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Campbell-K was desperate when he should have been sublimely happy. Here he was back in India on his second tour of duty, newly married to the governor of Bengal's daughter, when from back home came news of the deadly threat imperilling his budding career as a pibroch authority, exposing him as an ignoramus, before he and his fellow-conspirator, Bones Grant, illicitly took over the Piob. Society.

 

The threat, called the “redundant A”, had been published in 1907 by a police lieutenant in Edinburgh, whose ancestors provided a direct link from pre-Culloden piping to the present day.  He was also father of G.S. MacLennan, the boy virtuoso who became such a remarkable composer he was described as the Stravinsky of the bagpipes.

 

Now Lieut. MacLennan fiercely criticised the first version of the Piob. Society’s tunes, stressing the notation was ridiculous and hopelessly wrong, and printed the “redundant A” as a full note when it was actually a grace-note and could not be heard.

 

The police officer was a lucid writer who made the legalese jumble of Campbell-K look incoherent and for once the Indian Civil servant kept his mouth shut  in public.  His brain, however, must have almost ignited as MacLennan claimed the “redundant A” had been wrongly printed in both the taorluath and the crunluath throughout the first edition, when it was not audible and should therefore have been omitted in writing, and the rest of pibroch notation sorted out and standardised.

 

The reason for Campbell-K’s desperation over the redundant A was simple.  He didn’t understand a word of it.  How could a note exist when you couldn’t hear it?  And no-one would tell him. The situation was  best summed-up by the near-hysterical tone of a letter he wrote years later, which also revealed his plaintive admission of failure:   “I have tried to get everything I can…out of them.  I have done my best to get all the information I can and forgot playing…I must get the information…”

 

Campbell-K was referring to his obsessive motives for trying to get alongside Sandy Cameron and MacDougall Gillies to uncover the mystery of  this phantom “redundant A” in the final movements of a pibroch, the taorluath and crunluath, which you could not hear.

 

The future authority’s  problem was that he knew the redundant A was there all right, because he had been told so, but he didn’t know how it got there and he certainly did not know how to put it there, nor practise it.  He had repeatedly been at Gillies and Cameron  but they just looked at him and wouldn’t speak, and Campbell-K came to the conclusion they were making a fool of him. For once he had the concept correct, if nothing else, and he was in deep confusion.

 

Here he was conspiring with “Bones” Grant to take over the Piob. Society and rewrite its pibroch books, alleging they were all wrong, and he did not even have the elementary knowledge required to mend them.  His exposure was looming up all right, but he was still implausibly going to take command and instruct the others how to do it.  At least his effrontery was intact.

 

Hence Campbell-K’s near-hysterical admission of failure.

 

All this was breaking round Campbell-K’s head when he returned to U.K. on long-leave on 14 July, 1910, and made his way to Grantown-on-Spey to visit Gen. Thomason, the compiler of  the massive pibroch book, Ceol Mor, and discovered he had a complete copy of Angus MacKay’s pibroch manuscripts.

 

Campbell-K could not believe his larcenous luck and arranged to have a photographic copy made of the copy, which had been transcribed for a London barrister called C.E. Dove.  Here was a collection of 183 tunes, all written out by Angus MacKay in the same style of notation used in the 1838 published book bearing his name as author, which also contained 61 tunes.

 

Besides it was strongly rumoured that his father, John, had been trained by the last MacCrimmons and a closer inspection of the manuscript proved to Campbell-K that   all the other pipers must have been wrong because they differed.  This must be the authentic music, Campbell-K convinced himself. 

 

He admitted years later it was because it was the best-written and neatest of all the manuscripts he had seen.  Unbelievably, it had nothing to do with the integrity of the music, which he could not properly understand.  And it was on this basis that the entire shabby fraud was perpetrated.

 

It became ineffably worse when the original MS books turned up, containing a diary of Angus MacKay’s alleged suffering in Bedlam, written when he was a patient there after being certified insane.

 

Campbell-K brushed  aside the unpleasant smear campaign of the MacPhersons, claiming that Angus had been driven mad by the blunders in the 1838 book.  Instead here was holograph proof which would stand up in a court of law, especially one of his own.  It was all in writing.

