George Square revisited

Jim Gilchrist reports on the Society's anniversary Collogue

AS THE Lowland & Border Piper Society's 25th anniversary collogue returned to the scene of some of its early meetings, Edinburgh University's School of Scottish Studies in George Square, it was perhaps fitting that the first speaker should bring a degree of healthy revisionism - both to our established preconceptions as to what Lowland-Border pipes were and also, at the 11th hour, to his own researches,

Pete Stewart, whose previous book, The Day It Daws, was an invaluable survey of Lowland piping between 1400 and 1715 (see Common Stock, Dec 2005), has just brought out a follow-up, Welcome Home My Dearie: Piping in the Scottish Lowlands 1690-1900. Titling his talk A Flaw in the Bellows — a quotation from Thomas Shadwell's The Humourist, of 1671 — and in the process showing an intriguing range of seldom seen images of contemporary engravings and paintings, Stewart discussed some of the assumptions we tend to make about piping in the Lowlands at the end of the 17th century. His findings included some unexpected revelations which turned up just as the volume was on the point of going to press (see his article on Page 5 of this issue).

Discussing the elusive “Thornhill Piper” carving, having tracked it down to Thornhill, Stirlingshire, rather than Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, and thence to Perthshire, he described finding references to it in an old newspaper cutting: “This is the way in which Lowland piping history survives,” he laughed, “this newspaper cutting says everything, I think.”

Pete reckoned the carving probably dated from the middle of the 17th cnetury, possibly earlier, but was moved to compare the stone piper's humble garb with the splendid attire of, say, the famous painting of William Cumming, the Piper to the Laird of Grant, and the way the Highland piping tradition had been recorded in some magnificent oil paintings.

Another image he showed, purportedly of Lowland pipers, showed a mouth-blown set, with two horizontal drones - “not that different from the one at Thornhill ... and it looks to me very much as if, if we want to say what piping in the Lowlands is like at the end of the 17th century, it's a mouth- blown pipe and two horizontal drones.

Yet there were plenty other historical references to bellows-blown bagpipes.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that one of the truly distinctive things about the Lowland pipes is the bellows ... It's quite clear that the Scotch bagpipe was something familiar to play-going audiences in England by the second half of the 17th century,” and he pointed to the English 17th-century dramatist Shadwell's reference to bagpipe bellows. “He knew his audience well enough to make jokes about the Scottish bellows bagpipe - ‘worse than a Scotch bagpipe that's got a flaw in the bellows.'”

We didn't know whether he was referring to a small pipe or not: “Obviously bellows had been attached to small pipes since probably the early part of the 16th century in various parts of Europe,” and he illustrated his point with Praetorius's well-known picture of a small pipe with bellows.

He also referred to a long poem called The Maid oƒ Galashiels, written in 1727 in Scotland, which describes the making of a set of bagpipes and pays particular attention to the construction of bellows and their use, although it wasn't clear whether it was referring to Border or small pipes. By this time, however, a new bellows-blown pipe - and definitely not a small pipe - had appeared, at least in London, and was depicted in a contemporary sketch of a performance of The Beggars' 0pera.

Referring to further illustrations and references, he took us to the middle of the 18th century when, he said, there were numerous different types of bagpipe in circulation, some of which displayed the characteristics of those of the Thornhill piper, others of which were more akin to pastoral pipes which, according to the Highland piper and chronicler Joseph MacDonald, were being played in the Low countries in the mid-18th century. In fact, Pete continued, MacDonald was less than complimentary in his references to Lowland piping, which he described as “insipid and contemptible”.

A less partisan account emerged some years later, within the second edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was virtually entirely written and edited by James “Balloon” Tytler, who was not only the first man in Britain to ascend in a hot air balloon, frequent bankrupt and eventually a refugee in America, having been accused of sedition, but was also a player of

the Irish pipes. (We can see him in the background of the famous, if almost certainly purely imaginary, painting of Robert Burns's inauguration as Poet Laureate of the Masonic Lodge Canongate Kilwinning in Edinburgh in 1787.)

What Tytler wrote in the encyclopaedia's entry on bagpipes contradicted Joseph MacDonald's uncomplimentary account of 17 years earlier and decribed the Highland and Lowland pipes as “essentially different from one another as each of them is diffent from all other species of music in the world.”. “You might dismiss this as the work of someone who didn't know what they were talking about, if it weren't for the fact that he did know what he was talking about. He played the Irish pipes.”

Tytler's account in Encyclopaedia Britannica was also, noted Pete, the first recorded instance to “Lowland pipes”. “Back then, basically people simply called a bagpipe a bagpipe.”

PETE STEWART was followed by a talk from Richard Evans on the Northumbrian small pipes, which he illustrated with some fine tunes. He discussed

the development of keyed chanters so that by 1812 they were available with several additional rocker-style keys - the basis of the chanter still used today. “So the more keys the more notes, which sounds really good, but there's a sort of biological limitation on how many digits you can bring into play.”

It wasn't uncommon today for sets to have 17 keys - the thumb had to be pretty mobile to make use of them all, and good Northumbrian pipe tunes allowed for that. Among the tunes he played by way of example were Newmarket Races, the lovely Border Spirit and the perky Proudlock's Hornpipe. He ended with a nice set of variations on Lucy Campbell, as written by Tom Clough, variations being an important element in Northumbrian pipe music.

