This post was submitted to us by Club Member Ronald Smith, who has been making a careful study of the question of “redundant A” and the question of interpreting “A Ghlas” among other subjects of interest to students of pibroch.
Part One - What does “A Ghlas” mean?
There are four tunes with the enigmatic name “A Glas”, all in the Nether Lorne MS, although one, “A Glas Mheur”, is found elsewhere and is well-known.
The notion that the name refers to a tuning exercise has gained currency, and can be traced to Bunting’s work on Irish harp music, where he uses the word “glas” and “gleus” in a manner that could lead to confusion (Bunting not being a gaelic speaker).
“Gleus” refers to tuning, and in the collection of Angus MacKay there is a piece, “Deuchain gleus” or tuning flourish.
However, there are compelling reasons to discount this theory, before it becomes an accepted “truth”.
1) Grammatical: the prefix “A” means “the”, and it is improbable that four tunes, all named “The Tuning Prelude” would appear in the same collection, since “the” denotes a particular or singular state or thing.
Also, since Campbell recorded four instances of tunes named “A Glas”, it must be assumed all four are mistakes for “gleus” - Campbell wrote “Glas” when he should have written “Gleus” four times. This seems a large assumption.
2) Linguistic: it is well established that “Glas” means a joining, with associated meanings of lock, or grip.
It also appears to have had some colloquial use in the past, when Gaelic was spoken widely in the Highlands. Dwelly”s Dictionary records some of this, notably the phrase “A glas ghuib” or “mouth lock”, which was used to mean to shut someone up; literally “I put the mouth-lock on him.”
3) Cultural: The idea of a “grip” or special handshake indicating membership, status, or solidarity was widespread in the 18th century; examples being the Masonic grip, and the Horseman”s grip - both signifying a degree of attainment. In this respect, Dr. Roderick Ross’s talk to the Piobaireachd Society mentioning “The Finger Lock” as a type of handshake between clansmen before battle - a tradition he claimed to have heard from Jockan MacPherson, son of Calum Piobaire - may be illuminating.
4) Historical: There is, in David Murray’s book “Music of the Highland Regiments” p. 217 (an order book from the late 18th century of The Argyll Fencibles which lists the tunes to be played by the piper for various events), mention that “A Glas Mheur” (The Finger Lock) is for Reveille, along with “War or Peace”, “Glengarry’s March”, and “Lord Breadalbane’s March”. It seems unlikely that a tune called “the tuning piece” would be found in such martial company.
Allan MacDonald, in his treatise on the relation between pibroch and song, found the words to a drinking song which was sung to the same tune, “A Glas Mheur”, suggesting it was pretty well known to drinkers - again, not the sort of company to chose a tuning prelude for their music.
The Transactions of The Gaelic Society of Inverness, Coronation Edition, published a paper on the Rankins of Mull, a notable family of hereditary pipers who gave up teaching around 1757. They had a story about this tune; that it was given to one of their pupils by a supernatural being (one of the “Sidhe”) while he was learning but had not quite got the hang of how to play; when he performed this piece, it was remarked that “the grip has come into his fingers”, meaning that he had attained mastery.
Since this tradition can be dated back so far, and since the meaning imputed to the name “A Glas Mheur” accords with the idea of attainment connected with “the Grip” mentioned earlier, I feel the suggestion that it means a tuning prelude is improbable; and likewise with the other three tunes. Rather, they all commemorate a forgotten gesture which we may never fully know.
Part Two - Is ‘A Glas’ a tuning prelude?
The oldest and most complete account of the ‘tuning prelude’ is in Joseph MacDonald’s Treatise (Ms pp28 - 30) where he has written out three such; the first ‘a general prelude (Deachin Ghleust) for the pipe always taught and played before a voluntary one…’ Dr. Cannon in a footnote traces this to an Irish phrase used by harpists (feachin gleis - a test of tuning, or a conventional set of tuning phrases for the pipe). [See footnote, below.]
Joseph’s example consists of three ‘chelalo’ type movements, onto C, B, B, then down to A.
Then come two ‘voluntary preludes’; Joseph states they are not long nor designed to be so. They present a style left to the invention of the player, characterized by many cuttings.
In his following section on ‘Time’, he quotes the first two bars of four pipe adagios, three of them being “Duncan Macrae of Kintail”, “MacLean’s Gathering”, and “The End of Ishberry Bridge”.
The first one is “Lament for the Castle of Dunyveg”. This is clearly distinguished from the preludes and was not considered by Joseph to be one. Nor does it resemble any of the three preludes.
FN - For a more detailed look at the linguistic background, see the article ‘Feaghan Geleash’ by Sean Donnelly, Ceol Tíre 25 (1984): pp 3-6; 11-12. (This is online.)
Very interesting article, Ronald.
This is an important discussion. We come away the richer for looking with fresh eyes at the primary evidence, putting it into wider cultural context, cautiously drawing out what we can say (if anything) and being brutally honest about what can’t.
