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After a protracted to-and-fro of letters in late 1983, BBC Scotland asked me to make a radio series, which I called, Pibroch, the Tangled Web, bringing the history of pibroch up to the present day in three programmes, later increased to four.
2 November 1983: I am informed the programmes, according to Martin Dalby, BBC Scotland’s head of music, are to be transmitted in Music Makars , which they hoped “to revive next January” (1984). But the date passes without hearing from him.
31 January 1984: Raymond Eagle, from Vancouver, phones me around 6 this frozen morning in my dressing gown over a series of letters of complaint about Campbell-K written by John Macdonald, Inverness, to Seton Gordon. Raymond wants to know how to handle the letters in his biography of Seton Gordon, simultaneously asking why I had refused to reply to his previous requests. I explain I had received so many weird phone calls I had decided not to reply to anyone and add I would get back to him. I go down to the National Library in Edinburgh to examine the letters and was astounded at the nature of Macdonald’s remarks, virtually calling Campbell-K a liar. If only I had known of these letters, I told myself, before writing the MacCrimmon book most of the false-faced complaints could never have been made. The appalling problem is that I had known of the letters but because of John Macdonald’s reputation as a yes-man I had not bothered to read them. They were on a list of letters, not yet catalogued in the National – and they were dynamite. It looked as if Seton Gordon had deliberately induced John Macdonald to reply to him on points raised about Campbell-K’s dishonesty. We were all in Raymond Eagle’s debt. And, of course, Seton Gordon’s
15 February 1984: Dalby informed me he wanted to book a studio in the latter part of March “to record the three programmes.” Yet again, no explanation for the delay was given.
16 February 1984: I immediately replied, stating I had unearthed a damning file of letters from John Macdonald, the Piob. Society’s chief instructor, to Seton Gordon, devastatingly criticising Campbell-K and his book. These letters had never previously been published.
I quoted Macdonald’s remarks about the Kilberry book: “’Yes’ I had a copy of ‘Kilberry’s book’ and my opinion of it is that it is the beginning of the end of our traditional Piobaireachd playing as handed down to us. I certainly don’t agree with any of his comments on the Camerons and Gillies, and I have had so much to do with him” (Campbell) “before he went to India and since his return that I am almost justified in saying he is untruthful. I will have something unpleasant to say to him when I read his book, and I am not continuing teaching the tunes for this Years competitions as written by the P.S. I am now too old to adopt the modern ideas of ‘Piob’ and am quite happy to keep to what I got from the old pipers. Kilberry has completely shorn the ‘Vaunting’ of its traditional beauty…” This was arrant sacrilege to the Piob. Society.
Macdonald, who died in 1953, probably never even saw the Sidelights and didn’t know the half of it, although he had already gone on record claiming that Campbell-K had not written down the music as he was given it by Sandy Cameron.
17 March 1984: I send the three scripts to Martin Dalby, explaining: “…you have here very powerful material which I have tried to handle as coolly as possible
22 March 1984: Dalby acknowledged receipt of the scripts and said the recordings were to be made on 27 March, giving me less than four days to practice the music excerpts for the programmes (These are the same clips used on the Pipers Press website) but the situation was somewhat worse. I reply: “I’ve dragged out my practice chanter and have been working away, but I haven’t been in practice for almost four years – for which I trust allowances will be made…”
27 March 1984: The recordings were made at BBC Glasgow. I have to read all three scripts in one day and also have to play examples from about ten pibrochs, which have to be note-perfect, a somewhat formidable task. I have never previously broadcast, meaning the stress is horrendous. The third script, called Angus MacKay - Messiah or Madman? discussed "Archibald Campbell who dominated the Piobaireachd Society and tried to brainwash modern pipers into believing Angus MacKay was some sort of Messiah. Old pipers had different views."
11 May 1984: I have been asked to provide a fourth script, The Hanoverian Hoodwinkers, which is to be recorded on 17 May 1984. I return to Glasgow to read the script and to play the pibroch excerpts. I seem to manage all right and think if this is broadcasting, it’s sure better than working. The only thing that concerned me, I told Martin Dalby, was I had tended to rest on a low A when I began to play each pibroch clip and was informed not to worry about it. The BBC engineers could do almost anything with a tape, I was advised, shortening or lengthening notes, and no-one would be any the wiser.
Even words could be altered and interchanged, and you wouldn't know. It all seemed pretty matter-of-fact to me, and I pointed out which notes needed shaving back, and low and behold, the unwanted low As were gone.
Eight months pass before I hear from Martin Dalby after recording the programmes dealing with Campbell-K and his book. He did not reply until November, saying there was still no date for broadcasting the programmes. He adds: “Be assured they will be one day; I stake my life on that.” He then added he still hadn’t had time to edit them, but would send cassettes.
25 January 1985: I write to Dalby, saying I had to be in Glasgow at the month-end and could “pop in” if he wanted. He did not answer.
