RESEARCH
Case for ‘John MacDonald’MS and the Advice FoundTherein
JOHN SHONE
authorship of the ‘John MacDonald’ MS containing 10 piobaireachd transcribed into a hand bound book, dated around 1911/12 and now in my possession. Col. Murray seems to support the view that the tunes were probably written out by another hand who possibly attended the early Pipe Majors’ course run by Macdonald circa. 1911. At this stage such a suggestion has to overcome some major obstacles, namely: 1 John MacDonald’s handwriting in 1912, and later in the 1930s, is very similar to that contained in the MS.
I
2 The music written out for the examination of the potential Pipe Majors in 1911/12, asking them to grace the 1st part of ‘Leaving Glenurquhart’ appears
to be
identical to that in the MS. If the contention is that it was
Pipe Major Dunbar (under the great man’s instruction) who wrote out the tunes, than we have to explain away the fact, that he would therefore have had to write out his own examination question.Unlikely! To clinch the case that the
manuscript is by, and solely by, John MacDonald we need someone to show us that he visited Plymouth at the time the two piobaireachd in it were signed ‘Plymouth January 1912’.
18 was most interested in the
response to my article in February’s PT on the possible
I have sent a sample of MacDonald’s handwriting, and that contained in the manuscript, to an expert in the field. He has undertaken to submit these to forensic tests and let me know the outcome. When I have received the results of
such
comparisons I will write again to the Piping Times. Until then I wait with bated breath for someone to prove the Plymouth connection. I described the manuscript in a
previous article but I think it may be worth repeating here. It comprises bound, hand written, copies of 10 piobaireachd and at the end of each a date has been added, of, presumably, when each tune was transcribed. Whether these tunes are copies from a printed source we do not know. If they were written out byMacDonald, then each may have been transcribed from memory and could show how he learned them from ‘old’ Calum Piobair, and his other teachers and no doubt they conform to the way he, Macdonald, played them. However, I must emphasise that this is pure conjecture on my part, further evidence is required before we can be sure.
The evidence that this MS is by
JohnMacDonald is circumstantial but nevertheless strong. He left the book with Dr. MacPhail when he was instructing in the south of England in the 1930s. It would appear from the scrapbook kept up by Dr MacPhail
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