The Big Music (51 page)

For a full family tree, showing the pattern of hereditary pipers at The Grey House and the professions and status of other members of the Sutherland family, also details of marriages, illnesses and deaths – see full family records kept on file at the University of Dundee archive.

As is clear from family records, there are certain names that reappear throughout the history of the Sutherland family of The Grey House: first-born sons, for the main part, take the name John, or John MacKay, with second-born sons and daughters taking the names Roderick, Callum, David, Donald, George, and Alexandra,
Wilhemina
, Elizabeth.

These names in turn have various ‘pet’ names, or alternatives, e.g. Wilhemina was always known as Bunty, the third Elizabeth was Bette, and so on. In ‘The Big Music’ John was called Johnnie by his mother (never his father), and, as is seen, refers to himself in later years by that name – though it is uncertain whether or not he was
ever known by that name elsewhere, away from home. Certainly his estranged wife, Sarah, never called him Johnnie, nor did Margaret.

Callum, John MacKay’s son, was named for his grandfather, John’s father, who, though he was christened Roderick and became John after the death of his elder brother, and took Callum as his second name, was nevertheless known by John’s mother as Callum – so John may have had sentimental reasons for selecting that name, rather than that it was carried by himself and his father. All through the history of the Sutherland family there is a tendency to name in this way, or to ‘mark’ certain family members by characteristics. Thus, the John Roderick MacKay who first established the ‘Grey Longhouse’ as a stop-over place for the Lairg sheep run was ‘First John’ and his grandson, who went himself to visit the factor of the Sutherland Estates to arrange for the leasing (and subsequent sale) of that property to himself (this, in the Taorluath section of ‘The Big Music’), was always known as John ‘Elder’, and his son ‘Old John’ – although the prefix ‘Old’ is a local term that applies to the patriarch of any family where it is likely that a son holds the same name. John MacKay was never named this way, with the description attached. Perhaps that was because he spent the main part of his adult life in Edinburgh and London. Perhaps it was because, in that way, he had never fully belonged to The Grey House as his father and the generations before had belonged. Or perhaps, because his son was nowhere near and he barely saw him at all, there was no reason to mark him as separate from his child. They were separate enough already.

From as far back as the time of the ‘Grey Longhouse’ there have been kept records of music played and compositions attempted by various members of the Sutherland family.

In the beginning, before the easy circulation of printed manuscript, records consist of basic notes set down in a sort of chapbook that was kept in the original ‘Grey Longhouse’ and denotes tunes played and on what date, and some remarks. For example: the note ‘I had a kiss of the King’s hand’ is followed by the note ‘tunings, the dampe has found the bag’ and ‘J. played’. These are in shorthand, and hard to read – scanned versions of some of the pages are available, along with other original notes of this sort, in archive and are listed in the List of Additional Materials at the back of this book.

In addition to these papers are certain documents, letters etc. describing sections of music in canntaireachd, as may have been in custom at the time. For example, J. F. Campbell of Islay signs, ‘I have often seen my nurse, John Piper, reading and
practicing
music from an old paper manuscript, and silently fingering tunes’ (see
Bibliography
:
Canntaireachd: Articulate Music,
Archibald Sinclair, 1880), and certainly we have some remnants of what must have been once a comprehensive musical record kept at The Grey House that describe this practice, though the fragments left are badly damaged.

By the late nineteenth century, when the economic interests of The Grey House were prospering, there was money to purchase copies of the now-famous Angus MacKay manuscripts, all transcribed by him from the canntaireachd, which were used and played from right up to the time of John MacKay’s practice – though now these have been placed in archive. In addition there are copies of the Kilberry
manuscripts
and reproductions of the so-called Nether Lorn and Binneas A Boreraig manuscripts and the William Ross collection. In the twentieth century the library was extended with the introduction of the Piobaireachd Society’s volumes, these published regularly from 1902 until the present day, along with various pamphlets, leaflets and books containing more recent piobaireachd by John MacDougall Gillies and John MacDonald, as well as Donald MacLeod and John Callum Sutherland but excluding his last work ‘Lament for Himself’, which was left incomplete but is nevertheless ‘finished’ through the pages of this book, and is represented in extant manuscript form in Appendix 10a.

So then we understand that although, initially, the Sutherland family of pipers kept their own music for play within their own circle, at family gatherings and events, by the time of John ‘Elder’ Sutherland some of these compositions were notated and circulated for play by other pipers in the region, and as time went on, this practice formed the basis of the original ‘Grey House School of Piping’ as detailed in various sections of ‘The Big Music’. Papers and records of this and the musical activities of subsequent lessons and parties form a significant portion of filed papers and booklets kept in what has always been known as the Music Room in The Grey House – these include marches, strathspeys and reels and some salutes. In addition, the works of John MacKay are kept in labelled files – Ceol Mor 1–27, 1957–79 (referred to in the Taorluath movement) – including the
well-known
tunes ‘The Hills Always Come Back the Same’, ‘Stag’s Leap’ and ‘Elegy of the Lost Son’, all of which are also kept as recordings and similarly listed by number and date.

The Taorluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ details the history of John MacKay Sutherland, in terms of his business activities and musical endeavours, in relation to his taking leave of and then returning to The Grey House.

In addition, the third paper of the Crunluath movement, continued, contains a time line giving details of his family life – his position in his father’s family as only son bearing his father’s name, and his role as husband, father – as well as indications of his education, business and musical endeavours.

The business interests contain as follows: investments in Baillie Ross; Ross
Holdings
; MacKay Investments; Sutherland Holdings. Also Grey House estates;
additional
fishing, sporting holdings; forestry; real estate, London, Edinburgh.