27 January, 1985: BBC's Radio Scotland book programme transmits an interview I had done with its editor, Brian Hall, a highly experienced author, publisher and broadcaster. He mentions the storm over the MacCrimmon book and I point out that what had been done to pibroch was "nothing more or less than an act of cultural genocide." I also reveal I have a first thriller coming out in April, set at Edinburgh Festival, and that I intended to write "a dozen or so of them" for my pension fund. He tells me my first novel, By Law Protected, is already a collector's item and has achieved such acclaim it is being passed from hand-to-hand because of its scarcity. Brian Hall tells me he intends to praise the thriller to the skies and describe me as one of Scotland's leading novelists in a second programme.
Without warning, the programme was dumped and replaced with a blunt-hatchet job by a person, later identified as a bit-part player in a Scottish soap opera. He had a vocabulary to match. None of the buyers for the Scottish bookshop chains would now touch it. It was a disaster. What the hell had gone wrong? I wrote to Stan Taylor, the head of BBC Radio Scotland, expressing my disbelief and asking when the book programme review was to come out, giving some of the balance which BBC always boasted it set out to achieve. (For a full account of what happened go to the end of this link under Perfected Poison).
28 March 1985: The department secretary sent me tapes of the broadcasts. I was asked to “listen to them very carefully, particularly the musical illustrations. Please let us know, as soon as possible, if there are any mistakes.” It was all very mysterious as I hadn’t authorised any changes in the text, and was confident I had not made any errors in playing, apart from the low As, which had vanished as promised. I was very busy, therefore felt no need to check the rest of the tapes, which I should have done.
16 May 1985: I forwarded to Martin Dalby a copy of an anonymous postcard I was sent from the Isle of Barra, stating that Peter Cooke and John Macinnes of the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh University, were “preparing a paper on the Lady Doyle ms (Raasay) Angus MacKay’s music (not being his I presume).” I add: "It'd be a hell of a shame if McInnes and Cooke were allowed to creep in first and get the glory, unless the programmes came out before their alleged paper.
“It’s all the more ironic as I asked the pair of them to act as referees to an application to the Leverhulme Trust some time ago and, of course, they had to see the material about crazy Angus’s music differing from his father’s…I wonder if they’ll give me attribution in their paper!” The application also emphasised the need to scrutinise all the minutes and papers of the Highland Society of London, which had been previously denied to me.
6 June 1985: I wrote to Martin Dalby: “I was a wee bit disappointed not to have heard anything about the MacCrimmon Hoax project – and can only assume it has been dumped…?”
Again there was no answer from Martin Dalby. Instead I received a surprise note from the Head of Radio Scotland, Stan Taylor, saying he had been thinking about inviting me to appear and “air your view about critics.” He said he would take it up with me when he returned from holiday.
4 July 1985: I write to Stan Taylor accepting his proposal. I add a P.S.: “Could you please tell me when my radio series, Pibroch the Tangled Web, produced by Martin Dalby, is coming out? It was recorded more than a year ago and until it is broadcast, I can’t start on the sequel to my MacCrimmon book, of which the talks form the basis. Many people are eagerly awaiting them.” Two more months pass without a reply.
9 September 1985: The music department secretary has asked me to go down to BBC Glasgow for a final editing of the tapes with Martin Dalby. The atmosphere was glacial. I could only wonder what had caused the interminable and inexcusable delays, as he refused to tell me. How sad it all seemed, for not so long earlier Dalby had asked if I would act as a peacemaker between BBC and a very famous piper -- whose name I won't give without his permission -- who said he had been dumped by BBC ( denied by BBC who claimed it was a colossal misunderstanding) for making a "controversial comment on the subject of the 'throw on D' ". Or so said the minutes of the BBC piping sub-committee; i.e. he had made a mild crack on Seumas MacNeill's scrunched-up version of the D throw. So I did the needful, and Dalby later wrote to me: "Many thanks for talking to him and establishing a relationship between us once more." Now I realised that if MacNeill seemed to have such sway over a couple of grace-notes, what mischief could he get up to when a really controversial series was involved? I was blurring round the edges and decided to say nothing that could remotely cause offence.
17 September 1985: Stan Taylor poignantly wrote: “Just in case no-one else has let you know, your series ‘Pibroch, the Tangled Web’, at last begins on Radio Scotland this coming Sunday at 4.30 p.m .” That was it. The end of another auld sang, as we say in Scotland.
*
I had written to BBC 20 months earlier about finding the utterly damning John Macdonald letters and then regarded Piping Times as too nauseating to read. I therefore did not know the March issue announced that Campbell’s K’s son, James, had by some weird coincidence arranged with the Piobaireachd Society secretary, Seumas MacNeill, who was also chief presenter of BBC piping programmes, to edit a short ring-binder book squeezing together his father’s own thoughts on how he had assembled his Kilberry Book of Ceol Mor. Now they were to be hurriedly published under the name Side Lights on the Kilberry Book almost 70 years after they were written in 1917, while James Campbell, a barrister, mysteriously commented in his “Editor’s Preface”: -
“Included are reproductions of twenty tunes, with the accompanying notes. This seems about right for a start… A limit on numbers also improves the prospect of getting something out in reasonably quick time, an aim which explains any lack of elegance…” You can say that again, but no confession was ever made to account for the unnatural haste.
