The earliest reference is found in
a bond of manrent of November 29, 1574 between Colin Campbell of
Glenorchy and "John Tailzoure Makchrwmen in the Kirktoun of
Balquhidder and Malccolme pyper Mackchrwmen in Craigroy", this
reference being over ninety years before the MacCrimmons are found as
pipers to MacLeod of Dunvegan in Skye.
Another early reference is to a "Patrik
Mcquhirryman, piper", mentioned in the Register of the Privy
Council, vol.5 (1592–99), who is mentioned in connection with a
crime in Perthshire. Alastair Campbell of Airds speculated that
MacCrimmons were pipers to the Campbells of Glenorchy prior to the
MacLeods of Dunvegan and Harris.
By the mid 1690s the MacCrimmons are
confirmed to have been located in the Hebrides and appear to have
been recognised as masters of their craft. An order from John
Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane to his chamberlain, Campbell of
Barcaldine reads: "Give McIntyre ye pyper fforty pounds scots as
his prentises(hi)p with McCrooman till May nixt as also provyde him
in what Cloths he needs and dispatch him immediately to the Isles".
The order seems to relate to a statement written by the mentioned
earl of Breadalbane on April 22, 1697 at Taymouth in Perthshire:
"Item paid to quantiliane McCraingie McLeans pyper for one
complete year as prentyce fie for the Litle pyper before he was sent
to McCrooman, the soume of £160" (modern translation: "Item,
paid to Conduiligh Mac Frangaich [Rankin], MacLean's piper, for one
complete year, as apprentice fee for the Little Piper before he [the
Little Piper] was sent to MacCrimmon, the sum of £160"). The
MacCrimmon instructor that is referenced to may well be Pàdraig Òg.
Hereditary Pipers
Boreraig
Boreraig, Isle of Skye
Though much has been written about the
MacCrimmon pipers to the MacLeods of Dunvegan, there is little
reliable information on them. The genealogy of the "hereditary
pipers" has also been the subject of debate and speculation. The
MacCrimmon of whom there is the most reliable information is Red
Donald (Dòmhnull Ruadh) (d July 31, 1825). Red Donald held tacks at
Borreraig and Shader, and at Trien in Waternish, and also a farm at
Glenelg. Red Donald's older brother was Black John (Iain Dubh) (d
1822), who also held the Boreraig tack. Interestingly the MacCrimmon
brothers had their most formative years during the Disarming Act.
Today it is accepted that these MacCrimmon brothers were sons of
Malcolm (Calum), son of Pàdraig Òg, who were both pipers to the
chiefs of MacLeod and who also held land from them. Red Donald and
Black John's father and paternal uncle (Donald Ban) both piped for
the Government forces in the 1745-46 Jacobite Rising.
Donald Ban
During the Jacobite Rising in 1745 the
chief of Clan MacLeod supported the Hanoverians against the
Jacobites. As MacLeod's piper, Donald Ban MacCrimmon
(Dòmnhall/Dòmnhull Bàn MacCruimein - bàn meaning fairhaired cf
Duncan Ban MacIntyre) took an active part in the conflicts against
the Jacobite forces. Donald Ban was captured on December 23, 1745
following the Hanoverian defeat at Inverurie. During his captivity,
the pipers in the Jacobite army went on strike, refusing to play
while the "King of Pipers" was held captive. According to
popular tradition, Donald Ban wrote his well known lament, Cha till,
cha till, cha till, MacCruimein (meaning literally "MacCrimmon
will not, will not, will not return." it has been variously
titled "No more, no more, no more, MacCrimmon", "MacCrimmon
shall never return", "MacCrimmon's Lament" among
others) with an intimation of his fate.
Donald Ban was eventually killed during
the so-called "Rout of Moy" when on February 18, 1746, with
the Jacobites marching on Inverness, Lord Loudoun led 1,500 men in an
attempt to capture Charles Edward Stuart. When the Government troops
advanced upon Moy in the dark they encountered a watch made up of
only a handful of Mackintoshes. In the encounter a single shot was
fired and Donald Ban was instantly killed. With the death of their
piper, panic quickly spread and Loudoun's forces fled in the "Rout
of Moy". According to John William O'Sullivan's narrative,
"McCloud had his Piper killed just by his side, & was very
much laughed at when he came back".
