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THEY FOLLOWED THEIR MUSIC TO HELL
By Martin Osler
The photograph is posed and its subject looks stiff and uncomfortable. He has narrow, hooded eyes and is fixing the photographer with a fierce stare. A handlebar moustache makes him look older than his thirty odd years – the photo is not dated. He is in full highland dress; including a kilt, large hairy military sporran, plaid hung smartly over the left shoulder of his jacket and secured with a jewel encrusted silver brooch, pristine white spats to cover his brogues and a Glengarry hat with feather. The military attire of the 8th Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
The handsome man staring back from last century is Pipe Major William Lawrie. He would die in the Third Southern General Hospital in Oxford on the 28th December, 1916, from pneumonia, pleurisy and meningitis contracted in the trenches of First World War France. But Lawrie was more than just another statistic from that hell. Along with the others caught up in that devastating conflict he exhibited unfathomable courage, but he also left behind a rich musical legacy celebrated to this day.
This year is the 90th anniversary of the military engagement that became a byword for futile and indiscriminate slaughter - the Battle of the Somme. At the end of the five month campaign, the Allies had advanced just five miles. There were well over one million casualties on both sides. And yet out of this terror, a young Scottish bagpiper called William Lawrie composed one of the most celebrated and loved pieces of Scottish music, ‘The Battle of the Somme.’ Now some of Scotland’s most senior authorities on the bagpipes are calling for a fitting memorial to this forgotten hero to be established in his home of Ballachulish in Argyll.
One of those is Stuart Letford who is a professional bagpiper and author of the 'Little Book of Piping Quotations'. He also runs occasional piping tours to places like Ballachulish where curious enthusiasts visit Lawrie’s grave and learn about the legacy of Scotland’s national instrument.
“Regrettably, as yet there are no memorials to this illustrious piper,” says Stuart.
“Part of me says this is a shame and should be rectified. But part of me also says that in the age those chaps lived in, perhaps it’s the way they'd have liked it. Simple, understated and dignified.
“I feel Willie Lawrie's legacy in particular could be recognised in Ballachulish quite easily. Perhaps by having a small display in the Tourist Information office. Memorials like this have been set up in other parts of Scotland for other pipers.
“If they wanted the piping community involved in a 'grand unveiling' as it were, then they could have Lawrie’s piping descendents present – young Graeme Lawrie in particular is a fine player and conscious of his illustrious ancestor.”
A slate quarrier from Loanfern in Ballachulish, William Lawrie’s passion was the bagpipes. He was taught to play by his father, Hugh and tutored by the legendary piper John MacColl. He is recorded in documents from the time as being “one of his (MacColl’s) better pupils.” Born in 1881, Lawrie signed up to the 5th Volunteer Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at the age of 19. He made the 90 mile trip from Ballachulish to Dunoon to offer his services to ‘D’ company as a piper.
As well as ‘doing his duty’ for King and country, Lawrie was also dedicated to the bagpipes. An outstanding talent he won the prestigious Gold Medal of the Highland Society of London at the Northern Meeting in Inverness in 1910. This medal was for playing Piobaireachd, an ancient form of pipe music, handed down through the generations by word of mouth rather than written notation and revered as ‘classical’ music for the bagpipes. Lawrie also won the renowned Clasp competition in 1911 and the Gold Medal of the Piobaireachd Society in 1913 as well as many other piping prizes illustrating, without doubt, his stellar talent. His attraction not only extended to his bagpiping skills. He was also described as a “fine looking man.”
It was this talent that led to him gaining employment as official piper to the Earl of Dunmore and, later, Colonel MacDougall of Lunga. Although the practice was beginning to die out by Lawrie’s time, it was common for moneyed or titled men to employ their own piper to play for them each morning and at important events. This was seen as hugely prestigious in Highland society. In addition, pipers would be paid well for their efforts and attained a respected position in their communities.
In 1912 Lawrie was appointed Pipe Major of the 8th Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Territorial Force), registration number 10719. By this time he was already penning some fine pipe tunes that are still popular to this day. They included ‘Inverary Castle’, ‘Captain Carsewell’ and ‘The Paps of Glencoe’ which he composed one day during a walk with a friend from Ballachulish to Glencoe. Another tune, a Piobaireachd, the‘Lament for the late Lord Archibald Campbell’ was considered to be a masterpiece of the day but is now, sadly, lost.