Instead James, the son, dutifully whitened the image of his father in such a way that people who knew him would never have recognised him. For example: “My father had a lifelong distaste for seeking to dogmatize” and claimed that any difficulty in “interpreting the Kilberry Book did not stem from inability in the author to put his meaning across on paper but rather from a horror of being thought to be laying down the law.”
The official reason for writing the memoir was allegedly in case any of his sons wanted to take up pibroch. Poor them. The reason given for the dangerous voyage back to UK was because India was too hot for children, which was laughable, especially as home leave was suspended in war time. Campbell suppressed all mention of the Lahore conspiracy trial in 1915, the later threats and the hangings. In Scotland in the 1980s when the text was published, a sizeable Nationalist grouping had organised with a significant number of MPs. Perhaps it was thought that the Nats would have been appalled by an admission about the Lahore hangings of Indians who were themselves seeking independence.
The first intimation of the Second Coming of Kilberry was in an ad. published in the March 1984 issue of Piping Times, priced £7 plus postage, but I did not see them until June 2008, which was 24 years later.
June 1984: Meanwhile a second full-page ad for Campbell’s “Side Lights” was published in Piping Times, and a third full-page ad was published the following month.
December 1984: Unknown to me the Piping Times in its new issue carried the first-known eulogy of Side Lights on how Campbell-K had allegedly come to contrive the Kilberry Book. Presumably it marked the official date of publication. It greasily trickled: “…the most fascinating and important publication to have appeared in recent times. Briefly, it consists of twenty tunes in the handwriting of Archibald Campbell of Kilberry together with his notes on how to play them…” On it oozed: “We can tell now even the shades between Robert Reid’s playing and MacDougall Gillies’s.” The hallucinatory claim was enough to damn the book out of hand. Shades, indeed?
It sounded more like deadly nightshade to me, yet another toxic attempt to authenticate and corroborate Campbell-K’s ineffable campaign to prove that Robert Reid, by now his arch-enemy, had somehow altered his playing from the way he was taught by his revered master, John MacDougall Gillies, in turn insinuating that the Piobaireachd Society’s published falsehoods in the P.S. books edited by Campbell-K and his later Kilberry Book were normal.
Unfortunately no-one told me about the “review”, nor as far as I know, had the integrity to complain about its version of the truth. I did not see this grotesque “book” until June 2008, more than 24 years after it appeared, nor see the ads until after my wife decided to examine the Piping Times file at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, in 2008.
The anonymous smarmer, who wrongly claimed Campbell-K died in 1961 (1963 more like it) became quite sickening, referring to “a Godhead” of teachers, “a Holy Trinity by whom he was fortunate enough to have had intensive lessons at different times.”
Carnaptious
The bizarre delays by the BBC, which it has never explained, had the effect of permitting the Piob. Society to retaliate in advance before the programmes were even broadcast, although they had been recorded before the snidey Side Lights had ever been announced far less published. One programme included Robert Reid’s informed statement made on 23 June, 1954: “He was quite a different man from the dogmatic old Lawyer I once knew.”
Others had much to say about this new-found humility, which most people who had encountered him thought was better described as “carnaptious”, the Scots word for “irritable, or quarrelsome”. His niece, Marion Campbell, who rightfully held the title of “Kilberry”, said of him: “Uncle Archie was an awfully easy man to fall out with.”
Even Campbell-K’s long-time serfs like Seumas MacNeill and Gen. Frank Richardson were forced to own up in Piobaireachd and its Interpretation (1987): “Probably few pipers today can imagine the extent to which” (Campbell-K and Bones Grant) “ruled the roost in their heyday. Both (were) men of the Law, their word was law to pipers. John MacDonald (sic) could and did occasionally disagree with them; and they alone could criticise him.”
Somerled MacDonald, regarded as one of the best amateur pipers of the day, had intended to write a book on the teaching methods of some of the old masters, “but any book I would write would be ridiculed at once,” he remarked, “… its origin in jealousy.” When the proposed book was discovered he added the reason for the ridicule: “I think Hitler and Mussolini (Campbell-K and Bones Grant) wished to discredit me as an authority.”
MacDonald then commented: “Why should a man like Campbell be allowed to constitute himself the one and only authority? Why should I have to listen to a ‘running commentary’ on what the piper competing is playing when I know perfectly well that I could teach the said commentator who cannot even finger the chanter.”
All this (problem with the music) had occurred because of “an ignorant man – Kilberry… John MacDonald (claims) that all the music is wrong and that Sandy Cameron did not give it to him (Campbell-K) as he says.”
Campbell-K had already admitted the argumentative side of his nature when he spoke of his rows with Gen. Thomason over the so-called redundant A. “I had much argument with General Thomason about this A, he maintaining that it was played and played distinctly and I asserted that if the A was played the second G gracenote is not played. In a question like this he was at a disadvantage as he was never thoroughly taught.” Poor Thomason was then almost in his eighties and died soon afterwards.
Robert Reid much later indicated that Campbell-K’s tantrums diminished with age, already quoted in part. He wrote on 23 June, 1954: “I’ve heard no more since my talk with Kilberry (Campbell) but expect they are ‘cooking’ up something which won’t interest me much. He was quite a different from the dogmatic old Lawyer I once knew.”
