McAuslan in the Rough

“By George,” said he. “A brass band, hey? Stop you, and I’ll use that on Pipe-Major Macdonald, the next time he starts bumming his chat. No’ bad, no’ bad. And does the ither subalterns enjoy oor serenade?”

“I doubt if they’ve got my ear for music, pipey. Most of them probably think that if you played ‘Too Long in this Condition’ it would be more appropriate.”

He opened his eyes at that. “Too Long in this Condition” is a pibroch, long and weird and full of allusions to the MacCrimmons, and not the kind of thing that ignorant subalterns are expected to know about.

“Aye-aye, weel,” he said, smiling. “And you’re Mr MacNeill, aren’t you? D Company, if I remember. Ah-huh. Chust so.” He regarded me brightly, nodded, and turned away. “Look in at the office sometime, Mr MacNeill, if you have the inclination. Chust when you’re passing, you understand.”

And that small conversation was a step forward—a bigger one, really, than playing for the company football team, or getting my second pip as a full lieutenant, or even crossing the undefined line of acceptance by my own platoon—which I did quite unintentionally one night by losing my temper and slinging a mutinous Jock physically out of the canteen, in defiance of all common sense, military discipline, and officer-like conduct. For the pipey and I were friends from that morning on, and it is no small thing to be friends with a pipe-sergeant when you are trying to find your nervous feet in a Highland regiment.

He was in fact subordinate to the pipe-major and the drum-major, who were the executive heads of the band, but in his way he carried more weight than either of them. He was the musician, the authority on air and march and pibroch, the arbiter when it came to any question of quality in music or dancing. Years at his trade had left him with a curious deformity in which the facial muscles had given way on one side, so that when he blew, his cheek expanded like a balloon—an unnerving sight until you got used to it. He had enormous energy, both in movement and conversation, and was never still, buzzing about like a small tartan wasp, as when he was instructing young pipers in the finer points of their art.

“God be kind to me!” he would exclaim, leaping nervously round some perspiring youth who was going red in the face over the intricacies of “Wha’ll be King but Cherlie”. “You’re not plowing up a pluidy palloon, Wilson! You’re summoning the clans for the destruction of the damned Hanovers, aren’t you? Your music is charming the claymore out of the thatch and the dirk from the peat, so it is! Now, tuck it into your oxter and wake the hills with your challenge! Away you go!”

And the piper would squint, red-faced, and send his ear-splitting notes echoing off the band-room walls, very creditably, it seemed to me, and the pipey would call on the shades of the great MacCrimmon and Robin Oig to witness the defilement of their heritage.

“It’s enuff to make the Celtic aura of my blood turn to effluent!” was one of his more memorable observations. “It’s a gathering of fighting men you’re meant to be inspiring, boy! The noise you’re makin’ wouldnae collect a parcel of Caithness tinkers. You’ll be swinging it, next! Uplift yourself, Wilson! Mind, it’s not bobby-soxers you’re tryin’ to attract, it’s the men of might from the ends of the mountains, with their bonnets down and their shoes kicked off for the charge. And again—give your bags a heeze and imagine you’re sclimming up the Heights of Abraham with Young Simon’s caterans at your back and the French in front of you, not puffing and wheezing oot some American abomination at half-time at a futball match!”

And eventually, when it had been played to his satisfaction he would beam, and cry:

“There! There’s Wilson the Piper, waking the echoes in majesty before the face of kings, and the Chermans aall running away. Now, put up your pipes, and faall oot before you spoil it.”

This was his enclosed, jealously-guarded world; he had known nothing else since his boy service—except, as he said himself, “a wee bitty war”. Pipers, unlike most military bandsmen, tend to be fighting soldiers; in one Highland unit which I visited in Borneo only a few years ago, the band claimed to have accounted for more Communist terrorists than any of the rifle companies. And in peacetime they were privileged people, with their own little family inside the regiment itself, and the pipey presided over his domain of chanters and reeds and dirks and rehearsals and dancing, and kept a bright eye cocked at the battalion generally, to make sure that tradition was observed and custom honoured, and that there was no falling off in what he would describe vaguely as “Caledonia”. If he hadn’t been such a decent wee man, he would undoubtedly have been a “professional Highlander” of the most offensive kind.

The only time anyone ever saw the pipe-sergeant anything but thoroughly self-assured and bursting with musical confidence was once every two months or so, when he would produce a new pipe-tune of his own composition, and submit it, in a state bordering on nervous hysteria, to the Colonel, with a request that it might be included in the next beating of Retreat.