With his good looks and outstanding musical talent, allied to his work ethic and life in the beautiful Scottish highlands, he must have been a contented man. But Lawrie’s destiny would lie in a place far removed from his Ballachulish home. In 1915 he was sent to the slaughter house that was France in the midst of the First World War. It was an unspeakably dark and deathly place that would ultimately take his life. And yet despite its horrors Lawrie would leave a rich bagpiping legacy still revered and enjoyed to this day.
The history of the bagpipes is interwoven with that of the military. Most battalions had pipe bands. Lawrie’s had 35 pipers. Earlier in the war pipers were used in action, the Germans calling the feared and respected Scottish soldiers ‘kilted ladies from hell.’ But after the Battle of the Somme, because of the large numbers of casualties, pipers were seen as too valuable to battalion morale to be risked and were kept out of the front line. Instead they were employed as orderlies, ammunition and ration carriers, and stretcher bearers.
Sadly, this change came too late for Lawrie. Out of the 8th Battalion’s pipe band, 16 were wounded in action, gassed or invalided out of the hostilities and a further two, including Lawrie, lost their lives. As Roderick D. Cannon writes in his book ‘The Highland Bagpipe and its Music’, “As late as 1918 an officer could write that not only were pipers too difficult to replace, but that….. ‘when the men heard the pipes they would lose control of themselves, and in their eagerness to get forward would be apt to rush into their own barrage’.”
But it was in this hell that Lawrie composed ‘The Battle of the Somme.’ It is still played regularly by pipe bands across the world and heard and performed at numerous ceilidhs from Stornoway to the Solway Firth and, indeed, across the rest of the UK. Anyone who has heard this tune played in its traditional 9/8 time would doubtless think it a jaunty piece with a natural swing to it. Almost a defiant wiggle of the kilt to the enemy. But in its horrific context this seems bizarre. A tune named after the bloodiest battle of any war in history should surely be a slow dirge or an air, bringing a tear to the eye.
One explanation given for this contradiction is that Lawrie gave the name ‘The Battle of the Some’ to a tune he had written previously and was unnamed. Lawrie researcher Dale Brown, from Troy, Missouri has his own theory.
“I believe that Lawrie indeed composed the tune, but that sometime later another person put the title to it. In many books it is often attributed to ‘Traditional’ but it was certainly written by Lawrie.
“Why such a brilliant composition can sometimes go without proper credit has puzzled me for a long time. I think part of the reason is the times and conditions that existed when ‘Battle of the Somme’ was written.”
Perhaps the tune says more about the defiance in the face of horrendous odds of those brave men in Lawrie’s battalion pipe band. Indeed, one newspaper entry from the time says the piece is “...spirited and tuneful...a favourite marching tune in many battalions.”
The Pipe Major of the current World Champions, Shotts and Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band, is Robert Mathieson. Himself a celebrated composer of pipe tunes, Mathieson says ‘The Battle of the Somme’ is one of the finest.
“This tune is one of Lawrie's best compositions. It has been picked up by other traditional musicians and on many other instruments very successfully. I have heard the tune played at a slow tempo with great emotion and think it probably sits better in this mood.
“Like all truly great melodies it works well in several formats, whether it be a lament, mid tempo or an upbeat march. From the emotive lament to the defiant swinging march this tune will never die.”
In another extraordinary quirk of fate, one of the other pipers in Lawrie’s battalion was also to become a legendary figure in the piping world. John McLellan from Dunoon had been awarded the D.C medal for gallantry at Magersfontein in the Boer War in December 1899. He was one of those in the 8th who was wounded, at Laventie in 1915.
McLellan is also regarded as a fine composer of pipe music. Many of his tunes such as ‘Lochanside’ and ‘The Taking of Beaumont Hamel’ are still played to this day and regularly feature at the top of end of surveys of the best bagpipe tunes. To think that in the horror and extreme discomfort of First World War France, there were two ordinary men from remote parts of Scotland finding the time and motivation to compose these tunes is quite extraordinary. Lawrie had signed up for the Volunteer Battalion when he was 19 because of his love of the bagpipes. He, McLellan, the 33 others in their Battalion and many, many more pipers in other regiments, followed their music into hell.
Pipe Major William Lawrie, one of the world’s finest composers and performers of pipe music, was buried in the St John Episcopalian church yard in Ballachulish. He was 35. He had fallen ill in France and was invalided to Oxford where, eventually, he died. His funeral took place with full military honours and four pipers played the haunting tune, ‘Flowers of the Forest.’ He left behind a wife and three children. One writer of the time expressed his untimely death simply. “He is remembered as a very gallant gentleman, renowned everywhere for the music he has left.” Nearly 90 years on, perhaps it is time for a fitting memorial to one of Scotland’s greatest ever bagpipers.