Macdonald, who died in 1953, probably never even saw the Sidelights and didn't know the half of it, although he had already gone on record claiming that Campbell-K had not written down the music as he was given it by Sandy Cameron.
Nevertheless, James Campbell presented his father as a meek and mild man, as if no-one had previously been the victim of his outrageous bad temper. He quoted his father as being quietly courteous in asserting that Sandy Cameron had approved the Angus MacKay method of writing the double echo on D. “I was very careful to make certain about this point,” wrote Campbell Sr. “I told Gillies about this and he said it was curious that (Sandy) Cameron should have instructed me thus, but made no admission of being himself wrong.”
 
The Cameron style, as The Kilberry Klunker,
written by Gillies from Angus MacKay
The truth was that Campbell-K earlier described in a letter what did happen which was quite different and possibly more truthful. Instead the irascible father had hurried back to his earlier mentor, Gillies, and angrily questioned him, but Gillies had now become his tor-mentor, and assumed the courteous deadpan and deceptive face the Highlander had been forced to display to the laird for centuries, which Campbell-K was too bumptious to realise.
“All that Gillies said,” Campbell-K spluttered in his letter, “was: ‘isn’t that curious?’
“I entered in to no further discussion,” he pompously added, and came by chance to the truth of the matter. “If you begin arguing with these people you get nothing out of them.” It would seem they were merely there to be used, but he failed there, too.
Crippled
Campbell-K then provided his unique views on how others had confused pibroch notation, inadvertently revealing his almost total ignorance of traditional pibroch technique.
“The conventional method of writing the Taorluath and Crunluath is very curious,” Campbell-K later confessed. “(Angus) MacKay writes them thus:-
The 'inexplicable' E and the 'equally curious' A's
“As regards the Crunluath,” he resentfully wondered, “why the first E is written full when it is played as a particularly short grace note is inexplicable. Modern writers write it as a grace note. But the presence of the A semi-quaver in both the Taorluath and Crunluath is equally curious.” If he had known, pibroch would not be in the crippled condition it finds itself today.
What is not inexplicable is what the judge-in-embryo then did. He pretended by law they never existed, because they were a marker of his own ignorance of the music. They had effectively been already expunged from the record by Bones Grant when he was keeping down his own natives, as he specifically thought of them, and destroying their own traditional playing while pretending to save it, because again he was in ignorance of what he was presuming to rewrite for posterity.
Yet the two notes concerned are essential in learning how to play both movements, and others, and if our self-appointed leaders didn’t and still so blatantly don’t know, I can hardly be expected to educate their followers who would then probably tell me, why, they knew all along. So let’s hear their explanation first.
Gillies had already brushed Campbell-K off about the “redundant A”, and he had bitterly complained in notes left for publication that the alleged existence of this Houdini of a note “is equally curious.” He claimed: “I was taught by Gillies not to sound it at all but to lift the third finger of the upper hand simultaneously with the little finger of the lower hand.” If he had but known, it was an abject confession of rejection, if, of course, he could be believed.
It certainly was not the way that Gillies taught his protégé, Robert Reid, how to play it, for Robert Reid told me the exact wording employed by Gillies, then used it to show me how to practise this “missing” note repetitively, until I began to realise after the first year it should have been called the “essential A”, vital in playing a rounded grace-note group, unlike the weird “crackling” version prescribed by the Piob. Society in its role as Public Enemy No. 1 of Traditional Pibroch today.
The Johnnie-come-lately Campbell-K then rubbed his own nose in it by adding: “…Gillies says it is possible that the A may sound and no more. If it does it is merely caught in passing and is undoubtedly the shortest grace note in the whole turn.” And chucking his rattle out of the pram he petulantly demanded to know “so why should it be customary to write it as a full note?” Obviously no-one would tell him.
Veracity of the music
Finally, here is an analysis of six pibrochs, chosen at random, which Campbell-K crippled in the Sidelights, claiming it was how he was “taught” them by Sandy Cameron. . Let us now examine the veracity of Campbell-K’s claims.
1. The Big Spree
Campbell-K claimed that he was originally taught the tune by Gillies, but did not write down his version, instead preferring “the result of very thorough instruction from A. Cameron”, which he somehow received with at least a score of others during a three-week period of tuition from Sandy Cameron, who was taken to Kilberry Castle to provide the needful. The claims verge on hallucination, when you consider the first pibroch takes a year to learn.
Note the profusion of Campbell-K's pause marks which do not occur in other MS sources
Here is The Big Spree taken from MacDougall Gillie’s original MS book dated 9 December 1879.
Note the care and grace with which the title has been hand-lettered by MacDougall Gillies although he later described the MS book as “just a scrawl”, a description seized on by James Campbell to allegedly prove it wasn’t how Gillies played”, based on undisclosed information.
Campbell-K went to elaborate lengths to “prove”, by his way of it, that Sandy Cameron taught him the tune differently from Gillies, inserting pause mark after pause mark and claiming other notes should be mercilessly clipped. To “prove” it, Campbell-K described an alleged meeting with Sandy Cameron at the Northern Meeting in 1922, which is also described in one of the many biographical tapes by Craigie Calder, who recorded the information at first-hand from Robert Reid, long before the appearance of Sidelights, which Craigie never saw.