In many respects, this section of the Appendix should sit outside the formal
reference
section of ‘The Big Music’ but is sited here for the reader’s convenience, as it may be viewed that the following notes pertain more to the history and knowledge of The Grey House than to an understanding of the people who lived there
permanently
from the years 1964 (Margaret and Helen) and 1968 (Iain) and who continue to inhabit the House and keep watch over it, are doing so now, at the moment while you are reading this.

So is the information included here to give insight as to how the House was
managed
and run, from those years when old John and Elizabeth were still alive. In
addition
, these notes may give greater understanding of the Taorluath and Crunluath movements of ‘The Big Music’ – those sections pertaining to Margaret MacKay in particular.

Materials and transcripts

From the time of her (permanent) arrival at The Grey House, Margaret MacKay kept a domestic journal recording details of the kitchen and laundry, gardens and domestic upkeep – including an inventory of linens, soft furnishings and various pieces of furniture and effects, with a running commentary on the state of their repair and condition.

This detailed logbook was not kept when she first came to the House as a young girl, when she worked for one summer only as a domestic assistant, but later, when her position was made permanent, and there is evidence that Margaret updated it regularly – sometimes on a daily basis.

In these account books we can gather a pattern of daily life as is lived: the fruits and vegetables that are in season, when and how these are bottled and preserved; the seeds that are sown for flower beds and glasshouse blooms; the condition of
textiles and embroideries, curtains and cushions etc. – all of which were rotated to be cleaned and mended, what rooms they were used in and indeed, how the use of these rooms changed over the years. We know, for example, how John MacKay’s bedroom was moved from the first floor to the little room downstairs, with details of how this move was arranged, as well as other alterations (painting, carpentry and so on) that are not provided in the body of the text of ‘The Big Music’. These records may be of interest to the student of domestic history as Margaret’s notes are fulsome and often refer to her reading from earlier household diaries kept from Elizabeth Sutherland’s time and before. Significantly, there is no recording in the logbook about the rearrangement of the Schoolroom at the top of the House to accommodate a double bed. In some way, it might be as though such an
arrangement
had never been.

In addition to journals kept, there are various transcripts of conversations,
interviews
, that took place between Margaret and her daughter Helen that are clearly
intended
to form a personal historical account – a way of placing certain facts within an objective, feminist context so as to understand more about how certain women, like Margaret MacKay, defined it seems almost entirely by their domestic
capability
, have a place within, say, gender studies or an understanding of the female role in literature. Though nothing formal has come of these recordings as yet, in terms of Helen MacKay editing and collecting them into some kind of history or novel or poem (save those sections used at various points of ‘The Big Music’ to provide a sort of ‘dithis’ or variation to the theme), they nevertheless provide an
illuminating
account of how a woman’s domestic life may be described – how a mother may describe herself to a daughter, as a parent to a child; how the so-called ‘invisibility’ of motherhood may be made ‘visible’ – and someday could well form the basis of a moving and involving polemic regarding the subject of maternity and its identity and ethics. For more information on this area of study, see Lisa Baraitser and Sigal Spigel, MaMSIE (Mapping Maternal Subjectivities, Identities, Ethics), University of London. For this reason, all tapes have been labelled and numbered, with a view to providing for future research interests and general study. Included in all accounts, running through them as an ongoing theme, is the background of The Grey House and the way it provides a context – emotional as well as economic, practical and historical – for a particular way of life that is defined by living in part of the world that is far off and remote, that sees few visitors and much that is familiar, long winters and a short, sharp spring. This context may find other useful metaphors in the practice of, say, the visual and literary arts, social criticism and essay, philosophy, ethical thinking.

Helen MacKay began keeping notes of her reading and study from as early as her time as a student at the Farr Academy, when she was a teenager, to the present day. The list is randomly kept – according to the order in which she read certain books – with a star marked alongside those titles that are of particular interest to her (and that we see written about in more detail in various school and university essays, some of which recur in her reading and research for her PhD degree and are available in archive and referred to in various papers of ‘The Big Music’, ‘The people at the House and what they thought of him’ etc.).

The pattern we see emerging from these lists is an interest in literary modernism, with a particular emphasis on the fiction of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf that is shown from early on and is developed over the years to accommodate feminist theoretical writing around both those artists and their milieu – i.e. Eliot, Pound, Joyce. Helen’s interest, it is clear, lies less with placing the two artists within that other context, or finding a way of locating them either within the American or European tradition (something those men in the list above were themselves endlessly interested in defining), than with exploring the wild differences and yet similarities between two markedly distinctive yet connected writers who were outsiders, both, as women, as individuals, as practitioners.

Note: The poem to which Helen is referring in the Crunluath movement of ‘The Big Music’ is taken from Robert Frost and represents an aspect of her general interest in American literature that began in her adolescence and continued through to her early thirties. Other titles from this period can be seen collected as part of the same reading list referred to above.

The oldest forms of music in Scotland are thought by some to be Gaelic singing and harp or clarsach playing, although there is much discussion as to there being a pipe that closely resembles the Highland bagpipe as we know it introduced at a similarly early period of Scotland’s history.

Certainly Scotland is today internationally recognised for its traditional music, which has remained vibrant throughout the twentieth century when many traditional
forms worldwide have lost popularity. In spite of emigration and a well-developed connection to music imported from the rest of Europe and the United States, Highland music in particular has kept many of its traditional aspects, and though the musical history of the region has always been somewhat purist in orientation, nevertheless there are certain influences of song, ballad and air that we hear played out in some bagpipe tunes. Much has been written on the subject of the two musical disciplines (see Bibliography/Music: Highland) – highlighting certain connections between the two such as use of intonation, phrasing and the use of notation – where we see how many piping ornaments mimic the Gaelic consonants of the songs.