Our earliest evidence is two spellings which I have checked with my own eyes - because I have learnt not to trust anything except a facsimile image. I have not yet received permission to make these available open access, but I agree with Roderick Cannon’s readings, which are Glaisvair (1778) and Glais-mheur (1785). A week ago (29 Dec), I added these sources to the list at http://www.altpibroch.com/gaelic-tune-titles/ (scroll down below the Introduction), revised Roderick’s note at http://www.altpibroch.com/ps132/, and added Allan MacDonald’s pronunciation of both options. Thank you Ronald for prompting these revisions!
I think the evidence points in both directions and point out that Roderick Cannon wrote “Suggested to be English spellings for Gaelic gleus, and interpreted as ‘[finger/ tuning] exercise’” (http://www.altpibroch.com/ps50/). He is not presenting this as a fact. Given the evidence available, he seems to me suitably cautious. My own attempt to make sense of the evidence is currently as follows: if the pibroch title had previously been understood as A’ Ghleus Mheur, meaning ‘The Finger Test/Trial/Preparation’, then gleus possessed a wide range of meanings to 18th-century pipers, including: 1) tuning phrases a couple of bars long; 2) short pieces to settle the pipe and player (PS 50 A Glase, PS 127 A Glass and PS 146 A Glas); and 3) a large-scale work (PS 132 Glaisvair), so named possibly because it focuses on a particular finger movement or, perhaps more likely, in response to a popular story involving a piper’s fingers. Many words in Scottish Gaelic have a wide range of meanings and Allan gives an introduction to the issues here in our audio discussion, ‘Glas or Gleus’, available at http://www.altpibroch.com/ps146/.
Perhaps a fruitful next step would be to gather the primary source material for the story about the fairy putting “the grip” into young Rankin’s fingers. What are the earliest Gaelic spellings and English translations of the relevant word here? I’d like to see these in facsimile. If this evidence post-dates 1820, then was it influenced by Donald MacDonald’s book? This hardly matters, however, because if the meaning is that Rankin had attained mastery, then this lies comfortably within the semantic range of gleus, the basic meaning of which in earlier times was ‘preparation’.
Linguistics is not my field, so I rely on the scholarship of others. I recently came across a clear and helpful introduction by Donald Meek which helps with interpreting the apparently random spellings of Scottish Gaelic words by scribes like Colin Campbell who either received no education in Scottish Gaelic orthography and/or were writing before conventions settled down as a result of the dictionaries published in the first half of the 19th century:
http://meekwrite.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/gaelic-language-studies-non-gaelic.html
I hope these reflections stimulate further investigations that force further revisions to Roderick’s notes on Gaelic titles. This is the joy of pibroch - its ever-unfolding depth!
Barnaby, the relevant word here is ‘context’ since the Rankin connected versions are all late and suspect. I dealt with some of those aspects in an article ‘Mull and the MacLean Pipers’ in the PT back in June 1990. However to summarize, The paper quoted from the TGSI of 1934 was by Neil Ranken Morrison. so as far as spellings go only dates to that point. But previously in 1907 in what was described as the ‘Prize Essay by Fionn’, (the pen name of Henry White’), a shorter version in English of most of what appears later in the 1934 TGSI article was published in the Celtic Monthly Vol 19, (1911).
The spelling there for what it is worth is A’Ghlas mheur.
What was interesting given the claims of many such family histories was that Fionn had got his information from Conndullie Ranken Morrison, Neil’s father and there are discrepancies between the two accounts and as far as the ‘family’ genealogy goes Neil’s version was wrong but the information Fionn got from the father does match the contemporary birth, marriage and estate records.
The ‘Finger lock’ story was just one of several mentioned by those two tradition bearers which also appear attributed to other piping families so not especially reliable. What however I find interesting as I have also pointed out in a review I was asked to do of the recent publication ‘Pipe Music of the Clan MacLean’, (2012). The original edition of the Music of the Clan MacLean compiled under the auspices of the Clan MacLean Society and published in 1900. The Finger Lock does not appear in that publication, which was done for the society by David Glen., (nor does it appear in this more recent work).
Again to paraphrase my words in that review, ‘The Rankins , unlike all the other famous piping families, with one dubious exception do not have any other tunes ascribed to them. The exception being the very late claim on the Finger Lock. Since that was a very common tune at the early piping competitions when a contemporary piping member of that family could have laid claim to it, the fact that they seemed not to have nor that the original 1900 publication of the MacLean music did not, speaks volumes.
Lastly, although you reference Roddy’s summation from his ‘Gaelic Names of Piobaireachd’ paper in ‘Scottish Studies’ there has not been any mention of the story he quotes of the piper Donald Sutherland and his ‘wee’ or’ light’ piobaireachd which he called ‘aglase’? Admittedly doubtful but should be brought into the discussion if only to reject it.
