Category: Uncategorised

Maol Donn

At the moment I am working on Maol Donn. This lovely pibroch is often given the romantic English title “MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart”. Its original title means brown or tawny hummock, or rounded thing, perhaps referring to the bald hornless forehead of the cow that was lost in the bog, which some stories say is the origin of the tune. I like the story of Ranald MacDonald of Morar composing this tune to a smooth brown seashell he found on the beach.

There are a number of recordings available of this tune played on the pipes. The oldest is played by John MacDonald of Inverness in 1926:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/musicfiles/mp3s/jmcd-mcswthrt.mp3
from Ross’s Music Page

My favourite is played by Calum Johnston in 1955:
http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/53368/1 

Here’s the traditional song that goes with it, sung by Kate MacDonald in 1970:
http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/92097/1 

Daniel Tokar and The Willow Forge

Daniel Tokar is well known in the historical Gaelic harp world, as a superb artist and craftsman who has made some of the best quality metal harp fittings I have ever seen. Daniel made the silver studs on my Queen Mary harp replica. He also has done a lot of work on making historical metal wire harp strings, the results of which are written up in his book Dialogue on Historical Wire for Gaelic Harps (with Ann Heymann).

2 weeks ago Daniel’s workshop was burned down and his tools and materials were seriously damaged. This is a bad time for him – of course before Christmas he was working hard on many orders. Now he has to spend a few months rebuilding the workshop instead of pressing ahead with his work.

Photo on the right from The Journal.

Daniel’s website is  http://www.willowforge.com/ – there are contact details there if you can help him in any way.

Medieval art & the Queen Mary harp

I have been thinking for some years about the decoration on the Queen Mary harp, ever since medieval academics at the 2008 Leeds International Medieval Congress suggested that while the pillar is clearly 15th century West Highland, the box and neck look earlier.

Today I was down at the cathedral here in St Andrews and I took some photos of 12th century designs on the Cathedral stonework, to compare with the designs on the harp.

Left & right: replica Queen Mary harp soundbox designs; Centre: Outside of chancel end wall at St Andrews cathedral. (I understand this is a consecration cross. There is another, damaged, on the end wall of the south transept).

Above: arcade inside the South transept at St Andrews cathedral. Below: replica Queen Mary harp neck design.

Ecce Fulget

Today at the Harp Class in Dundee, as it is St Patrick’s day, we looked at a medieval hymn to St Patrick from Trinity College Dublin ms.80.

Ecce fulget clarissima
Behold, flashes brightly

Patricii sollempnitas
Patrick’s festival,

in qua carne deposita
whereby the body he has abandoned,

felix transcendit sidera.
happily he passes through the stars.

Recording of me singing it

Recording of me playing it on the harp

An Tarbh Breac Dearg

An tarbh breac dearg, an tarbh a mharbh mi,
An tarbh breac dearg, an tarbh a mharbh mi,
An tarbh breac dearg, an tarbh a mharbh mi,
Tarbh buidhe, buidhe, buidhe,
Tarbh buidhe, buidhe, a mharbh mi.
The speckled red bull, the bull that killed me,
Yellow bull, that killed me

From J.L Campbell, Songs Remembered in Exile, Aberdeen 1990, p.92

I have recently been working on this pibroch or ceòl mór, which I first heard on Allan MacDonald’s CD, Dastirum. I had been on the look out for it anyway, since I have a gradual project to learn up versions of the various tunes associated with the Morar harper, piper and fiddler, Raghnall MacAilein Òig (1662 – 1741), whose name is unfortunately Anglicised as Ronald MacDonald.

I have been playing A Ghlas Mheur in concerts for a wee while now and am very pleased with how it is turning out. I have only just started learning An Tarbh Breac Dearg, and it is changing every time I play it – already I am thinking of different sonorities for the ‘away’ sections, and wondering how best to return to the ground between variations.

I am very struck by how both A Ghlas Mheur and An Tarbh Breac Dearg are so obsessively focussed on three note binary sequences. They remind me very much of the medieval Welsh harp music notated in the Robert ap Huw manuscript, and I wonder how much that is because of Raghnall being trained in the old clarsach traditions as well as being a piper and fiddler. Certainly these compositions seem of a different taste to other bagpipe pibroch I am familiar with.

The other thing I am not yet clear about is the actual subject matter. Early piping sources call this tune An t-Arm Breac Dearg, the red tartan army. The song refers to the bull, and the association with Raghnall gives us bull stories to link it with, but I do wonder if they are both later accretion onto an originally martial composition.