Annotation:Lord Breadalbane's March

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LORD BREADALBANE'S MARCH. Scottish, Slow March (6/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCD. David Murry, in his book Music of the Scottish Regiments (Edinburgh, 1994), notes this tune is said to have been played to turn the soldiers of the Highland regiments out in the early hours of the morning of Quatre Bras (1815), the name of the battle that was a prelude to the climactic struggle at Waterloo. Murray states it is "the tune of a song from Strathspey in the Central Highlands. 'People of this Glen, Awake!', the song begins, and goes on to warn that James Grand of Carron on Speyside, a notorious ruffian and reiver, has been seen in the glen with his henchmen. 'People of this Glen' is also said to have been played in the gloaming of the winter's evening before the massacre of Glencoe in February 1692, in a last-minute attempt to warn the people of the treacherous attack that was planned for the next morning. It was played by Hugh MacKenzie, piper to Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, who commanded the soldiers of the Earl of Argyll's Regiment who carried out the massacre. The tune, and its connotations, would be well known to the Highland soldiers of the Black Watch, the 79th and the 92nd who heard it in the first light of that June morning" (p. 106).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Kerr (Merry Melodies), vol. 1; No. 16, p. 48.

Recorded sources:

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