“Which one is it this time, pipey?” the Colonel would ask. “ ‘The Mist-Covered Streets of Aberdeen’ or ‘The 92nd’s Farewell to Hogg Market, Calcutta’?”

The pipey would scowl horribly, and then hurriedly arrange his face in what he supposed was a sycophantic grin, and say:

“Ach, you’re aye joshing, Colonel, sir. It’s jist a wee thing that I thought of entitling ‘Captain Lachlan Chisholm’s Fancy’, in honour of our medical officer. It has a certain … och, a captivatin’ sense of the bens and the glens and the heroes, sir—a kind of … eh … miasma, as it were—at least, I think so.”

“Does it sound like a pipe-tune?” the Colonel would ask. “If so, by all means play it. I’m sure it will be perfectly splendid.”

And at Retreat, with the pipey in a frenzy of excitement, the band would perform, and afterwards the pipey would approach the Colonel and inquire:

“How did you like ‘Captain Lachlan Chisholm’s Fancy’, Colonel, sir?”

And the Colonel, leaning on his cromach, would say:

“Which one was that?”

“The second last, sir—before ‘Cock o’ the North’.”

“Oh, that one. But that was ‘Bonnie Dundee’, surely? At least, it sounded like ‘Bonnie Dundee’. Come to think of it, pipey, your last composition—what was it?—‘The Unloading of the 75th at Colaba Causeway’, or something—it sounded terribly like ‘Highland Laddie’. Of course, I haven’t got your musical ear …”

“And he can say that again, and a third time in Gaelic,” the pipey would rage in the band-room afterwards. “God preserve us from a commanding officer that has no more music than a Border Leicester ewe! ‘The Unloading of the 75th’, says he—dam’ cheek, when fine he knows it was caalled ’The Wild Green Hills of—of—of—ach, where the hell was it, now …”

“Gorbals Cross,” the pipe-major would suggest.

“No such thing! And, curse him, he says my composeetions sound like ‘Bonnie Dundee’ and ‘Highland Laddie’, as if I wass some penny-whistle street-musician hawkin’ my tinny for coppers along Union Street. Stop you, and I’ll fix his duff wan o’ these days. I’ll write a jazz tune, and get it called ‘Colonel J. G. F. Gordon’s Delight’, and have it played in aall the dance-halls! He’ll be sorry then!”

And yet, there was no one in the battalion who knew the Colonel better than the pipey did, or was more expert in dealing with that tough, formidable, wise old commanding officer. The truth was that in some things, especially his love for his regiment, the wily Colonel could be surprisingly innocent, and the pipey knew just where and when to touch the hidden nerve.

As in the case of Private Crombie, which would have sent our modern Race Relations Board into screaming fits of indignation.

He was in my platoon, one of a draft which joined the battalion from the Liverpool Scottish. They were fascinating in their way—men with names like MacGregor and Cameron and MacPherson, and all with Scouse accents you could have cut with a knife. Genuine Liverpool Scots, in fact, sons and grandsons of men who had settled on Merseyside, totally Lancashire in everything but name and race. But even among them, Private Crombie stood out as something special. He was what used to be called a Negro.

Which would not have mattered in the least, but he also happened to be a piper. And when he marched into company office about three days after he joined, and asked if he could apply to join the battalion pipes and drums, I confess it came as a shock. No doubt it was all the fault of my bad upbringing, or the dreadful climate of the 1940s, but my immediate (unspoken) reaction was: we can’t have him marching in the pipe-band, out in the open with everyone looking. We just can’t.

I maintain that this was not what is called race prejudice, or application of the colour bar. It was, as it appeared to me, a sense of fitness. If he had been eight feet tall, or three feet short, I’d have thought the same thing—simply, that he would have looked out of place in a Highland regimental pipe-band. But that, obviously, was something that could not be said. I asked him what his qualifications were.

He had those, all right. His father had taught him the pipes—which side of his family was black and which white, if either was, I never discovered. He had some sort of proficiency certificate, too, which he laid on my desk. He was a nice lad, and painfully keen to join the band, so I did exactly what I would have done in anyone else’s case, and said I would forward his application to the pipe-major; my own approval and the company commander’s went without saying, because it was understood that the band, or any other specialist department, got first crack at a qualified man. He marched out, apparently well pleased, Sergeant Telfer and I looked at each other, said “Aye” simultaneously, and awaited developments.

What happened was that the pipe-major was on weekend leave, so Crombie appeared for examination before the pipe-sergeant, who concealed whatever emotion he felt, and asked him to play.

