Keith Sanger brings us some revealing information about the Hastie family, known as ‘hereditary pipers’ of Jedburgh; was one of them also Town Piper of Dunbar?

                                  
Searching for evidence about early pipers means trawling through a wide variety of source material. It therefore follows that the aspects of life found in some of these sources can be less savoury than others. For example, mentions of pipers in Kirk Session Records mostly lean towards their transgressions, at least as seen through the Kirk’s eyes at that time. These were mostly cases of playing for dancing on the Sabbath or miscellaneous immorality issues, none of which would be subject to any disciplinary procedures today.
However, the sort of charges to be found in the Justicary Court papers are of a more serious nature although they are still a source of references to otherwise unknown pipers, including the rather sad case involving the daughter of the town piper of Dunbar. In July 1760, Ann Hastie, daughter of Robert Hastie, Town Piper of Dunbar and Robert Fairgrieve, Surgeon in Dunbar, both then prisoners in the Tolboth of Edinburgh, were indicted on the charge of child murder. The charge related back to the period of August to October of the previous year after a child’s body was recovered from a draw well in or near the Burgh of Dunbar.¹
The bundle of court documents is quite extensive and apart from the indictment includes witness statements, the precognition and the list of the people selected for the jury. Since Ann Hastie had in fact, when first being examined in Dunbar, denied having been pregnant, the majority of the witness statements were affirming that she was, while most of the rest were from other doctors and midwives giving their opinion that the dead child was a new-born full-term female baby, but it was not possible to say whether still born or not.
While the written evidence clearly indicates the child was Ann Hastie’s and Fairgrieve was the father, both parties continued to protest their innocence of murder although with conflicting accounts. As there was no corroborating evidence that the child had been born alive, the case never actually came to trial. Instead there was a sort of American style plea bargain with individual petitions submitted to the court from each respective party.
In that of the surgeon Robert Fairgrieve, he opted for banishment from Scotland for life with the choice of where to go apparently up to him. In the case of Ann Hastie it was banishment to one of His Majesty’s colonies in America, although in the actual pronounced judgement the outcome of what would happen to her if she ever returned was spelt out in somewhat gruesome detail.²
While most of this has little direct connection to piping some of the details in the case papers do provide enough information to add somewhat to what we know about her father Robert Hastie the Dunbar Town Piper. For example, her age and the fact that she had two brothers also living in Dunbar, one called William Hastie and the other called Charles. Ann was born on the 14 May 1734 to Robert Hastie in Dunbar and his spouse Ann Hay.³ Tracking backwards, her brother Charles was born on the 3 March 1725 to Robert Hastie Town piper.⁴
Although Robert was designated as a piper his wife was not recorded, (whoever was keeping the birth register at that time seemed to have no interest in the mothers). Moving further back though to the elder brother William, the record shows that he was born on the 19 June 1715 to Robert Hastie described as ‘weaver’ in Yester and Anna Hay his wife. The witnesses for that one were her father John Hay and brother in law James Matheson.⁵ The couple had been married on the 11 August the year before, when Robert Hastie and Anna Hay, described as ‘parishoners of Garvald’, were recorded.6 Based on the date of his marriage Robert Hastie would have been at least 60 years of age when he last saw his daughter.
Having the name ‘Hastie’ raises the question of there being a connection between the town piper in Dunbar and the family of pipers of that name connected with Jedburgh. The coincidence extends beyond just the Dunbar and Jedburgh pipers sharing the same name. The last of the pipers in Jedburgh was said to be a Robin or Robert who according to one source ‘succeeded his uncle [John] about the year 1731’.⁷ When the two ‘Roberts’ are compared, born roughly around the same time, firmly placed as ‘town piper of Dunbar’ by 1727 in one case and only thought to have ‘succeeded his uncle’ in 1731 in the other it is tempting to wonder if they are the same person, now based in Dunbar but with periodic visits back to Jedburgh? ⁸

Keith Sanger

Notes..

1. National Records of Scotland. (NRS),Justicary Court papers 26/164
2. Although both parties were transferred from the Tolbooth in Dunbar to the Edinburgh Tolbooth on the 14th January 1760 their treatment thereafter differed. On the 20th February Robert Fairgrieve was released on ‘letters of liberation’ pending trial. Ann Hastie on the other hand remained in the tolbooth until the 8th August when she was turned over to a ship’s   master for transportation. While being in the tolbooth would not have been pleasant judging by its records there were on  average quite a high class of people incarcerated there. Only a few months before Ann Hastie arrived, John McLean of   Lochbuie along with some of his servitors, including Donald McLean the son of Lochbuie’s piper, had spent two months   there awaiting trial on a charge of Lochbuie having illegally imprisoned in his castle dungeon, some neighbours who had   upset him. N.R.S HH11/26 f 57- 58 and 76. (Edinburgh Tolbooth Record Book).
1. National Records of Scotland. (NRS),Justicary Court papers 26/164
2. Although both parties were transferred from the Tolbooth in Dunbar to the Edinburgh Tolbooth on the 14th January 1760 their treatment thereafter differed. On the 20th February Robert Fairgrieve was released on ‘letters of liberation’ pending trial. Ann Hastie on the other hand remained in the tolbooth until the 8th August when she was turned over to a ship’s   master for transportation. While being in the tolbooth would not have been pleasant judging by its records there were on  average quite a high class of people incarcerated there. Only a few months before Ann Hastie arrived, John McLean of   Lochbuie along with some of his servitors, including Donald McLean the son of Lochbuie’s piper, had spent two months   there awaiting trial on a charge of Lochbuie having illegally imprisoned in his castle dungeon, some neighbours who had   upset him. N.R.S HH11/26 f 57- 58 and 76. (Edinburgh Tolbooth Record Book).
3. O.P.R Births 706/0000200142. Dunbar.
4. O.P.R.Births 706/0000200071. Dunbar.
5.  O.P.R. Births 725/0000100265 Yester.
6.  O.P.R. Marriages 725/0000100260 Yester.
7. Stewart, Pete. Welcome Home My Dearie. (2008). 67.
 8. Bagpipes were relatively expensive and more likely to be inherited than bought new. Therefore the date by which a Robert Hastie first appears as piper in Dunbar would coincide with him having inherited the pipes of John Hastie in  Jedburgh and therefore being able to ‘turn professional’. John Leyden in his edition of ‘The Complaynt of Scotland’ published in 1801 mentions seeing the bagpipe of John Hastie the town piper of Jedburgh in the hands of one of his descendents ‘within the past 10 years’. He does not in fact say where he saw them.