Campbell-K in his note to the tune, claimed that Sandy Cameron, was present at the Northern Meeting in 1922 “very old and shaky …(he) was emphatic in condemning his (Reid’s) cutting short the second C in the first bar (wherever it occurred throughout the ground) and making it a quaver…and he praised John Macdonald (sic) for playing this C long. Reid’s way is Gillies’ way,” Campbell-K asserted, “as taught by him to Reid and to me. Cameron taught me to play the C long and the final A of equal length and it is clear that he attached much importance to this C being played as long as the first C. The nearest way in which I can explain his method is as I have written a pause on the final A.”
It all seems so emphatic and plausible -- except for one thing. Campbell-K could never have suspected that anyone would later consult the 1928 Punjab History of Services for the Indian Civil Service to establish where he in fact was in 1922.
The truth was that Campbell-K was nowhere near Inverness. He was thousands of miles away in India. It was deliberate deception from beginning to bedraggled end.
A further note to the tune was based on an alleged conversation with Robert Reid, already mentioned in one of the Craigie Calder tapes, with a wealth of detail. Campbell-K instead alleged: “The previous year, 1921, (I was then in India) he (Reid) won the Gold Medal at Inverness. When he was tuning his pipes before playing, an old man came up and listened to him. Thinking this was one of the old wise-acres” a Campbell-K word, but definitely not a Reid expression.
Reid was supposed to have asked what he wanted. “The old man said ‘You play that tune rather like Jack Gillies; who taught you?’
Reid said, “Jack Gillies” taught me.
“Well, and I taught Jack Gillies.”
“Oh,” said Reid. “You must be Sandy Cameron.”
Of course, to back up Campbell-K’s tale about who “really” taught Gillies, his pupil should have said: “You must be Keith Cameron.” But he didn’t.
2. The Wee Spree
In Further Sidelights p.56. Campbell-K wrote the singling with the long low As, and the melody notes cut. As follows:-
His text then asserted on p.57:-
he truth is that MacDougall Gillies wrote it “up” for his pupil, Robert Reid, who taught his pupils the same way, exactly like Sandy Cameron and Calum MacPherson. Here (below) in Gillies's own script is how he played and taught the singling to his pupils - "Up".
3. Donald of Laggan
Campbell-K then emphasised: “This is the only tune in which to my knowledge this method of playing is adopted by Gillies and A. Cameron, though it is often written elsewhere and played too by other pipers.” His bizarre reason? “The reason for adopting it here is obvious, that the note following the Taorluath note is invariably B, except for two or three Ds, and to make this note long would mean monotony and loss of the air.” He appeared incapable of realising he had already achieved these objects by cropping the melody notes.
These damning paragraphs concerning the taorluath of Donald of Laggan were not seen by me until around 5.50 p.m. on Wed. 16 July 2008, although I had for many years known that, according to Robert Reid, Campbell-K had ruined the taorluath of Donald of Laggan, and repeatedly told me: “And don’t you forget it.”
Campbell-K seems to have based his latest fabrication on the remarks about the tune in the Piob. Society’s 1st series, which is quoted under link The Kilberry Book, and were first mentioned by me in Pibroch, the Tangled Web. The broadcasts were inexplicably held up for about 20 months after recording by which time these Side Lights were rushed into publication, only 73 years after they were allegedly written.
Here is the “Side Lights” version of Donald of Laggan’s taorluath
Beneath is how Gillies copied out the taorluath of the tune for Robert Reid showing that the melody note and the final note of the group were the same in length while the note immediately after the grace-note bundle was stressed to depict the Cameron style of playing:-
4. Glengarry’s March
Campbell-K claimed (p.45) he was taught the tune by Sandy Cameron “from his fingers” and asserted that the “Thumb Variation would be better written making two bars out of one existing bar”.
He described the tune as “peculiar”, marking “an extraordinary event”, which he did not describe but implied that was reason enough for the broken metre. The tune is said to commemorate a revenge raid by Macdonnell of Glengarry clansmen who set fire to a church in Urray Parish, Muir of Ord, while the MacKenzie congregation was inside at its devotions. As the kirk burned the piper played around the building, first mimicking with his low G the psalm singing, followed by the fire sweeping through the thatched roof and the screams of the worshippers.
A good pibroch story indeed, marked by a fatal flaw. It was completely untrue.
Campbell-K claimed to have played the tune to Gillies in February 1921 who said the thumb variation was wrong, and to “prove” it, showed Campbell-K his MS book which he said he had copied from Sandy Cameron’s own MS book. (All this according to Campbell-K’s unsubstantiated allegation).
Campbell-K then wrote to Sandy Cameron asking if it was true and he obliquely replied on 15 February 1921 that he preferred the tune to be “played as it was written in my book… I prefer it the way I gave it to you at Kilberry.”
What it apparently meant was that Sandy Cameron confirmed his MS book differed from Gillies’s MS book – which it actually did because he had copied it from a different source, the previous tune in the book being dated 23 October 1884, and the following tune dated 24 October, 1884 -- long before he went to Sandy Cameron for re-training.