 

The falsity of Campbell-K’s credo rings in your ears as he justifies his behaviour: “I am inclined possibly by reason of my professional experience to discount oral tradition and, by preference, to grasp at any straws which can be gleaned from contemporary records.”  If it was written down by a covert lunatic it was  bound to be true, as any con merchant will tell you.  The inconvenient records, after all, could be conveniently burned at Rothiemurchus, as he once suggested.

 

But the latest threat by Lieut MacLennan to Campbell-K’s mental well-being forced him to take exemplary measures to safeguard his new image as an authority on the music which, by his own admission, had so far eluded them.  When he examined the photographic copy he realised his problem had hideously expanded.  It was stuffed with so-called “redundant A’s”.  Panic-stricken he realised a fitting explanation was needed to save his face .  So, true to form, he concealed the existence of the photo-copy to outsiders.

 

   *

 

Sandy Cameron, who by then was living in a cottage  at Achnacarry,  had just completed work on the Society’s 5^th part of its 1^st collection. He was therefore virtually kidnapped to Kilberry Castle in May 1911 for three entire weeks to have his brains ransacked, or so they thought.  But later evidence shows he refused to discuss the existence of the “essential A”, as it would be better called, and even worse he seemed to have made a sort of piping cuckold out of the 34-year-old Indian civil servant (he was not made a judge until 1921) if he can be believed.

 

The master piper allegedly taught him the gracings in the Angus MacKay book, meaning, according to Campbell-K if no-one else, they were authentic.   Sandy also allegedly taught him the heavy and clunking G grace note in the D double echo, which appeared  in the 1838 book.   And the stunted taorluath movement. 

 

He even claimed Sandy Cameron  taught him to play  an  a mach or “open” movement  on a certain group of tunes, which sounded like an explosion in a jam factory.  When I mentioned the claim to Robert Reid, he snapped:  “Sandy Cameron said no such thing.”  Campbell had been at it again, then he asserted  Sandy Cameron did teach  him to begin the lyrical pibroch, latterly called MacCrimmon’s Sweetheart, starting with a long and drawn out low A, although none of the other Camerons did,  and he reputedly omitted the inverted singling but added other instructions which wrecked it and other  tunes.

 

Perhaps Sandy Cameron had had more than enough of the Society’s arrogance, for all the advice that he and Gillies had freely given to the part 5 editor had been insultingly rejected, although their names were to remain on the section as advisers, meaning they could be blamed for any or all the blunders within.  Perhaps it was pay-back time after all, if again Campbell-K could be believed.  Or more likely he was trying to make out for future generations that Sandy Cameron played the same clunking way as Angus MacKay, which was untrue.

 

Campbell-K later asserted he had been taught, or at least  “put through” 40  pibrochs in this three-week period  (in another three-week period in 1905 with John Macdonald, he claimed:  “I got from him everything he knew”, and was so vain he actually believed it) which was in the realms of advanced delusion.  But Campbell-K was looking for more from Sandy Cameron and  in later years  constantly exposed his motives for trying to get alongside Sandy Cameron and also MacDougall Gillies.  It was summed  up by his plaintive admission of failure in the letter:  “I have tried to get everything I can…out of them.  I have done my best to get all the information I can and forgot playing…I must get the information…”

           

But Sandy certainly did not reveal to him how the “redundant As” were played, no matter how much he was cajoled, or whatever was done to induce him to give up the information.

 

Campbell-K’s  eldest brother, Jock, who had in fact inherited the territorial title, unhappily inherited  another genetic gift.  He was a totally dependent alcoholic, for which he was under almost constant treatment, and had become so addicted he was apparently reduced to going round the tables at  functions and swilling the dregs of other peoples’ drinks.  His youngest brother, Archie, knew only too well how to use alcohol to achieve control, and was also well aware that Sandy Cameron was known “to take a dram”.  The Celtic gene is no respecter of social class.