Thanks Keith. You will find a reference to ‘wee’ pibrochs being called ‘aglase’ in the revision to http://www.altpibroch.com/ps146 (which I made on 20 Aug 2015). I have been hesitating to propagate this revision to the other Glase/Glass/Glas pages - do you think it stands up to scrutiny? Please suggest any refinements.
The story about ‘wee’ pibrochs being called ‘aglase’ was collected by Bridget Mackenzie from Eric Rogart in Sutherland in the 1980s or 90s (see page 41 of Roderick’s article at . I have a suspicion that this was influenced by the copies of Colin Campbell’s Instrumental Book which were in circulation from 1909, but without further evidence we don’t know whether or not we are dealing with a circular argument here.
To make serious progress, we need evidence in Gaelic, preferably from before 1820… uses of glas and gleus in musical contexts. Is there any relevant material in J.F. Campbell’s Popular Tales or the Carmichael Watson collection? There’s a pleasurable task for someone! But it would make sense to go in armed with a longer list of questions before working through those two treasure chests.
‘Do I think it stands up to scrutiny?’ Well as far as it goes I have no doubt that we can take it that Bridget recorded what she was told accurately in her book. That was one of her earlier publications and was more reliable than the most recent two, although to be perfectly fair she had been very unwell for the past years and it shows in the most recent books. which only came out just before she died.
I am not sure however that I would be firmer than as I remarked ‘doubtful’. I would be surprised if the copies (not many) of the CC would have influenced things. The circulation of the originals and the copies was quite restricted.
Uses of ‘glas’ and ‘gleus’ in musical contexts, well there are a number of examples of ‘gleus’ in the sense of tuning an instrument, but I cannot remember actually seeing ‘glas’ used. J F Campbell’s ‘Popular Tales’ would be worth a search as they were mostly taken down from oral versions although the spelling would reflect the time and scribe. Carmichael Watson is not such a good bet as he is thought to have ‘edited’ a lot of what was collected. I seem to remember there was a bit of a debate about his methods which involved J L Campbell some years ago.
At least this discussion has had a positive aspect in that I found a working grey cell and had an idea. Based on the fact that Colin Campbell would not have been taught to write in Gaelic but was using phonetic Scots to write phonetically spoken Gaelic it occurred to me to see what variety of spellings the word ‘Glas’ had in Scots. So I hit the Dictionary of the Older Scots Tongue up to 1700.
That produced the following which tend to emphasis the point that too much weight should not be placed on old spellings. Glas, Glase, Glasse, Glasce. Glais, Glaise, Gles, Glesse, Glese, Compared to those the fact that Colin Campbell only had three variations looks positively narrow.
A further footnote: we see that Dr. Cannon appears to have initiated the idea that ‘A’ Glas (etc) could have come from the Irish phrase in Bunting’s book. But this skips over the gap between an obscure book published in Ireland around the turn of the 19th century, and a collection of piobroch compiled in Argyllshire around the same time, for the most part consisting of traditional and well-known pieces from the dwindling world of the old Highland pipers. How could such a collection from various sources (as the different spellings and different tunes suggest) have been influenced by Bunting’s book? The connection seems plausible if one is looking at various literary examples - but less so when the cultural and physical reality is taken into consideration.
Bunting’s Book it not mentioned by Roddy Cannon in the section of his ‘Gaelic Names of Pibrochs’ where he discusses the various permutations of ‘Glas’ and GLeus’. While not taking a firm position one way or the other it is certainly possible to take issue with your last comment regarding ‘cultural and physical reality into consideration’.
It is almost a case of where do we start? For example one of the volumes of CC has been bound using a section of a map of Ireland as end-papers. From it’s style the map dates to early 18th C, but it has not been recognised by any of the map experts. I took it to the National Library of Scotland Map Room and the equivalent in Dublin while Roddy consulted the British Library and two of the foremost Irish antiquarian map experts.
So where did it come from? Well for starters the Campbells at Ardmaddy were on top of the Quarry at Easdale, and boats from as far afield as Ireland came there to get slates. Even earlier in the 18th Century I have found contracts between Irish merchants from all the way up from Dublin northwards with land owners in Argyle, including Cameron of Locheil, (Argyle extended further north in those days), to buy and fell timber on their estates. That in turn would have required ships to collect it close by the felling sites.
But changing direction the regiment in which Colin Campbell briefly served spent time in Ireland and was in fact the regiment that order book belonged to. ( the order book itself is with the late J L Campbell’s papers on Canna). That would have given Colin Campbell an Irish connection well before any of Bunting’s publications. Mind you Donald MacDonald also spent time in Ireland well before Buntings publication’s as did many Scottish regiments Highland and Lowland. Way back in the 1640’s a regiment was raised by the Earl of Eglinton for service in Ireland and according to it’s papers it had a Lowland piper to each company, one of them being the son of Habbie Simpson of Kilbarchan fame.
I could go on with a pet subject of mine which is how the drove routes were probably musical conduits , cattle from the North of Ireland were shipped across to join the main Scottish drives south. but I have said enough to make my point.