And it must be obvious that Gillies would not have needed re-training if the contents of his own MS book had been correct.
Thus emboldened, Campbell-K gave the thumb variation a good old heave and stretched the high notes out like Angus MacKay who had made the high G and following E dotted crotchet length. As he also gave crotchet length to the first E in every bar in the urlar, although the tune was founded on low G to mimic the singing.
Here is Campbell-K’s version of the thumb variation:-
Campbell alleged (p.45) that Gillies had written the thumb variation noted as follows from and including the fourth bar onwards which was taken from the discarded MS book:-
The truth, once more, was that Gillies wrote the thumb variation differently, after retraining by Sandy Cameron. Here is the full 2nd line of the thumb variation (Craigie Calder MS) which was fully authenticated by Robert Reid:-
The 2nd line of the Thumb variation, written by MacDougall Gillies after retraining by Sandy Cameron
5. The Desperate Battle
Above is the first line of the urlar, taken from Further Side Lights (p.21) which Campbell-K used as the basis for his version of the tune in the Piob. Society’s book 7 (2nd series) where he claimed: “The setting which is now printed was taught by Alexander Cameron.” ( i.e. Sandy Cameron).
Campbell-K also wrote the letter “C” above the note F in the first bar of the tune and asserted: “The grace note here is an ordinary Ceol Beag doubling (the only instance I know of in piobaireachd).”
The problem is that the version in fact comes from MacDougall Gillies’s “stolen” MS book where the first F crotchet was originally preceded by two F grace-notes and two high G grace-notes.
Campbell-K then turned the first F grace-note into a melody note, making it an F semi-quaver, leaving behind the Ceol Beag F doubling “the only instance I know of in piobaireachd.” As he was the person who had forged it, he presumably had that segment of his activities correct.
Below are the first two bars of the tune taken from the MacDougall Gillies MS book owned by Craigie Calder, which was copied from Sandy Cameron’s MS book, where it will be seen there are three F notes in the first bar which are separated by two high G grace-notes, and totally differ from Campbell-K’s P.S. version.
First line or urlar, taken from MacDougall Gillies’s/Craigie Calder’s MS book
On 25 September, 1942, the Piob. Society’s chief tutor, John Macdonald, wrote to Seton Gordon that he had a pupil called McRae on the previous Wednesday afternoon who played three tunes, including the Desperate Battle “as played and taught by Colin and Sandy Cameron which differs somewhat from the P.S. version.”
Once more Campbell-K is seen to have falsified the record, but it gets worse. In 1948 he republished the tune in his Kilberry book of Ceol Mor and without a word of explanation that I’ve heard of, substituted the book 7 version with the version below without any attribution whatsoever. Once more he wrecked the traditional phrasing. If you want to achieve the correct contrast, play the second E shorter than the following F into which it should flow.
6. The Vaunting
Campbell-K wrote the first line of the doubling of variation 1 as follows, marking the 2nd and the 4th bar with a C, for which he later gave a separate written explanation, asserting that these bars thus appeared in “the Piobaireachd Society Collection.
Campbell-K’s “Side Lights” version of the 1st Variation doubling
Campbell-K did not specify that the pibroch had appeared in Part 4 (1st Series) dated December, 1909, meaning his assertion could be more easily checked. He did not admit this was the “Collection” that he and Grant intended to withdraw and suppress.
The bars (above) showed that the final note in each group was a dotted quaver
He then gave a garbled account of how he had been on leave in 1910 and had questioned Gillies who had been allegedly involved in the production of Part 4, and Gillies told him the music was correct. “Cameron however in 1911 taught me as I have written. I am convinced that Gillies did teach me the same way in 1900 and that he had forgotten.” Easy to claim if the evidence had been falsified.
Campbell-K had again libelled Gillies, but unfortunately for Campbell-K’s own veracity the same bars in the suppressed Part 4 (marked C) of the Piob. Society's 1st edition were published as follows and giving the final notes concerned as full crotchets:-
(above) the final note groups in bars 2 and 4 marked “C” instead ended with full crotchets
Yet again Campbell-K had falsified the record.
So where did he find his aberrant version of the doubling? He had reverted to his amour propre, Angus MacKay, and lifted it from his 1838 book, knowing full well it was long out of print and virtually unobtainable by normal pipers. Here is the end of the doubling of Variation 1 as it appears in the 1838 book showing that the timing of the taorluath movement is exactly the same as Campbell-K’s forged version. Once more he had slyly foisted the Angus MacKay setting on pipers with the apparent approval of J. MacDougall Gillies, which the master had never given.
Doubling of Variation 1 in Angus MacKay’s 1838 book (above) showing each note group marked "C"
ended with a dotted quaver, the real source of Campbell-K’s “authentic” version
Everywhere you looked in this wretched book, you found more and more evidence of the scam. Gillies hadn’t forgotten at all. Once more he had been libelled.He taught the correct way to Robert Reid, who played it quite differently from the tattered version left by Archibald Campbell after he went to work on it. As John Macdonald, the Society’s chief instructor, put it: “Kilberry has completely shorn the ‘Vaunting’ of its traditional beauty.”
