GREY’S NOTES
by Michael Grey.
Piping Today #96 • 2019.
It was a bleak, frosty, light-starved January day in Edinburgh about 20 years ago that it found me. The kind of day where the only cure for quaffing a little too long – and often – from things in Glasgow connected to things Celtic called for a long walk in the cold. Oddly, it’s that special kind of lugubrious, frigid grey that is the Old Town in winter, that can be the most curative.
And so I walked. From Waverley station to the occasionally punishing uphill steps of Fleshmarket Close, to Cockburn Street and finally “The Royal Mile” – High Street. It seems to me that today Edinburgh’s tourist areas are never really quiet, even at times when the days are shortest. It hasn’t always been this way. On this January afternoon, streets were muted. Locals, students and a hungover piper aside, the place, then, was slim pickings for the determined piping busker offering his tunes near the gobby Heart of Midlothian.
To the distant – and untuned – soundtrack of a gracenote-free rendition of Skye Boat Song – I was drawn, pulled as if otherworldly, to a city centre antiques shop. The place, with name carefully etched on the storefront, had been around a reliably long time. The faded gold leaf letters on the window gave away as much.
A push of the door and a corresponding ring of the horse bells that hung from the handle marked my entrance to the small shop – that, and a blast of humid, faux-tropical air. As if in a willful attempt to create his own private city centre Caribbean retreat, the elderly shopkeeper had heaters blazing to the max.
This place was no Jamaica. Jammed to the beams with shimmering silver and gold plates, brooches and every shape of Scots Victoriana ever conceived, the shop had a smell just like the basement of the home of my first teacher, Aberdonian George Walker. The basement of George’s suburban Toronto home was the place where he would teach. Come to think of it, basements – rare to homes in Europe (and dare I say, Scotland, too) – are the go-to spot for piping activity in Canadian homes, at least the ones where pipers live. The aroma was a quirky mix, heavy with notes of cowhide, mustiness and Airtight bag seasoning. Though the smell of it suggested otherwise, this Edinburgh shop wasn’t a piping place. And I loved it. Bread baking and George Walker’s basement: fantastically evocative scents – two of my most liked.
And yet, for this moment in time, this High Street antiques hot house was a piping place. On this day, under the scratched glass of the old display case were glowing pieces of treasure: shimmering gold and silver. Medals. Piping medals. Holy Hannah! “What’s this, good sir?” (I didn’t really put on any BBC4 voice). I do recall my surprise, though, when I found he did hear my question through the impressive tufts of hair sprouting from his ears. Hirsute lugs seem strangely common to shopkeepers of the antiques kind.
“Yes, we just got this lot in last week,” he said. The medals were of a very high quality, a kind not often seen today where disposable plastic or chrome trophies often rule the waves of prize-giving at piping events. Cast-molded images, the names of well-kent places and downright fine artwork was everywhere. There had to be more than two dozen medals on display: Strathpeffer, Atholl and Breadalbane Gathering, Inverness – the north and west of Scotland was well represented – and all were sterling silver or assayed gold.
“These come from the estate of a close relation to John MacDonald of Inverness,” said the canny, knowing shopkeeper. He opened the case and allowed me to handle the pieces. For that is surely what they were (and are), pieces, museum pieces. There were no bargains here. This High Street gent knew what he had on offer. An especially fine gold medal, pictured on the preceding page, caught my eye. The hallmark indicated it was made in 1905. On the medal’s front, impressive and fine work by an early 20th century goldsmith; on the back the words, “Won by John MacDonald”. I was thrilled to hold something that the great piper – one of the greatest ever – had once held in his own deft hands.
I didn’t really have the cash to buy the medal. But I did. You’ll have figured that out by now. This is why God made credit cards, I rationalised. This medal was won by MacDonald and awarded, I reckon, for his first Senior Piobaireachd win (as the contest is known today) at the Argyllshire Gathering in 1904.
As I get older I question more and more the value of things; you know, material things. Possessions. Beyond things like chairs and cutlery and shoes and all that – utilities, stuff that makes living livable – what about baubles and bling?
John MacDonald twice married but never had kids. I surmise that this lot of medals – “possessions” – landed in the hands of a niece or nephew, and they timed out with their progeny not much interested in stuff that belonged to a great uncle.
We know that this medal mattered to MacDonald. In fact, we can see that medals mattered to the great man. Information from The Piobaireachd Society’s website offers a timeline of MacDonald’s life. Here is the entry related to his Argyllshire Gathering win:
“13 Sept 1904. First Piobaireachd Society competition, Oban, won by JM. Results and tunes played are said to be on record, John’s being The King’s Taxes. The prize included a gold medal and there was a delay in awarding as it was not ready on the day, the Society not having yet settled on the design. As late as November 1904 John wrote two stiff and business-like letters complaining about the delay.”
The medal I’m looking after is dated 1905. It seems likely to me that this is the medal John MacDonald (eventually) received well after his winning 1904 King’s Taxes.
Again, when I look at MacDonald’s Oban medal I’m reminded of a lot things: the high craftsmanship common a century ago, that a great piper named John MacDonald lived and made wonderful music, that this medal mattered to him and that this medal did not matter to his ancestors, those care-taking his stuff. Or better put: things he once possessed.
My dad was a great collector of things. He appreciated old stuff: from the quirky to the highly crafted. He never apologised for it. “I enjoy these things,” he’d say. He knew that he was care-taking objects and the day would come when he wouldn’t care – the day of his last breath – and it was to someone else to treasure, or sell, or, for that matter, destroy.
And so, in my effort to reconcile the idea that “things” matter, at least a little, I came across a quote that speaks to me. From author and podcaster, Fennel Hudson: “fine things are reservoirs for the heart”.
John MacDonald’s medal, this cold gold thing, strangely, projects warmth. In this thing I’m reminded of him. I hope the caretaker that follows feels even half as much.