Piobaireachd Manuscripts Welcome Page

Introduction

Welcome to the on-line piobaireachd manuscripts collection being hosted by McGillivray Piping Partnerships and Ceol Sean CD’s. The collection consists of four manuscripts; Angus MacKay’s manuscript, David Glen’s manuscript, the Nether Lorn manuscript, and Peter Reid’s manuscript. Web hosting of these manuscripts has been made possible due to the efforts of Dr. William Donaldson who coordinated the effort and who offers the following statement:

“Without the support of many institutions and individuals the posting of these old piping manuscripts to the net would not have been possible.  Particular thanks are due to the National Library of Scotland who gave permission for manuscripts belonging to them to be included, the Carnegie Trust who funded initial copying of the scores, the Open University in Scotland for contributing to research costs, and to Jim McGillivray and Steve Scaife who generously committed much time and bandwidth to the project.”

Dr. William Donaldson
Aberdeen,
Scotland,
December 2007

Conditions of Use

These manuscripts are available as presented for non-commercial playing and study uses only, including downloading and printing. Written permission for any other uses (including reproduction, publication, adaptation, manipulation of images, rental and leasing) must be obtained form the Manuscripts Collections Division of the National Library of Scotland.

Organization of the manuscripts

Each of the manuscripts is presented individually. The links provided below take you to the introduction page for each manuscript. This introduction page presents a historical description prepared by Dr. William Donaldson, along with links to each setting in the manuscript. Simply click on the title of the setting to activate the link. When the setting appears, please be aware that many of the settings begin in the middle, or even near the bottom of the page. This is especially true with many of the David Glen and Nether Lorn settings. Just scroll down the page a bit, and you will see the beginning of the setting.

In addition to the links to the manuscript, each introduction page has a link to Dr. William Donaldson’s Index of Piobaireachd Manuscripts. This index provides a complete list of all piobaireachd settings from 18 different manuscripts, and also includes notes.

In addition to the Index of Piobaireachd Manuscripts discussed above, Dr. William Donaldson has also provided a General Published Piobaireachd Index. There are links to each of these documents at the bottom of the page.

Links to the manuscripts

Click here to link to the David Glen Manuscript

Click here to link to the Angus MacKay Manuscript

Click here to link to the Peter Reid Manuscript

Click here to link to the Nether Lorn Manuscript

Links to the Indexes

Click here to link to the Index of Piobaireachd Manuscripts

Click here to link to the Published Piobaireachd Index