Music and Bards – a rich and active cultural life

 

Joseph MacDonald

​

Joseph’s father was the Reverend Murdoch MacDonald, minister in Durness and a key campaigner for the establishment of the parish school at Loch Croispol.  It is said that Joseph and his brother Patrick and sister Florence were taught violin by the Keoldale Factor, Kenneth Sutherland – and that Joseph and Florence composed some of the airs for Rob Donn’s songs.  Joseph gained a position with the East India Company and sailed to India in 1760.  He wrote the manuscript for this book on the voyage.  Joseph died of ‘fever’ in Calcutta in 1763, aged 24 years old.  The book was published in 1803 in small numbers and then rediscovered and reprinted in 1927.  It was not until the 1950s and the scholarly work of Archibald Campbell that this book becomes acknowledged as the earliest known primary source on Highland bagpipe music

 

Rob Donn Mackay

​

The famous Bard was also very much part of the community in the years when Joseph’s father Rev Murdoch was campaigning to get a school and once the school opened.  After his death in 1778 his songs and poems continued to be recited and sung very widely across Mackay Country and were taken abroad by the many men who served in the military too.