An ancient Highland bagpipe
I am a great believer that in order to promote and preserve history in this day and age, it is necessary to present it three-dimensionally – that is, to be able to pick it up, touch, move around and hear it.
I can think of no better example than when last month the West Highland Museum in Fort William, loaned the organisers of the MacIntyre clan gathering in Argyll a set of bagpipes which were said to have been played by one of their own at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.
No one who was present at the gathering could fail to be thrilled at seeing and hearing an instrument with such a lengthy pedigree.
Any vintage artefact will inevitably be surrounded with the stuff of legends. This one is no exception, with tales of a fairy making sound or vent holes in the chanter, the pipes never having been played at a lost battle by the Clan Donald and being the oldest Highland pipes in existence, to name a few.
Although much of this can safely be put aside, it is not to say that they do not have an interesting history. Somewhere closer to fact than fiction, here is their story.
The MacIntyres were the hereditary pipers to the MacDonalds of Clanranald whose land used to stretch from South Uist to Moidart. According to Seton Gordon (1886-1972), historian and piper and author of 27 books, one of the last pupils of which there is a record at the MacCrimmon college of piping at Boreraig, in Skye, was a Clanranald MacIntyre and that the payment for the tuition was two cows.
On a date, now lost, the MacIntyres shared the tenancy of Ulgary, a large settlement near the head of Glen Moidart. There, in 1745, one of them, John, who was piper to MacDonald of Kinlochmoidart, composed a famous piobaireachd, My King has landed in Moidart, commemorating Prince Charles Edward Stuart arriving at the foot of the glen in August 1745.
When the MacIntyres left Ulgary for America in 1790, they gave their treasured pipes to 19-year-old Donald MacDonald, seventh of Kinlochmoidart whom they recognised as their chief and not Clanranald, which suggests he had evicted them. The pipes remained with the Kinlochmoidart family until 1998 when Lt Commander David MacDonald-Robertson, 14th of Kinlochmoidart, loaned them to the West Highland Museum, where they are now on display and labelled, The Faery Pipes of Moidart.
Seton Gordon and a companion examined the Ulgary pipes in 1930 at Invermoidart House on Shona Beag, a small island lying at the entrance to Loch Moidart, owned by Dr Symers MacDonald McVicar. His mother, Mrs Jessie Robertson-MacDonald MacVicar, was the great-granddaughter of Donald MacDonald, 4th of Kinlochmoidart who was executed in 1746 for his part in the Jacobite Rising.
They recorded: ‘There were originally two drones but Dr MacVicar’s father, or uncle, threw one of them away because it had got so worm-eaten. What now remains are: 1) the chanter with the fairy holes in it, 2) the blowpipe and 3) the top piece of one of the drones which is slightly worm-eaten.
‘The extra hole, or rather two holes, for they are simply double sounding holes above the normal ones, in the chanter is still visible, but it has been blocked up by some Victorian busy-body; we hope not because the fairy note was too atrocious but much more probably because it failed to obtain the official recognition of the Edinburgh Pibroch Society!
‘The drone-head is cylindrical and unmounted except for some binding at the base. It has a narrow turned waist and the drone widens towards the top like a trumpet. It is more of a dark wood, slightly worm-eaten, which looks exactly like old oak but seems too light to be so. [When Seton Gordon and his companion examined this piece in 1930, it was clearly plain. Today, however, it has a worked bone ferrule and an ornamental brass collar which suggests it belongs to a different set altogether.]
‘The chanter is of hard dark wood, different to the drones of a higher polish, not quite so dark, and lighter. It seems thicker than modern ones, but no heavier. It, too, is unmounted and unbound and expands at the base. The fingering is the same as today’s and felt very easy and comfortable. Unfortunately, we had not taken a reed with us to try it.
‘No one knows, though Seton took forestry at Oxford, what the wood was of either the chanter or drone. The chanter was never played after the drowning of one of the family near Assary [a settlement downstream from Ulgary; date of incident unknown]. The blow-pipe is cut square and is of similar wood. Grooves for hemp-binding and a flange form the air-retaining valve are still visible, as in modern pipes.
‘Dr MacVicar lent these pipes to [clan chief Sir Robert] Menzies, who mounted them in a Menzies tartan bag, claimed that they were used by their hereditary pipers, also called MacIntyre, and inserted them in a production which he called The Red and White Book of Menzies, as being “the Menzies pipes”. On being asked to return them no reply was received, and it required the gentle suasions of a lawyer to make him give them up.
‘Dr MacVicar produced a letter from [Sir
Robert] Menzies dated February 13, 1880, acknowledging receipt of the pipes, in which he expresses deep disappointment with them, saying that they were valueless and not to be compared with the real MacDonald pipes – a set then in Glen’s shop in Edinburgh bearing the MacDonald arms and dated 1409.
‘Yet once in Menzies’ possession their value in their new character as the Menzies pipes appeared to be so enhanced as to require legal pressure to persuade him to part with them.’
Seton Gordon and Dr MacVicar discussed having the pipes set up with a bag in order to keep the set together so that after Dr MacVicar’s death people would know what they were.
Seton suggested that the missing drone be replaced by a new one and that an inscription on it should state plainly which part of the pipes were genuinely old and which parts restored. It was proposed initially to entrust the work to Reid, a famous Glasgow pipe maker, but in the end Robert G Lawrie, also of Glasgow, was given the task and it is his hallmarked, sterling silver plaque which can be found on the pipes today.
The MacDonalds sold most of their Moidart property in 1883 to Robert Stewart of Ingliston, Midlothian, whose descendants are still there upholding the old Highland values and traditions of the glen, even to having a young, talented piper in their midst.
Kinlochmoidart House is what ‘big houses’ should surely be, but too rarely are – the living heart of the local community and a source of inspiration and excellence. The old Clan Donald lairds and the MacIntyres of Ulgary would have approved.