Henry Robson’s poem The Northern Minstrel’s Budget, published around 1800 and subsequently included in the Northumbrian Minstrelsy (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1882) is a rhyming list of tunes played by
“A minstrel who wandered ’tween Tynedale and Tweedale,
Who well could perform on the bagpipes and fiddle.”
Among the tune titles listed is “my bonny Meggy Lauder” (which Robson rhymes with “rare Cuddy claw’d her”).
There are two Northumbrian smallpipe settings of Maggie Lauder, both of which have been recently published from manuscript sources. Like the Irish and Highland pipe settings they are closely related to Scottish fiddle versions, but both also have some unique passages of their own.
CLOUGH FAMILY
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The Clough version, included in The Clough Family of Newsham (Chris Ormston & Julia Say, Northumbrian Pipers’ Society, 2000), has the manuscript comment: “variations HC, TC, HC, TC, beginning of last century played by HC. Strange that not in Peacock.” The HC referred to is Henry Clough [I], 1789-1842, and while he may have had this version or parts of it in his repertoire at some stage, it is unlikely to have been at the very beginning of the 19th century, and it is not strange that it is not in Peacock’s collection (published c. 1800).
To explain: the great divergence of the Northumbrian smallpiping tradition from the other piping traditions of Britain and Ireland occurred a little later, when it was established that the “secondary” key of the chanter would be based on the 5th, rather than the 4th degree, of the chanter’s “primary” scale. So, in terms of their nominal key (actual pitch, and modes, may differ) union or uilleann pipes are in D and also play in G, Highland pipes are in A and also play in D, and Northumbrian smallpipes are in G and also play in D (rather than C). While Maggie Lauder is played in D on all the pipes mentioned, the piper’s experience of playing in D is different for each, as D is in a different place on each type of chanter.
In Peacock’s book, and in the later manuscripts of his pupil Robert Bewick, there are a significant number of tunes in C, but they are unsatisfactory because the major 7th (F#) in the chanter’s primary scale (G) cannot be flattened on a “plain” (i.e. unkeyed) cylindrical bore chanter to give a perfect 4th (F natural) in the key of C. The last gasp for the C tunes, which were probably taken from the Border pipe repertoire, must have been around the time of Bewick’s manuscripts (c. 1835), for these also contain tunes, primarily Scottish fiddle tunes, in the “new” key of D, and Maggie Lauder would not be out of place among them.
With the addition of more keywork to the chanter it is possible to play in C as well as D, but the C tunes were to fall almost entirely out of favour (the Cloughs retained a couple), or worse, to be misunderstood as being in A minor and played against A drones. From the time of Peacock onward the Northumbrian smallpipe repertoire became increasingly based on directional harmony and the extended scales of G and D, thus growing more and more distant from the old repertoire based on proportional harmony and the plain chanter scale: very few players today follow the Cloughs in straddling the divide with the old repertoire.
Much of the Clough version of Maggie Lauder is traceable to the fiddle versions. Five of the six strain openings coincide, though not in exact detail, with strain openings in McGibbon (for example):
1 = 1
2 = 2
3 = 3
4 not in McGibbon
5 = 4 in shape but not detail
6 = 5 and/or 8
Clough’s strain 4 is good idiomatic material. Although the motif itself is not new it is given a new slant here and justifies the family claim to originality. From our own point of view we also take account of the family’s position as inheritors of the Border tradition. On the other hand, we note that bars 4-8 of strain 1 are recycled almost without change through the whole setting, and that the descending scale passage in bar 7 lands on low D rather than low E, a melodic change with harmonic consequences.
G G ARMSTRONG
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G G Armstrong was a respected mid-20th century smallpiper. His annotations are given along with his manuscript version of Maggie Lauder in The Northumbrian Pipers’ Third Tune Book (Ann Sessoms, Northumbrian Pipers’ Society, 1991): “Mrs E. Olivers copy as she learned it from her father Robert Reid of North Shields,” and “Copied from J. W. Fenwick’s collection of music.” Robert Reid, the master pipemaker of his day, made Irish pipes as well as Northumbrian smallpipes, which may be significant in relation to this tune. The tune is not among those in J W Fenwick’s published Tutor (1896), and the whereabouts of any manuscripts Fenwick left are unknown.
Four of Armstrong’s five strain openings coincide with strain openings in McGibbon:
1 = 1
2 = 2
3 = 3
4 not in McGibbon
5 = 6 in shape but not detail
The set as a whole consists of the almost universally occurring strains 1-3 followed by two arpeggio strains. Strain 4 is not found elsewhere, and its opening bar is nicely mirrored in bar 5. The ending of bar 7 is consistent with the fiddle versions except in the final strain, which also replaces the descending scale figures with a spectacularly angular display of keyed smallpipe technique.
1.Intro . 2.Songs . 3.Anster Fair . 4.Fiddle . 5.Irish Pipes . 6.Highland Pipes . 7.Northumbrian Smallpipes . 8.Border Pipes . 9.Conclusion