The Highland bagpipe : $b its history, literature, and music: with some account of the traditions, superstitions, and anecdotes relating to the instrument and its tunesManson, W. L. (William Laird)
History
The Highland bagpipe : $b its history, literature, and music: with some account of the traditions, superstitions, and anecdotes relating to the instrument and its tunes
Manson, W. L. (William Laird)
Bagpipe
Coll Kitto at once recognised the warning, turned his boat, and escaped.
The Lady of Dunstaffnage saw how she had been out-witted, and she made
the piper play on the top of the highest hill in Islay tunes of the
merriest kind, and then ordered his fingers to be cut off so that he
might never play again. The hill is known to this day as “The Hill of
the Bloody Hand.”
In pretty much the same way the story is associated with Duntroon
Castle, only there are no women in it, so it is difficult to say which
is correct. But it is plain enough that the incident itself is
authentic, although it is doubtless exaggerated, and tradition is
somewhat hazy as to the proper location.
“DUNTROON’S SALUTE.”
Another tune—“Duntroon’s Salute”—is mixed up with _A Cholla mo run_ in a
rather peculiar way, a way that suggests that the origin of the one is
somehow being attributed to the other. Sir Alexander Mac Donald,
_Alister Mac Cholla Chiotaich_, so this story goes, made a raid on
Argyllshire in 1644 (the dates are irreconcilable with the accepted
facts of the two stories), and surrounded Duntroon Castle, with the
object of cutting off every person inside in revenge for the murder of
his father’s piper. He himself, with a fleet of galleys, besieged the
castle from the seaward side, and he ordered his piper to play the “Mac
Donalds’ March.” Instead, however, the piper, on the spur of the moment,
composed and played a war cry to alarm Duntroon. After saluting Duntroon
and wishing him good health, he warned him of his danger, pointed out
that the enemy were ready to attack him by sea and land, from right and
left and front. The tune was understood on shore and also on board Mac
Donald’s boat, and the poor piper was instantly hung from the yard-arm.
Mac Donald finding he could not reduce Duntroon, moved northward,
following out his work of destruction. The tune composed and played on
this occasion is still known as “Duntroon’s Salute,” and that there is
some truth in the story is shown by the way in which it seems to
represent the sound of waves breaking against rocks. The exact relations
between its origin and that of _A Cholla mo run_ would, however, do with
a little clearing up. It may be mentioned as a fact that some years ago
a body was found buried within Duntroon, which was evidently that of the
piper referred to in the tradition. At anyrate his finger bones were
awanting, a fact which goes to prove the second Dunivaig story. But how,
then, did the piper come to be buried in Duntroon?
“THE CAMPBELLS ARE COMING”
dates so far back in the centuries that we fail to trace its origin. It
has been the march of the clan for hundreds of years. There is an old
Gaelic song sung to the air, which tradition says was the composition of
a piper. This piper, in the course of his vocation, was at a wedding in
Inveraray, where he was inhospitably treated. Smarting under a sense of
injury, he composed the song:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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