“I swear to God, Mr MacNeill,” he told me an hour later, “I hoped he would make a hash of it. Maybe I was wrong to think that, for the poor lad cannae help bein’ a nigger, but I thought … well, if he’s a bauchle I’ll be able to turn him doon wi’ a clear conscience. Weel, I’m punished for it, because I cannae. He’s a good piper.” He looked me in the eye across the table, and repeated: “He’s a good piper.”

“So, what’ll you do?”

“I’ll have to tell the pipe-major he’s fit for admeession. He’s fitter than half the probationers I’ve got, and that’s the truth. I chust wish to God he was white—or no’ so black, anyway.”

Remember that this was almost thirty years ago, and there have been many changes since then. Also remember that Highland regiments, being strongly national institutions, are sensitive as to their composition (hence the old music-hall joke on the lines of: “ ‘Issacstein?’ ‘Present, sir’. ‘O’Flaherty?’ ‘Present, sir’. Woinarowski?’ ‘Present, sir’. Right—Cameron Highlanders present and correct, sir.’ ”)

Carefully, I asked:

“Does his colour matter?”

“You tell me, sir. What’ll folk think, if they see our pipe-band some day, on Princes Street, and him as black as the ace o’ spades, oot front, in a kilt and bunnet, blawin’ away?”

I could pretend that I rejected this indignantly, like a properly enlightened liberal, but I didn’t. I saw his point, and I’d have been a hypocrite if I’d tried to dismiss it out of hand. Anyway, there were more practical matters to consider. What would the pipe-major say? What, if it came to that—and it would—would the Colonel say?

The pipe-major, returning on Monday, was in no doubts. He wasn’t having a black piper, not if the man was the greatest gift to music that God ever made. The pipey, genuinely distressed, for he was torn between his sense of fitness on the one hand, and an admiration for Crombie’s ability on the other, asked the pipe-major to give the lad an audition. The pipe-major, who didn’t want to be seen to be operating a colour bar, conceived that here was a way out. He listened to Crombie, told him to fall out—and then made the mistake of telling the pipe-sergeant he didn’t think the boy was good enough. That did it.

“No’ good enough!” The pipey literally danced in front of my table. “Tellin’ me, that’s been pipin’—aye, and before royalty, too, Balmoral and all—since before Pipe-Major MacDonald had enough wind to belch oot his mither’s milk, that my judgement is at fault! By chings, we’ve lived tae see the day, haven’t we chust! No’ good enough! I’m tellin’ you, Mr MacNeill, that young Crombie iss a piper! And that’s that. And fine I know MacDonald iss chust dead set against the poor loon because he’s as black as my boot! And from a MacDonald, too,” he went on, in a fine indignant irrelevance, “ass if the MacDonalds had anything to hold up their heids aboot—a shower of Argyllshire wogs is what they are! And anither—”

“Hold on, pipey,” I said. “Pipe-Major MacDonald is just taking the line you took yourself—what’s it going to look like, and what will people think?”

“Beside the point, sir! I’m no’ havin’ it said that I cannae tell a good piper when I hear one. That boy’s good enough for the band, and so I’ll tell the Colonel himself!”

And he did, in the presence of Pipe-Major MacDonald, myself (as Crombie’s platoon commander), the second-in-command (as chief technical adviser), the Regimental Sergeant-Major (as leading authority on precedent and tradition), and the Adjutant (as one who wasn’t going to be left out of such a splendid crisis and scandal). And the pipe-major, who had the courage of his convictions, repeated flatly that he didn’t think Crombie was good enough, and also that he didn’t want a black man in his band, “for the look of the thing”. But, being a MacDonald, which is something a shade craftier than a Borgia, he added: “But I’m perfectly happy to abide by your decision, sir.”

The Colonel, who had seen through the whole question and back again in the first two minutes, looked from the pipe-major to the pipey, twisted his greying moustache, and remarked that he took the pipe-major’s point. He (the Colonel) had never seen a white man included in a troop of Zulu dancers, and he’d have thought it looked damned odd if he had.

The Adjutant, who had a happy knack of being contentious, observed that, on the other hand, he’d never heard of a white chap who wanted to join a troop of Zulu dancers, and would they necessarily turn him down if one (a white chap, that was) applied for membership?

The Colonel observed that he, the Colonel, wasn’t a bloody Zulu, so he wasn’t in a position to say.

The second-in-command remarked that the Gurkhas had pipe bands; damned good they were, too.