And this was the stuff that a father had allegedly written for his son in case he wanted to take up pibroch. What manner of father was this who would deceive his own sons and leave them what was nothing more or less than a perjurer's handbook as an exemplar of how to conduct their future lives. The Piob. Society which hurriedly published this odious piece of work seventy years after it was written, but somehow before the long-delayed programmes were broadcast should very carefully consider its position as it is now legally required, as a registered charity, to produce work which is historically accurate.
Perfected poison
January 1985: Early in the month the new head of BBC Radio Scotland, Stan Taylor, launches a book programme, Case and Paper, run by an author and experienced publisher, Brian Hall, who works from the Aberdeen station of BBC. He contacts me, asking if I would take part in a broadcast and he comes to Montrose to record it.
27 January 1985: Case and Paper transmits the interview with Brian Hall, who mentions the storm over the MacCrimmon book. I point out that what has been done to pibroch is “nothing more or less than an act of cultural genocide”, and that I will be writing a sequel. I also reveal that I have a first thriller coming out in April, set at Edinburgh Festival, and that I intend to write “a dozen or so of them or so” for my pension fund. He tells me that my first novel, By Law Protected, is already a collector’s item and has achieved such acclaim that it is being passed from hand to hand because of its scarcity.
18 April 1985: I go to BBC Aberdeen where Brian Hall interviews me about the thriller, Perfect Poison, which he has glowingly reviewed. In the staff club I am introduced to the station manager, Dennis Dick, another BBC “son of the manse” and to other visiting placemen as “one of Scotland’s best novelists.” Dick, whom I have never previously met nor heard of, seems not best pleased. I later discover he had worked at the Weekly Scotsman.
Brian Hall, the book editor, later explained that an arts programme, Prospect, has occasionally done books but the head of Radio Scotland had warned them off and many a limp wrist had been smacked to avoid duplication of reviews. Brian Hall said he had already told Prospect he was reviewing the thriller and advised them not to touch it.
21 April 1985: Prospect has broken the agreement for reasons unknown and torn the thriller to ribbons, falsely asserting not once but twice it had no plot, one of the most defamatory allegations that can be made about a thriller. The reviewer is unknown to me but later is exposed as “a bit-part player in a Scottish soap opera” called Ian Agnew.
Agnew grossly insults Hugh MacDiarmid making out he was mentally confused. (A bronze head of MacDiarmid sits on a plinth in the entrance hall of BBC Scotland’s HQ in Glasgow, as a mark of respect to the country’s greatest contemporary poet).
The back cover of the book quotes the review of By Law Protected in the Evening Times, Glasgow, by Jack House, the elder statesman of Scottish reviewing: “The great Hugh MacDiarmid has compared By Law Protected to the best works of Eric Linklater and Sir Compton Mackenzie and I think he’s not far off the mark”
Agnew chortles: “Perhaps he means Dennis Compton” and to clinch the ridicule sneers: “I’m still waiting to find out what ‘sullen coffee’ means.”
The expression was used on p.1, proving he had read that far. To answer his query I wrote to the head of BBC Radio Scotland, pointing out that the Oxford English Dictionary defined “sullen” as “of sombre hue, of a dull colour; hence of gloomy or dismal aspect.” I also asked for the bit-part player’s titles and qualifications to review a book written in English, and requested a transcript of the programme.
No answer was forthcoming, and certainly no transcript; foolishly asking for one had revealed I did not have one. I should possibly have given MacDiarmid’s original assessment in the unpublished preface, on which Jack House had based his statement: “Many of the ‘set pieces’ in the book equal Eric Linklater or the Compton Mackenzie of ‘Whisky Galore’ at their best. In short, I have pleasure in prefacing a book which dispels with ample knowledge and wit a great deal of the unwholesome ‘fug’ which is still wrapped round the general notion of Scotland and the Scots.”
22 April 1985: Prospect repeats its hatchet job, word for defamatory word. Our children sit in our basement restaurant listening to the insults about their dad, their faces stricken. The tape recorder is now ready to make a cassette but one of two keys is not depressed, and the interview is totally lost.
I phone Brian Hall, asking what on earth has happened. He is badly upset and says: “ I enjoyed it (Perfect Poison) very much. I thought it was amusing. Of course, I thought it had a plot. No matter what you think of Robert Hale, they don’t accept books without plots, neither do their readers. Perhaps he didn’t even read it.
“I am a little annoyed that Prospect have done it, because I told it that I was doing it. We have this good agreement going whereby we exchange information every couple of weeks. We try not to clash. If we do, even if there is a week or two between programmes, the Head of Radio Scotland will ring up to see what is going on. They knew I was going to review your book. I am more than a little annoyed.” He paused and added: “I won’t be using my review now.”
I do not know why Brian Hall refused to broadcast his review, as it would at least have balanced the BBC’s appalling behaviour. You can hardly have the book editor of an organisation extolling a book and its author one moment, and allowing a soap opera actor, who can’t by his own admission understand English, to destroy the reputation of the same author and his book the next and hope to retain credibility. No buyer for the major book shop chains in Scotland would now touch it.