Notes for a tutor’s handbook

JOCK AGNEW and Martin Lowe then gave a presentation on the proposed bellows pipe tutor's handbook on which they are working, with the aim of acquainting members with the project's aims and objectives.

Recognising that the Society, and the bellows piping scene at large, represents a pretty broad church of styles, repertoires and techniques, establishing exactly what such a tutor's yardstick hould teach - what tune examples and in what styles? - was a potentially contentious task, so they were anxious to glean feedback from their listeners as to what they would want from such a handbook., which would provide more depth of information that Jock's already very popular More Power to Your Elbow.

Issues which had surfaced so far included the “dots versus oral/aural learning” debate. Martin felt that both should be available. So far as another disputatious topic, ornamentation, was concerned, Jock felt that if the tutor gave students an “armoury” of as many embellishments as they could cope with, it would serve as a “tool chest” which they could use as they choose.

Distinctions had to be made between how to approach small and Border pipes, while another controversial area was that of a certification scheme, for both teachers and pupils. The pair had already been in discussion with the Piping and Drumming Qualifications Board (PDQB), which had been very positive. It wouldn't be too long before bellows pipes were being offered as an alternative to the Highland instrument in schools, and there was a need, said Martin, for the Society to take the initative in this.

Subsequent to the Collogue, Martin and Jock presented a rough draft ot the forthcoming tutor to a LBPS committee meeting devoted to it. The following are the notes they circulated at the meeting:

THESE NOTES are intended as background and perhaps as a stimulus for discussion. The impetus for such a meeting has been provided by the work, now nearing completion, on a handbook for teachers of bellows pipes, and the discussion we have had about a possible relationship with the Piping and Drumming Qualifications Board. The session that Jock Agnew and I led at the Collogue also raised one or two matters - eg, the possible production of further teaching recordings for remote learners.

It may be helpful to remind ourselves of the main conclusions arising out of the seminar on teaching methods which I convened in May 2006:

• It is helpful to know what is done currently in teaching bellows piping. Is there scope for more interaction between established teachers?
• There is probably scope to explore further a standard core curriculum of what should be taught, perhaps building on the contents of the practical guide More Power to Your Elbow (LBPS 2003).
• Certification of qualifications should be treated with caution for fear of over- standardisation and thus inhibition of creativity; nevertheless it may be helpful to some bellows learners to have a target for which to aim There might eventually be an approach to the PDQB regarding the introduction of an elementary certificate of competence in bellows piping.
• The production of a teaching CD might be helpful, with a selection of tunes played slowly and then up to speed and including some Border music, and the provision of say six “first tunes” might be helpful to beginners, with a mixture of styles
• The reintegration of piping with dance music should be actively explored. Perhaps the formation of a small dance band might help.
• The use of the internet should be taken into account, both in terms of what is already there and of what the LBPS might put
• The production of a simple publication to help teachers might be considered, perhaps in the form of a
• Maintenance requires attention and methods of developing confidence in this should be explored. Small written leaflets could be produced (as with Colin Ross's bellows leaflet) and courses specifically on maintenance could be
• There should be more cooperation and communication between the various interested parties, and it would be good to get the National Piping Centre and the College of Piping more actively involved: both offer bellows teaching if it is requested but it is perhaps not yet regarded as a core

We have come quite a long way since then, but there are still matters in the above checklist which would benefit from further attention. During the discussion of the handbook at the Collogue our member from Norway made a strong plea for further recordings to be made for teaching purposes, particularly to assist learners who are not able to attend a teacher regularly. At the time we said it would not be practicable to include this with the handbook, but it is something that we might think further about for the future, notwith-standing

a number of potential difficulties which Jock may be willing to rehearse.

With regard to certification through the PDQB, we now have informal encouragement from Board members to come forward with proposals for the development of a bellows version for each of their levels, but with the suggestion, with which I think the committee is inclined to concur, that we might concentrate first on the more elementary levels one to three and perhaps look also at the teachers certificate (and maybe the certificate of performance). The current (January) issue of Piping Times (pp 5-6) carries an article about the imminent acceptance of PDQB qualifications by the Scottish Qualifications Authority and committee members who take that journal might care to read it. There is now a dedicated website for the PDQB (www.pdqb.org) from which the curricula for each level of the PDQB's certificates can be downloaded. We should consider how we might now best take this forward.

ML & J A

Visit to the Reid Collection

THE COLLOGUE also included a guided tour of Edinburgh University's fascinating Reid Collection of Historical Instruments, conducted by the collection's director, Arnold Myers, professor of organology at the university (see his article about the collection on Page 20).

In an introductory talk, Professor Myers described the collection's five- year bagpipe acquisition programme, “Enriching our Musical Heritage”, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund - one of only 22 successful applications out of 95, and one of only three in Scotland. The Collection had recently been able to make its first purchase as part of this project, a set of early 19th-century Lowland pipes made by MacDougall of Perth.

There was much to see in the Reid's cases in terms of bagpipes alone: indeed, Arnold Myers suggested that the collection, with its intriguing varieties of pastoral/Irish and Lowland pipes, keyed or non-keyed chanters and regulators and the like, reflected the implications of Pete Stewarts' talk, that nothing was ever clear-cut.