After the take-over of the Society on All Fools' Day 1912, the two conspirators, Campbell-K and Bones Grant, had hatched a two-point plan of deceit:-
1. To suppress the Society’s existing books of pibroch, on the shameless excuse that the contents were so stuffed with blunders they had to be replaced, bearing in mind that this original 1st collection had been allegedly edited by the same famous pipers, Sandy Cameron and MacDougall Gillies.
2. To replace the existing series on the sly with a new series which they pretended was the first.
To give it the credibility it so vitally needed, the lairds then outrageously claimed they were taught the weird versions in the 2nd edition by the same Sandy Cameron and MacDougall Gillies, who had supposedly edited the 1st edition, asserted to be so error-stricken it had to be destroyed.
Kilberry Castle, where it was decided all the old pipers were wrong.
The two legal brains instantly solved their self-imposed problem, apart from the truth, by obliterating all evidence of the existence of the true first series and not publishing the first part of the 2nd series until the famous pipers were safely dead, when they could no longer protest about the outrages published under their names.
Campbell-K and Grant then autocratically let it be known to piping instructors that all copies of the 1st collection should be “withdrawn”. The instructors well knew that if any of their pupils were caught playing from the originals, their piping careers would be abruptly terminated, and did as they were bidden.
The books were duly confiscated whenever they came to light, much to the outrage of the young pupils, many of whom remembered the theft for years. One was the late John Burgess, the famous piper who was taught by Willie Ross at Edinburgh Castle, and John told me he never forgot the day when his 1st edition books, which had somehow survived the purge, were confiscated by old Willie, saying he wouldn’t need them any more.
Details of the contents were soon blurred and forgotten. The next stage involved John Macdonald, the accomplice they so desperately needed.
The first section of the new series was edited by Bones Grant, because Campbell-K had allegedly returned to India in late September 1925 – the date was fraudulently altered to 1923, presumably to distance himself from the contents which instantly became the law. It also included The Big Spree, asserting this “traditional setting has been handed down by Donald Cameron and his sons to their pupils”. This was Bone’s code for J. MacDougall Gillies whom even he dared not name. “It is confirmed by an unnamed MS found among the papers of the late General Thomason…” Bones boldly added they were “conscious” that their choice “may provoke criticism.
“They can only urge in justification the popularity of the Cameron setting among pipers of their times, the opinion of many excellent players that the B enhances the beauty of the tune…” In fact it is almost identical to John MacKay sr’s setting, which Bones had unsportingly admitted, for a key part of the scam was to bury it at all costs, because it contradicted the false theory that his son, Angus MacKay, handed on unchanged all his father’s pibroch which in turn allegedly came down unaltered from the MacCrimmons. Angus had unsportingly handed on the MacArthur version of the tune, recorded without a name in the Highland Society of London MS a century earlier.
Bones had almost ruined the theory before it was properly off the groundwork, as it were, but the evasive way the claim was made deliberately fooled many people, even today. First the redundant A; now The Big Spree, which the “respectable” Piob. Society was going to rename The Great Banquet, after dinner in Dunvegan Castle on the evening the Borreraig cairn was unveiled in 1933.
This was to clean up the titles, doncha know, and get away from the original name of You’re Drunk, You’d Better Sleep (Angus MacKay) based on the Gaelic original which roughly translated as: “You’re Drunk, You’re Falling Down Drunk.”