23 April 1985: I write to Patrick Chalmers, controller of BBC Scotland, unaware he is one of the last “Milne-men” in BBC Scotland (ie. a close ally of Alasdair Milne, BBC’s director general, described as a piper) pointing out it had been a “macabre coincidence” for the attack to have happened “on the same day BBC was ordered to pay £75,000 in libel damages and an estimated £1,200.000 in costs.” I requested a transcript of the Agnew allegations. No chance. Others claimed the identity of the murderer eluded them all the way through. No plot forsooth. There seemed to be an even weirder plot unfolding all around me.
Especially as a publisher had just written to me, weirdly saying that people do not like their legends being interfered with, and threateningly added -- as you are shortly about to find out.
29 April 1985: I receive a standard rejection from BBC appointments saying my name would not be put on the short list for a producer’s job in Aberdeen, involving Doric, in which I am well-versed. I had specifically asked the station manager, Dennis Dick if I should apply for the job, and he said yes. I had told him if he contacted the head of music, Martin Dalby, he would let him hear one of The Tangled Web tapes to assess my voice-quality. Later I asked Dalby if he had done so. I was told Dick had not bothered contacting him. Afterwards I learned that “not being placed on the short list” was a classic BBC brush-off.
3 May 1985: Stan Taylor writes a letter of apology but claims that Agnew did not say there was no plot. Now there was no tape recording to back up my word, and you have to be word perfect when dealing with BBC. It’s their constant defence.
I ask when the Case and Paper interview was coming out to “balance” the distorted attack? BBC insists it is always balanced. No answer.
3 May 1985: It was a bizarre and unworldly segment of my life. I had left newspapers to write forensic-science thrillers of which Perfect Poison was the first. Instead I had been cajoled by my first publisher, Canongate, to write the MacCrimmon book as a non-fiction sequel to my first novel, which was so highly praised. Almost ten years of incessant and rabid smear and abuse had followed. When I thought over the circumstances under which Perfect Poison had been written, I realised it was a miracle it was ever completed. For it then to be so extolled by BBC Radio Scotland’s head book reviewer was equally miraculous to me, yet simultaneously the soap-opera segment of BBC Scotland set out to destroy it and my reputation as an author, breaking an agreement to do so. It was too murky for words, especially as I was still waiting for my long-delayed radio series, Pibroch: the Tangled Web, to be broadcast. What the hell had happened to it?
Ian Rankin’s first Rebus novel had appeared only two years earlier in 1987, its reception possibly helped by what other Scottish writers and even myself had done to show London publishers that books about Scotland would sell elsewhere. I don’t know.
What I do know is that back in 1983, I had sent Perfect Poison to a leading mass-market publisher, Century, and Mrs Rosemary Cheetham, a director who was wife of the founder and managing director, had taken the trouble to respond that although they published Scottish novels, they didn’t yet have a whodunit list, “so I think your novel would be rather an odd man out.
“It’s a good read though, and I feel sure you’d have no problems in placing with, say...” She gave the name of three leading publishers, indicating what she thought of the quality of the book which she had significantly described as “a novel”.
Perfect Poison’s principal character, Marcia Moore, was an American forensic-science investigator working for the UK Home Office in London and wanted to open a Scottish forensic-science institute at Stirling University, which is hinted at on the second-last page when Marcia announces that she and her new husband intend to set up “an academic stronghold together.” It was a commercial whiz of an idea. I devised the character in 1972 but the first novel was not published until 1985 because of all the contrived uproar and aggravation over the MacCrimmon book, so violent it hounded me into a heart attack.
Humour’s no joke.
Patricia Cornwell’s first Kay Scarpetta’s novel did not appear until 1990. There can be no connection between the two characters but it indicated an international interest in the genre. Ian Rankin’s epic Rebus series began a little earlier and he was latterly getting a million quid a book.
The thriller had been preceded by We Bought a Country Pub, claimed to be hysterically funny.
But the publisher insisted to me in writing that if it was categorised as humour it is, in so many cases, the kiss of death to a book. A local bookseller showed me the catalogue. The publisher had put the pub book under “Humour” which was at the very bottom of the list, and the book was at the end of the section. The last word. Despite its treatment the book promptly sold out and I could not even buy copies to sell at our private hotel. No paperback edition was ever published.
The publisher first insisted the book had to go out under a pen-name, Alan Mackinnon, meaning many changes to the narrative, then without warning or informing me put my real name on the blurb inside the dust-jacket. Hysterically funny? It was no joke, I can tell you. At that moment, I badly missed the rough and tumble of journalism. It worsened after the thriller came out.
I remember standing in the hotel kitchen weighing the thriller in one hand and thinking over all the work that had gone into it and all the grotesque treatment it had been given. In this latest sequence of events I’d already had one destructive answer by BBC which had already blackened my character as a writer. I was still waiting to discover if and when it now intended to broadcast the Pibroch, the Tangled Web series a year after it had been recorded and had heard nothing for months.
It all seemed ominous to me but one thing was as clear as crystal. I would never write another thriller when these sub-literary louts were around. That was it. Especially when I was not even permitted by the exquisitely balanced BBC to have the right of reply. All I could do was return to unreality.
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