 

Sandy Cameron and Gillies obviously refused to tell the querulous Campbell-K anything and the question is:  did he desperately fill up the vulnerable Sandy Cameron with drink to extract the information which he admitted he “must get”, otherwise Campbell-K’s vacuous knowledge of traditional pibroch would be broadcast throughout the piping world.

 

What we do know is that Sandy Cameron went missing after his “visit” to Kilberry Castle.  The word must have been out to find him and he was discovered nearly destitute in a London street by a couple of Scots Guards pipers, who recognised him and discovered he was almost reduced to begging.  The Guards pipers reported the meeting to their adjutant who contacted the clan chief’s young brother, Alan, who was serving with the family regiment at Aldershot, and after the clan chief was duly advised, Sandy Cameron became the subject of a rescue operation and was brought home to Achnacarry by Alan Cameron in person, where he lived out the rest of his life in peace and quiet.

 

                                                                                                                 *

 

All the unsavoury posturing of Campbell-K and Grant was forestalled when Gen. Thomason died on 12 July, 1911.  His remains were brought north to Grantown-on-Spey, where he was buried in the local churchyard.  Campbell-K later boasted:  “I played Cronan na Caillich (The Old Woman’s Lullaby) while his grave was being filled in…and I went through all his piobaireachd MS left by him later on.”  He declined to mention his subsequent behaviour, but, despite his actions, claimed the general was a “close friend”. 

 

Indecently, Campbell-K had pocketed the Ballindalloch MS by Donald MacKay and even Gen. Thomason’s own manuscript, plus the pibroch manuscript by Ewen Henderson, a Scots Guards pipe major from 1853-1874.  These were manuscripts of irreplaceable value, which then effectively vanished until 1977. 

 

That was when Campbell’s son and accomplice, James, deposited them in the special collections unit at Glasgow University, where Seumas MacNeill had worked   as a physics lecturer almost all his adult life after graduating from the same place.  (By chance I had just  been awarded a writer’s bursary by the Scottish Arts Council to complete the MacCrimmon book and had asked  the Piob. Society about the extent of the pibroch manuscripts it held, most of which were said to be on deposit at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh).  The Society refused to cough up.

 

But Gen. Thomason also had another document in his safe-keeping, none other than Duncan Campbell’s MS, from which MacDougall Gillies seems to have copied his MS book, including the unusual tune The Battle of Balladruishaig,  which Campbell-K later discovered was found only in Angus MacKay’s own MSS and nowhere else. It was a veritable  Loreilei  of a coincidence,  enticing Campbell-K, like an aged mariner,  to his doom on the rocks.  Duncan Campbell’s manuscript, too, “vanished”.

 

Loreilei was the Rhine maiden who lured navigators to their fate, although it wasn’t a German river where Campbell-K’s canoe sprung a leak.  It was the River Spey and he disappeared well and truly up it with a wire-netting paddle.  And down went traditional pibroch with it.

Campbell-K afterwards symptomatically attacked Gen. Thomason’s playing:  “The Pity about him was that he was never through the mill so far as playing went.  I do not think he could ever have been a good player.  Had he been so the value of his work would have been increased enormously.”

Unlike Arch. “Sausage Fingers” Campbell, one presumes, fresh from his three weeks with Sandy Cameron, on top of three weeks with John Macdonald, six or so years earlier, when he brazenly asserted he had learned everything that Macdonald knew.  He also allegedly had tuition here and there with MacDougall Gillies, who must have obediently abandoned his business to attend to the new Nabob any time he clambered down from his elephant in Renfrew Street, Glasgow, for a quick lesson or two. 

And if you don’t believe the bit about the elephant, how can you possibly believe the stuff about the lessons?  Gillies had a business to run. Furthermore he utterly despised Campbell-K and would tell him nothing worth having.  And he certainly did not tell Campbell-K to do what he did to the “Redundant A”.  Here is what really happened to it.

The ‘legal paper’

 

As planned, the takeover of the Piob. Society took place on All Fools’ Day (April 1) 1912.  Campbell-K had returned to India in October, 1911, after deep consultation with his associate “Bones” Grant on how to wipe out the menace of the “redundant A” and conceal their ignorance from the masses they were about to deceive.

