Malcolm Nicolson MacInnes

It is always fascinating when you get an innocent query that turns into more and more coincidences. This happened when I received an inquiry from a Pipe Major from the U.K. He is looking for a Malcolm MacInnes who had written a book of bagpipe tunes in 1939.

This work was called 120 Bagpipe Tunes, Gleanings & Styles. Today this book, published in 1951, is getting a lot of critical attention. Part of this work is called “Tuning Preludes” and is meant to test out all aspects of the bagpipes and get the piper ready to play. This is shown at https://macinnes.org/music/120BagpipeBook/MacInnes/MacInnes_TOC.html with each song available in sheet music in pdf format.  For a list in alphabetical format, go to Names_TOC.html

Malcolm grew up in a croft just outside of Drumfearn, Scotland. Drumfearn is located in Sleat on the Isle of Skye, Inverness-shire, about six miles from Leitir Fura on the east coast of Skye. Leitir Fura is described on this web and is a historical area in Scotland since a family of MacInneses lived there and were notorious rum runners. They would watch for barges coming down the loch, then steal the rum and whisky. I am sure this was a small part of the MacInnes in the area. Looking at Malcolm’s family tree, almost everyone was from Leitir Fura, Drumfearn or the surrounding area.

Malcolm was born February 8, 1871 to John and Mary MacInnes. He had two older brothers and four older sisters, and only spoke Gaelic. “He attended school in Inverness at Raining’s School, under a distinguished Gaelic scholar, Dr. Alexander McBain. It is likely that he was a student at Raining’s between 1880 and 1886. He became a student at Edinburgh University about 1887. He matriculated in 1887 and graduated M.A. in 1891. Malcolm was an outstanding student, taking a second and post-graduate degree in law, graduating in L.L.B in 1898.” This information is taken from John W. Keddie who wrote a four-page article on the life of Malcolm.

But Malcolm was not just a scholar. He possessed unusual strength and physical stature and became involved in local Highland Games. He was particularly gifted in the shot put and the hammer throw. The hammer was thrown statically, just standing, and not spinning. The hammer is 16 pounds on a wooden handle. Malcolm could throw the shot about 40 feet and hammer over 110 feet, which at the time was considered world class. Malcolm never trained and attended these games as a hobby, but he usually placed first or second.

In 1901 Malcolm moved to Transvaal (Johannesburg), Republic of South Africa where he initially worked in the mines, but he continued to study law and was appointed to the Permanent Secretary for Education, considered a very prestigious position. He also continued to attend the games in South Africa where he won the hammer competition twice and the shot seven times.

In 1926 he returned to Drumfearn and took up farming, but wanderlust set in, and he continued to pursue cultural interests, including piping. He was a severe critic of Gaelic melodies as they had evolved over time and worked to make them more traditional. That is where the 120 Bagpipes was created. He took his material from Alexander Nicolson’s 1881 production of A Collection of Gaelic Proverbs and Familiar Phrases. (Nicolson was his mother’s maiden name.)

He never married but traveled around achieving cultural pursuits. He is buried in Kilmore, near Armadale in the southwest corner of the Isle of Skye.

But there is one more fascinating tale of Malcolm. In researching his bagpipe work, I found that several people from the Isle of Skye had done extensive work on Ancestry on his family tree. This is where many of the pictures and John Keddie’s work was found. I traced back Malcolm’s lineage, and to my amazement Malcolm is a 6th generation descendant of the famed Neil of the Bow (Naill a’ Bogha). Naill was born in 1580 in Leitir Fura and the tree actually has two more generations back to 1530. The earliest descendants show they were born in Morvern, Argyll, but I cannot be sure of the accuracy of these records before 1500. Almost all the descendants after that first one were born in Leitir Fura. But Malcolm was born in Drumfearn, about 6 miles away. This supports our web article that when the large oak burned in Leitir Fura, the MacInnes group moved away from Leitir Fura. Today there are no residents living in Leitir Fura.