One word of caution will be necessary to certain pipers before going further into this subject. This notation, invented for and suitable only to piobaireachd, is not going to teach pipers how to play piobaireachd. There is and always has been, one way and only one way to do that—to get instruction from a master; once that is accomplished, a pupil may be fit to learn more tunes by himself from books written in any intelligible notation. This I take to be true of any musicians and any music.
The piobaireachd pupil might well get his instruction through the medium of canntaireachd, for it has been made solely for this music, and is in point of fact very suitable for the purpose. To begin with, if the few master-instructors of piobaireachd will take the trouble (and assuredly it will not be great to them) to become familiar with canntaireachd, and to use it as a medium of instruction, it is a matter of certainty that they will realise its use for this end—for instead of a perplexing maze of notes and grace-notes in staff notation to correspond to any movement which they are trying to teach their pupil, they will have pronounceable vocables which will act as memoria technica to the pupil: the pupil will, at first, learn these parrot style, until he gets to a certain length, when, unaided, he will begin to see that these vocables he has learnt convey a definite meaning—a definite combination of note and grace note, in a form which can be crooned to the air. I have found that for the purposes of learning new tunes, staff notation compared with canntaireachd is cumbrous and misleading: and even when written in an abbreviated form (as in General Thomason's great book, Ceol Mor) it appeals mainly to the eye, while canntaireachd appeals to the ear.
For some years now I have found it invaluable as a kind of musical shorthand, and with a certain amount of practice it becomes possible to write down a tune in canntaireachd while it is being played, and then to learn it at leisure. I had the triumph of converting a brother piper a few years ago. He was inclined to be sceptical about the whole system, so to test me and it he played me a tune which I had never heard and I wrote it down as he played it. After he had finished he said, "Now we shall see what is in it, for I made two mistakes: play what you have got and we shall see." I played on the practice chanter just what I had written, with the mistakes, of course, included.
Again, when one is judging piobaireachd competitions, it is valuable as shorthand to jot down notes of mistakes, etc.
Before coming to the notation itself, it should be explained that it is not maintained for a moment that this variety (the Nether Lorn) is superior in any way to the MacCrimmon or MacArthur varieties. It is merely given and suggested for use, because it is this variety which has become once more available to pipers at large. There are people who undoubtedly can do the same for the MacCrimmon variety also, and it is sincerely hoped that they will do so. That all three varieties are first cousins to each other is beyond doubt to any one who compares them; perhaps at a later date, when more knowledge of canntaireachd becomes available, it may be possible to point to one as the original, or to find a common ancestor to all.
Coming now to the actual notation, the following paragraphs should be read, subject to this note that the pronunciation of the vocables must be largely a matter of conjecture, but it is reasonable to suppose that, as they were written in the manuscript and used by Gaelic-speaking pipers,[16] the pronunciation should have at least some reference to Gaelic pronunciation—thus the vowels, when occurring as the last letter of the syllable, would be pronounced
| 'a' | as in English | hard |
| 'e' | " | hay |
| 'i' | " | heed |
| 'o' | " | home |
and probably the consonants should be given their Gaelic equivalents also (all which can best be obtained verbally from a Gaelic speaker).
In addition to the simple vowels, combinations occur which require to be sounded as diphthongs:
| 'io' } | as in English | yoke, e.g. hioeo |
| 'eo' } | ||
| 'ea' | " | yard, e.g. haea. |