RESEARCH Catriona, was working close to the shore in Oighre when she heard the sound of the pipes coming from a boat far out in the Sound. ‘Had she not known,’ she said, ‘that her brother John was away fighting Napoleon, she would have said that he was the piper!’ But she was right, since this was John Mackay on his way back to Raasay from his military service. Ceòl Mòr In the annals of piping, John Mackay’s most celebrated pupil must be his son Angus. Angus Mackay (1812-1859) is known by pipers today mainly for his contribution to ceòl mòr. His settings, both in manuscript and those he published in 1838 in A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd influenced later ceòl mòr publications and many became the basis for standardised settings in the 20th century. There is little doubt that Angus’s success has been down to the perpetuation of his written works which we may assume had resonance with the playing of a succession of 19th-century master pipers beginning with Angus’s father, John, and his pupils who included Angus and his brothers, John Bàn Mackenzie and Angus Macpherson, and their pupils in turn who included Malcolm Macpherson (Calum Pìobaire) and Donald Cameron. The subject of Angus’s style of ceòl mòr has been discussed and illustrated at length elsewhere but, to summarise, his settings, as well as those of his brother John, are less decorated and employ a smaller, more standardised corpus of ornaments than, for example, the settings of Donald MacDonald and Angus MacArthur. The timing of some of these ornaments has long intrigued students of piping due to the notoriously prescriptive nature of ceòl mòr notation. It is therefore instructive to look at the manuscript of Eliza Ross when considering the interpretation of such movements as notated by Angus. The ‘Lady D’Oyly Manuscript’ in Edinburgh University’s School of Scottish Studies Archives takes its name from Eliza Ross’s married name and carries the legend on the front cover: ‘Origi-
nal Highland Airs Collected Rasay in 1812 by Elizabeth Jane Ross’. The personal and musical circumstances of Eliza Ross (1789-1875) are explained in Angus Mackay’s ‘Historical and Traditional Notes’ in his Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd: Her father and mother having died when she was in infancy.... she was left under the guardianship of her uncle (James MacLeod of Raasay) who brought her up in his own family at Raasay. She became a great favourite with all who knew her, being imbued with the finest feelings of the Highlander. Her musical taste was remarkably good, and she was so fond of Piobaireachd that she acquired many of the longest pieces from the performance of the family piper, and was accustomed to play them on the piano with much effect. We see that Eliza Ross used Angus’s father, John Mackay, as source for the ceòl mòr
examples in her manuscript of Highland music arranged for fortepiano or piano. Eliza Ross’s settings represent a non-piper’s impression of the melodies of several ceòl mòr airs and give an unusual and extremely valuable overall melodic impression of the music deriving from an ear-learnt player in a ‘pre-literate age’ of piping. It is therefore of particular interest that Eliza Ross incorporated certain ornamental motifs, especially ‘echoing beats’, directly into the melodies of her arrangements. Had these been played differently by John Mackay – more quickly for example – then we might assume that Eliza would have notated them differently, replaced them with a more typical keyboard embellishment or even omitted them entirely. The following examples of ‘MacLeod’s Salute’ from Eliza Ross (transcribed here one tone lower) and Angus Mackay allow for some interesting comparisons:
example 1. Unnamed (The MacLeod’s Salute) from Eliza Ross (No. 145)
example 2. Fàilte Na ’n Leòdach – ‘The MacLeod’s Salute’ from Angus Mackay (1838)
The Piper’s House in its Raasay setting, looking from Oighre to Skye.
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