The MacCrimmon Legend Quotes

“I gave a kiss, a kiss, a kiss I gave a kiss to the King's hand No man who filled a sheepskin bag with air Ever got such a welcome save me.”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“Alistair Campsie was a disgrace to the literary world! His lack of research, poison commentary and destructive narrative should be ignored by the world at large!”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“Musick they have, but not the harmony of the sphears, but loud terrene noises, like the bellowing of beasts; the loud bagpipe is their chief delight, stringed instruments are too soft to penetrate the organs of their ears,”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“Pipers at the Edinburgh contest were using two-droned pipes up until 1821, when such pipes were forbidden, because they allegedly gave an unfair advantage over other competitors playing the three-droned pipe.”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“It would have come as a considerable shock to Arch. Campbell and other members of the Piob. Society to know that when MacDougall Gillies played the tune in competitions which they were judging, he was playing it 'at' them instead of 'to' them ... and they did not realise he was expressing his loathing and contempt for them. When Robert Reid told me this, he added that I should not attempt to play the tune until I was forty. 'You won't be mature enough to understand hatred until that age.'— hatred being the emotion behind the tune.”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“was an advanced eccentric, and had the disconcerting habit of seizing people in the High Street of Edinburgh, and chanting and crooning these incomprehensible words of canntaireachd into their dazed and far-from-willing lugs.”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“When owing to the infirmity of his years, he could not play the Warpipe, he would sit in a sheltered spot, facing the sun but sheltered from the wind, with his stick in his hand, and playing upon it with his fingers, and with a sad Cronan (crooning), he played thus the tunes he used to play in his young days.”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“it is doubtful if they could differentiate between pibroch and a proctalgic twinge.”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“The Act also forbade the carrying of weapons, later claimed to ban the bagpipes, which had been judicially declared a weapon of war, for a piper named Reid was hanged in 1746 for playing the instrument in the Jacobite army.”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“Against the "supposed cause of insanity" is emphatically stated: "Disappointment and drink", bearing out the original newspaper story. But a later hand has scored through the first entry and substituted: "Over study of music".”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“with a predeliction for enticing people to approach him, then punching or kicking them in the testicles.  He was Angus MacKay, Queen Victoria's first household piper, a man of undoubted talents,”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“The outrage which greeted the announcement that the Scottish Arts Council had awarded me a Writer's Bursary to complete this book scrutinising the MacCrimmon legend was understandable, for the MacCrimmons are our most sacred cow. Indeed I received a couple of death threats”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay

“is to certify that someone so far unidentified wrote deliberate errors into the corrected final proofs of this book after they left my hands, then stole the proofs and the typescript, presumably to avoid detection from their hand-writing.     These errors were picked up by me in the advance copies and I immediately phoned the publishers, Canongate, and wrote the same day, July 18, 1980, giving details for an errata slip, which they promised to post out to everyone who had received a review copy.     The most dangerous errors were that a Seumas MacNeill's name had been given three incorrect spellings, which, as I feared, appeared to incense him, as he deeply resented any mis-spelling of his name, indicating the person responsible well knew of him.     He maturely retaliated in his Piping Times (Nov, 1980), at the age of 63, by mis-spelling my name five different ways and also mis-spelled the publisher's name in a "book review" signed Seumas MacNeill, He then distributed his magazine throughout the U.K., Europe, the Commonwealth and the U.S.A., asserting to the piping world the book was totally inaccurate, an allegation he was also permitted to make on BBC,”
― Alistair Campsie, The MacCrimmon Legend: The Madness of Angus MacKay