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Òran M​ò​r MhicLe​ò​id (The Great Song Of MacLeod)

from Zithers by Andrew Cronshaw

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about

Before the adoption in Scotland of bagpipes, ceol mor (‘big music’), the form of music that became known as piobaireachd or pibroch, meaning ‘piping’, was played on clarsach, the wire-strung small harp. So not too far in some ways from playing it on the zither. As Anne Lorne Gillies, in whose aforementioned book I found it, says in her notes to this song, its composer An Clàrsair Dall (‘the blind harper’) Ruaridh MacMhuirich (Roderick Morison) (1646-1713) has been called ‘Scotland’s last minstrel’. Born on Lewis, after musical training in Ireland he became harper to Iain Breac, chief of the MacLeods of Dunvegan, in the same period as the patriarch of pibroch piping Patrick Mòr MacCrimmon and the famous song-making nurse to the MacLeods, Máiri Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh, so he was at the turning point of that culture. Indeed he recognised that in his song, which was intended as a dig to Iain Breac’s son Roderick to return from the south to become a real clan chief as of old, but which also became, as Anne Lorne Gillies says, a lament for the old ways. Here’s her translation (used by permission) of part of the Gaelic lyrics:

“The echo is subdued now
in the hall where once music sounded
and the haunt of bards is now
without joy, without pleasure, without conviviality
without sport, without play,
without the serried ranks of drinking horns
without hospitality towards learned men,
without wantonness, without singing.

Bear this last message
from me to young Roderick,
and tell him to his face
how much is at stake if he calls himself MacLeod.”

credits

from Zithers, released March 11, 2020
Ruaridh MacMhuirich arr. Cronshaw
(74-string fretless zither)

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Andrew Cronshaw London, UK

Andrew Cronshaw is a British multi-instrumentalist and producer, soloist and also leader of the Finnish/Armenian/British band SANS, who also has a long career as a writer on roots musics, particularly those of the Nordic, Baltic, eastern and central European and Iberian regions, for fRoots, The Rough Guide to World Music etc. ... more

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