Red Donald and Black John
Red Donald
The MacCrimmon of whom there is the
most reliable information is Red Donald (Dòmhnull Ruadh) (d July 31,
1825). Red Donald held tacks at Borreraig and Shader, and at Trien in
Waternish, and also a farm at Glenelg. In the early 1770s he left
Scotland and settled in North America in what is now North Carolina.
He was away from Scotland for about seventeen years (1773–1790),
though there is no record of him associated with his involvement with
the pipes in anyway. He settled in Anson County (located in what is
now North Carolina, USA). He took part in the American Revolutionary
War as a Loyalist, raising troops for the British forces and served
as a Lieutenant. He claimed to have been present at the Battle of
Moore's Creek Bridge in 1776. He eventually lost an eye. Red Donald
evidently evaded capture by the Americans at Yorktown in 1781. After
the end of hostilities he spent seven years as a Loyalist in
Shelburne County, Nova Scotia, (located in what is now Nova Scotia,
Canada).
He returned to Scotland in 1790, at the
insistence of the Highland Society of London which defrayed the cost
of MacCrimmon, his wife, and three of their four children's journey
back to Scotland. In 1808 the Highland Society of London proposed
that a College of Piping be re-established at Fort Augustus, and that
Lt. MacCrimmon should supervise instruction. This proposal was
declined though, causing Red Donald "disappointment and
mortification".
According to J. G. Lockhart's biography
of Sir Walter Scott: "MacLeod's hereditary piper is called
MacCrimmon, but the present holder of the office has risen above his
profession. He is an old, a lieutenant in the army, and a most
capital piper, possessing about 200 tunes and pibrochs, most of which
will probably die with him as he declines to have any of his sons
instructed in the art. He plays to MacLeod and his lady, but only in
the same room, and maintains his minstrel privilege by putting on his
bonnet so soon as he begins to play".
Red Donald's decision not to pass his
knowledge of piping on to his sons seems to be related to the massive
emigration of the MacLeod estates in the 1770s, in which he himself
gave up Borreraig and sailed for North America. Even in 1799 after
his return to Scotland Macleod put many substantial tacks up for sale
around Dunvegan. In his later life, he is associated with Glenelg,
which MacLeod sold in 1798 and subsequently re-sold in 1811, 1824,
1837, further forcing the poorer Highlanders to emigrate to North
America.
Black John
The last MacCrimmon to be hereditary
piper to MacLeod of MacLeod (until the modern era) was Black John
MacCrimmon. According to tradition in 1795 Black John decided to
emigrate to America, though only got as far as Greenock, before
making up his mind to stay on the Isle of Skye, where he died in 1822
aged ninety-one.
Modern Appointment of Hereditary Piper
of MacLeod
The MacCrimmon piping dynsaty is
honoured in the form of cairn built in 1933, at Borreraig. This
cairn, which overlooks Loch Dunvegan across to Dunvegan Castle, was
paid for by clan societies and donations from around the world. The
Gaelic inscription on the cairn reads in translation as: "The
Memorial Cairn of the MacCrimmons of whom ten generations were the
hereditary pipers of MacLeod and who were renowned as Composers,
Performers and Instructors of the classical music of the bagpipe.
Near to this post stood the MacCrimmons' School of Music, 1500–1800".
