Thank you Katrina for last week’s tunes, this week tunes are courtesy of Dave G.
Session 1
1 Twinkle/OMD
2 The Mermaid’s Song wb19
3 Arran Boat set wb27/29
4 Far O’er Struay, Balchraggan
5 Sitting in Stern of a Boat, The Northern Lass. Wb 49
6 John McAlpine, Hugh Rory McKinnon, Ben Williams of Tiree. Wb53
Request Time
Last Weeks’s New Tune – The Banks of Spey, courtesy of oor Katrina and William Marshall.
Session 2
This Weeks New Tune, Miss Graham of Inchbrakie (see member area)
1 Ask My Father, The Panda. CB41
2 The Rope Waltz, My Cape Breton Home. CB 136
3 Starry Night in Shetland, Southwind, Lament of the First Generation. CB 143
4 Lament for the death of the Rev. Archie Beaton. CB 144
5 Jimmy O’ The Bu’s Polka, Koukkulammin Polkka. CB123
6 Sidlaw Hills, Cutting Bracken, Highland Whisky. CB103
Most of us will have heard and even played Major Graham of Inchbrakie (the tune Robert Burns preferred for My Love is Like a Red Red Rose but was thought too difficult for most so we got the simpler one). Well, Miss Graham was his Major Graham’s daughter, just in case you were interested. There were two adjacent estates near Crieff that Niel Gow frequented, namely the Morays of Abercairney and the Grahams of Inchbrakie. He wrote tunes for most if not all of the homes at which he was invited to play his fiddle. The two estates were eventually combined through marriage and the grand estate houses are no longer extant. Abercairney was demolished in the 1960s. Abercairney even had its own railways station, notably visited by Queen Victoria in September 1842. Abercairney station was closed in 1951 but the station house is still extant and occupied and the platform is still there.