 

This was to be done by  making the three leading pipers, Sandy Cameron, John MacDougall Gillies and John Macdonald, Inverness,  sign some sort of legal paper which astonishingly was to prove the so-called redundant A had never existed, although the Angus MacKay published book, long out of print,  and manuscripts were riddled with them.  The intention of Campbell-K and Bones was to protect themselves from ridicule.  So they abolished traditional pibroch by law – their own.

 

Also included in the “legal paper”, according to the traditional piper, George Moss, who wrote to me on 20 July 1984 about the imbroglio, were the gracings from (4 ) E to high G (called chedari) and (5) the throw from low G to high G (called embari).

 

The scheme was so outrageous I asked George Moss, latterly of North Kessock, to put it into holograph letters himself, which he gladly did as his father had worked at Achnacarry, when Sandy Cameron lived there, and had actually instructed young George in pibroch.  For his efforts George Moss was savagely smeared by the Piob. Society and its minions in an attempt to destroy his integrity, which should instead  be treasured by the modern piper.

 

When the “legal paper” was presented to Sandy Cameron to sign, he was  living in a sort of grace-and-favour situation with his clan chief, Donald Cameron of Locheil, at Achnacarry and presumably felt, after his London excursion, he could not offend him, George Moss stated.  He added a copy of Sandy Cameron’s reply to Grant’s “request” to sign the “legal” paper:-

                                                                                          

                                                                                           Achnacarry,

                                                                                           Spean Bridge.

                                                                                           31^st Jany, 1913   

                       J.P. Grant Esq.

 

                      Sir,

                      Enclosed is your paper, and am pleased to say it is correct.  The great

                      thing is to play the notes correctly.  Please tell Mr Campbell I am quite

                      well.  It is very kind of him to be asking for me. 

 

                                       I am, Sir

                                       Your respectful servant

    

                                  A.     Cameron

 

                     P.S.  Please do not use my name as an authority.  A.C.

 

George Moss acidly commented:  (1)  “Your paper…is correct” (i.e. as a statement of Grant’s opinion; not of Sandy (or his forebears)’s opinion of Leum, Taor and Crun was well known).

(2)     “The great thing is to play the notes correctly” (i.e. correctly = not according to faulty opinion from anyone).  

(3)     “Do not use my name etc”:  This shows clearly that Sandy regretted signing Grant’s paper, and had come to realise that his signature had been wanted for reasons other than those stated verbally to himself.

 

“The same could apply to MacD. Gillies”, remembering that he was still under contract to publish the Piob. Society’s books.

 

George Moss added the self-incriminating reply by John Macdonald to Grant addressed from “The Barracks, Inverness” dated 18 March 1913:-

 

“I herewith send your paper on the method of performing Leumluath, etc. which is just the same as I have been taught, and as I have always taught to others.  I never heard a low A sounded in Leumluath, Taorluath or Crunluath. No. 4 is also as I know it.  Also no. 5…I am very pleased you have taken this up.  There are several movements, one comes across, that require to be treated in the same way, so that we may arrive at a universal way of writing and playing them.

 

       I am Sir,  yours respectfully…” 

                               

           

George Moss commented that for John Macdonald “to hear low A as a middle note in Leumluath, Taorluath and Crunluath he hadn’t to go further than his father and uncle,or even his own playing in earlier years.”

 

I asked for more details and George Moss replied in writing:  “Alex. Macdonald, John’s father, won the prize-pipe at the Northern Meeting in 1860 before John was born (b.1866 d.1953).  His father and uncle taught him to play the middle note in Leum, Taor, Crun., and to play the ‘Shake on low A, and the beats on the As,  A. MacKay’s way of writing being regarded as error, as the ‘ged’ grace-notes were only grace-notes, never melody notes.”

 

George Moss cited two brothers, Donald and John Gollan, who “were taught to play the middle note in Leum, Taor, Crun. By John, in their youth and his youth.”  They went to Ceylon as tea-planters and returned to Glenurquhart in later life.