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WELCOME
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| Alistair Campsie, author, journalist and piper, once wrote an essay about pibroch, the oldest classical music in the West, which is now played on the bagpipes. Later he added a book exposing the scam worked on it, rendering it incomprehensible to its own nation and formal musicians alike. |
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There followed muggings, international smear campaigns, destruction of his writing career, homelessness and poverty, in the worst UK literary scandal of the 20th century which has now oozed into the 21st.
E'er you look - burn the book The scam was to substitute traditional pibroch, almost certainly derived from the lost harp music of the Celts, with the distorted versions of an Angus MacKay, who was Queen Victoria’s first piper, falsely claiming they had been handed down unchanged from the legendary MacCrimmon pipers…
But Angus had been covertly disturbed for years, insisted he was married to the queen and was going to murder Prince Albert for having sex with her. The reason, Angus howled at the doctors certifying him insane at Bedlam, was that he was her rightful husband and the royal children were his too.
What happened to Alistair Campsie, one of the last pipers trained in traditional pibroch, is revealed in this website, which also exposes the enormity of what was done to his family. He was hounded into a heart attack and warned the next could be terminal, leaving his young children fatherless.
By coincidence the scandal was largely hatched out in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, recently made UNESCO's first City of Literature - where "inconvenient" books were formerly burned by the public hangman.
Now other sinister methods of censorship seem available to destroy the artist in Scotland which the international communities of writers and musicians may want to investigate and come to the aid of one of their own, along with all others who believe in the freedom of artistic expression and the written word.
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Around the site
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This unique and ground-breaking website contains an experimental book which is the sequel to my earlier The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay. To read the sequel in sequence finish the first link, then click on the word -- "continue" at the end of each link to move to the next, through to the end.
Certain chapters provide a link in the text to other links. You may find it better to read the new links then return to the original link to keep to the sequence. Music clips of the changes made to certain pibrochs by Angus MacKay have been inserted into two links, Big scam for the Wee Spree , and Inside the Tangled Web .
The reason for publishing the sequel, The MacCrimmon Scam, in this fashion is that deliberate forgeries were written into the corrected final proofs of the original book after they left my hands, for which I was nevertheless blamed. These corrected proofs and the typescript, which are the property of the author, were then stolen, presumably to conceal the forger's handwriting and thus identity.
Follow the links to discover the truth about how a phoney legend was used to inflict Angus MacKay's versions of pibroch on pipers, and thus the musical world, while destroying the traditional and melodious music.
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Site news and updates
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To discover the truth about the Wikipedia article on piobaireachd, whose panic-stricken “authors” tried to deceive readers into believing the text of the original MacCrimmon book appears on this website, which it emphatically does not, please click on our link Wikipedia to discover the truth of the matter and why. The new link is the first addition to the site of 2010, but by no means the last.
Operational activities earlier delayed work on updating the site, but resumed on 20 December 09 with an addition to the Birth of the Glenfiddich link which exposed how the event was set up to destroy the Cameron style and substitute it with the deviations of Angus MacKay , itself replaced with the script from the radio series, Pibroch, the Tangled Web. The new addition is therefore entitled The Cameron Style – for yet a while and will allow genuine lovers of pibroch to learn the shocking story of what was done to the music and to the tapes of Robert Reid, the final doyen of the style, and thus of traditional pibroch itself.
As you read what was done to our ancient music, it will become glaringly obvious why the MacCrimmon book had to be demonised and its author internationally smeared -- by opportunists who wanted to keep their seats on the MacCrimmon gravy train, which has now hit the buffers. You can recognise them by their compulsive and identical insults without which they cannot even mention the book, far less discuss it,all destined to show it is the delicacy of their hurt feelings that force them to prevent you from being likewise harmed by reading the truth. It's really for your own good... All that is missing are the three-card trick and free bottles of snake oil.
More illuminating facts are to come, including a Literary Corner containing suppressed reviews on certain error-stricken books on pibroch which were elsewhere hailed as works of impressive "scholarship" accuracy and reliability, and the unpublished inside stories about how fake controversies were contrived to fool the world, including pipers, of the real reason for the 30-year uproar over the MacCrimmons..
But please remember, as you read the new and updated links there still remains much work to be done to return pibroch to its former rhythmic beauty. All the clues are there. If you love the music, you must help.
Recent new links include: Omega; The manners of the Moguls , A farewell blessing of the pipes and The Snidebytes.
Major updates have been made to: The Great Pibroch Hoax , The ordeal of Robert Reid and The Old Masters.
And more new links are to be added to complete this investigation, in the interests of truthfulness and the conservation of the music in its original form.
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The sacred cow
Propagandists have long known that if you use a legend to float your scam you can get away with bloody murder. And the MacCrimmon "legend" was no exception, yet it was utterly divisive.
Basically it asserted that a family called MacCrimmon, who were the best pipers the world has ever known, ran a piping college for 300 unbroken years on Skye (1500-1800) where they invented the musical form pibroch, and composed all the best tunes. All the chiefs sent their best clan pipers there for seven years' training, but no matter how hard they practised they could never equal their masters whose like was never seen nor heard again.
It was a pretty legend and MacCrimmon pipers had undoubtedly surfaced in Skye in the early 1700's. Yet with few, third-rate exceptions, the purported "MacCrimmon" pibrochs had earlier and different names and had been stolen and renamed to prop up the false legend which still had not been properly invented by 1818. All the other artefacts were proven fake, yet it became Scotland's most sacred cow, proving that the Hanoverian (i.e. Protestant) pipers were the best players and composers to whom the Jacobite (i.e. Catholic) pipers had to go for training but could never equal, such was the political climate of the time.
And no-one dared question the legend. To do so was heresy.
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The freedom of speech
UNESCO recently made Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, its first city of literature signifying approval of its record in the freedom of expression for authors and the nurturing of an intellectual climate in which writers could freely practise their art.
Now I would ask the new Scottish Parliament to penetrate the cultural underbelly of the same city and investigate my silencing and destruction as an author there after I wrote an "inconvenient" book, leading to the utter violation and obliteration of my human rights.
And I do this in the hope that my fellow writers and musicians will never again experience the same cruelty which was inflicted on my family and me, reducing me to ill health, and bringing us to eviction, homelessness and poverty, especially at this time when Edinburgh is applying to become an official "City of Refuge" for writers who have been forced from their own country. The scheme is run by PEN International, the world-wide writers' organisation. "It's a freedom of speech issue", said one of its Edinburgh City of Literature organisers.
And I do this not merely for my family and me but for the intellectual freedom of all the children of our future, no matter if for now they only draw a chalk line on a slate, or tuck a blade of grass between their thumbs to blow a note in true. Perhaps their piping voices should matter most to us in the international community of the arts.
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© Copyright 2010 The Piper's Press
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