pipers in the west Highlands had tried and rejected it. Politics were complex in
College Principal RobertWallace receives the pipes from NormanWelz
According to piping historian
Keith Sanger the evidence we have of 18th century pipe makers points to bagpipes being made by a very small number of turners in Edinburgh.The pipes would be made under the close supervision of a piper. It is possible that an occasional turner elsewhere may have made the odd instrument. The design and style of decoration would as much reflect the taste of the supervising piper as the individual turner, a situation that would have applied to early instruments before regular demand would have brought a degree of standardisation. The Museum already has the
Culloden pipes and two other sets which are pre-1800 plus others from the early 1800s. All are different in design and size.The Culloden set has only two tenor drones but as it came from Loch Awe this fits with Joseph MacDonald’s evidence, as he wrote in 1760 that pipers in the North Highlands used a third, bass, drone but
11
the mid 18th Century and the question of which Duke of Atholl and which of the Hapsburg Wars our story refers to is a difficult one.At the beginning of the century the duke had five sons. The eldest, John, joined Queen Anne’s army and died at the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709 during the War of the Spanish Succession in which France and Spain fought against the
Habsburg Empire, Britain, the United Provinces and Prussia.The second son William with his brothers Charles and George raised a battalion of Atholl men and fought for the Jacobites in 1715. Charles was taken prisoner and died. William and George fought again in 1719 and afterwards went in to exile in Europe. After the death of their father in 1725 William was known to the Jacobites as the Duke of Atholl while his next brother James