In the last century, with a revival in
clan interest, the modern chiefs of Clan MacLeod have instated two
MacCrimmons as hereditary pipers to the chief. Malcolm Roderick
MacCrimmon, a Canadian born in 1918, started piping at the age of
eight. With the start of the Second World War he joined the Calgary
Highlanders and subsequently joined the pipe band. At some point in
time he wrote to Dame Flora MacLeod, chief of Clan MacLeod, asking
for approval and support of his decorating his bagpipes in the
MacLeod tartan. The chief then wrote to the regiment's Commanding
Officer and permission was granted. In 1942, MacCrimmon is said to
have made a verbal agreement with the clan chief and became the ninth
"hereditary piper" to the Chief of Clan MacLeod. MacCrimmon
claimed there was proof of his descent from the MacCrimmons of
Borreraig, and as such, that he was a descendant of the hereditary
pipers to the Chief. In 1978, John MacLeod of MacLeod, 29th chief of
Clan MacLeod, while visiting Calgary, Alberta, Canada, formally made
Malcolm's son, Iain Norman MacCrimmon, the tenth hereditary piper to
the Chief of Clan MacLeod."
(from Wikipedia in May 2011)
Some highlights of MacCrimmon music, hereditary pipers to the Clan MacLeod …
per P.M Donald MacLeod
"We begin with “The Pretty Dirk.”
This tune was composed by Patrick Og MacCrimmon who became hereditary
piper to the MacLeod's in about 1670. Patrick Og had in mind a dirk
belonging to the chief of the MacLeod's and the chief told him that
if he composed an appropriate tune in his praise by the following
day, then the dirk would be presented to him. Next morning, Patrick
Og struck up the newly composed Piobaireachd, which seemed to express
the performer's entreaties for the gift and exultation at receiving
it. The MacLeod chief was so pleased that he called Patrick Og into
Dunvegan castle and handed him the dirk saying that he well deserved
it, for so forceable an appeal prepared in so short a time.
Patrick Og MacCrimmon died in 1730 and
was succeeded by his son Donald Ban who was killed at the route of
Moy in 1746. In this skirmish, a defending force of 5 men under a
blacksmith called Fraser frightened off a much larger attacking force
by rushing about shouting and firing at random behind peat stacks to
give the impression of a more numerous body of men. It was a stormy
night and the attackers, further confused by thunder, fled with the
loss of one man, Donald Ban MacCrimmon, who dropped his dirk. It is
recorded that this was picked up by Fraser, the blacksmith, and may
well have been the pretty dirk given to Donald Ban's father, by the
chief of the MacLeods."
Donald MacLeod plays “The Pretty
Dirk.”
"One of two nameless tunes.
This one, “Hio Tro Tro, Hin Ban Ban,”
appears on page 124 of the Piobaireachd Society's Book 4. It is
translated from Colin Campbell's Canntaireachd, where it is one of a
group of tunes, and it is called one of the Cragich. This obscure
word, Cragich, has usually been taken to mean 'rough' or
'unfinished.'"
Donald MacLeod plays “Hio Tro Tro,
Hin Ban Ban”
“Salute on the Birth of Rory Mor
MacLeod.”
"This tune appears in Donald MacDonald's
book, published in 1822, where it was said to be composed by
MacCrimmon at the birth of Roderick Mor MacLeod in Dunvegan Castle,
Isle of Skye, in 1715. However, as pointed out in Piobaireachd
Society Book 4, the famous Rory Mor MacLeod died in 1626. The tune is
usually attributed to Donald Mor MacCrimmon, but could not have been
composed by him, as he was not born until after the birth of both
Rory Mor, and his elder brother, who preceeded him as chief. If the
tune had been composed on the birth of Rory Mor, then, the composer
must have been an earlier MacCrimmon. The Gaelic name for the tune is
“An Ann Air Mhire Tha Sibh,” which means “Are you besides
yourself?,” or as Angus MacKay translates it, “Are you Merry
Making?”"
Urlar to “Salute on the Birth of Rory
Mor MacLeod.”
(Above quotations from Donald MacLeod's "Piper in the Nave" audio cassette, recorded in Dunfermline Abbey).
Summing up …
MacLeod piping traditions are long and
alive today …
And the Clan MacLeod, through the ages,
has been of great help in support of piping and furthering this
tradition.
Let us continue this tradition in our
families and our MacLeod Societies, for piping is a musical art with
a power all its own.
Hold fast to piping
Scott MacLeod
...
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