The Gesto collection of Highland music, edited by Dr. Keith Norman Mac Donald, and dedicated to the Mac Leods of Gesto, is perhaps the most outstanding publication in which the music of the pipes has been adapted for the piano. It was published in 1895. Dr. Mac Donald’s avowed object was to supply a collection free from all adulteration, and to preserve the music as it was sung and played by the Highlanders themselves. The book, while not containing everything that is good in pipe music, undoubtedly contains a larger selection of the best than any other. There are songs, pibrochs, and laments; marches, quicksteps, and general martial music; and also reels and strathspeys, numbering in the aggregate about three hundred and forty tunes; and all over, the book is perhaps more interesting and comprehensive than any that has been issued. A second edition was published in 1898.

In 1896 Major-General Thomason, already mentioned, issued for private circulation a small volume. In this he foreshadowed a larger, which has since been published.[[8]] Major-General Thomason is the possessor not only of the manuscript of Donald Mac Donald’s proposed second volume, but also of all the manuscript music left by Angus Mac Kay. Besides, he spent many years in collecting pibrochs from all possible sources, and at the present time he believes that he has almost every pibroch known to be in existence. He has spent much time and labour editing his collection, and the result is the volume referred to, which is published under the title of Ceol Mor (the proper title of real pibroch music). Besides being an extraordinarily diligent collector of tunes, Major-General Thomason was imbued with the idea of rendering the reading of pibrochs more easy. He took notes of the difference in times and the different styles of playing, and became so proficient that he could note any strange tune from the playing of another piper. It was only a step further to decide that the signs which he could note down as the tune was being played would serve as a notation from which the tune could be replayed. He invented, in fact, a system of shorthand for pipe music, and then he set about endeavouring to publish a book printed after his own system, in the hope that pipers would learn it in preference to the old and cumbersome system. By this means he believes he will further popularise bagpipe music, but the ordinary notation has now got so firm a hold that it will be difficult to convince pipers that it will pay them to learn another. Like ordinary shorthand systems, Ceol Mor is doubtless capable of improvement; but the idea opens up an altogether new field in the literature of pipe music, and as the book contains some two hundred and eighty tunes—the result of thirty years’ collecting—it is to be hoped that it will prove a success.

[8]. Messrs. S. Sidders & Co., Ball Street, Kensington, London.

After all it is not so much more books that are needed as a thoroughly standard work including all that is best in pipe music set in some uniform style. There is, however, no getting away from the fact that this cannot be done with any hope of financial success. The jealousies of musicians come in the way, and pipers will have some new tunes, even although it is well known that these, as a rule, are worthless. Nothing short of an encyclopædia containing everything that has ever been composed would please everybody, and this would require to be sold for a few shillings. Then there are the difficulties of copyright—different persons or publishers claiming different tunes or settings of tunes. Still, with anything like a common desire to promote the best interests of national music, these difficulties could to a large extent be overcome. There never was a more opportune time than the present, there being so many pipers and the ability to read music being almost universal. Meantime pipers are struggling along with many tunes and a good many books with a lot of irregularities and inconsistencies scattered through them. There is certainly room for improvement, and if pipers and publishers, or some of the Highland societies—say in Glasgow—took the matter up in earnest, something could be done to set up a standard of some kind that would give the music of the pipes its proper place.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Pipes in Battle.

“Fhairshon swore a feud

Against the Clan Mac Tavish,

Marched into their land,

To plunder and to rafish.

For he did resolve