Authors: Kirsty Gunn
The next hundred years saw the significant extension of that original dwelling, and with it development of a way of life that had been
established
– but without the necessary modernisation. So now the House was a substantial domestic dwelling, extended up and out to form the overall structure and architectural shape of the House that exists today. Of the original, as has been already noted, only the present scullery and pantry areas remain of the walls and floor; the rest has been absorbed by the more handsome extensions made that provide an entrance area, dining and sitting rooms, upstairs bedrooms, and, of course, a kitchen that is now provided with a large Victorian range, a large and decorative dresser and sideboard, and those other pieces of furniture that denote increased prosperity.
As the House was also known to be a centre of piping through the Highlands and beyond, the sitting room – that became later known as the ‘Music Room’ (when the House was extended again, in the early part of the twentieth century to add a gracious drawing room and large formal dining room) – came to be used for informal concerts and tuition.
This informality was part of the spirit of the House and its mood and atmosphere – as the number of bedrooms attest to a rule of hospitality and welcome that prevailed all through these years. With the later
extensions
, more bathrooms were added and a separate ‘bunkhouse’ built out to the back of the main House to take in younger pupils for schooling over the summer months.
Family records and a Visitors’ Book from 1923 to 1959 show that the musical teaching was a year-round concern – and, in particular, there is reference to what became wildly known as ‘The Winter Classes’. All through the first half of the twentieth century there were classes
conducted
and concerts given – these drawing to a close only when old (
Roderick
) Callum Sutherland (1887–1968), ‘Himself’, the father of the current John Callum featured in ‘The Big Music’, became too infirm and, with his son not at home to support him and not being able to play any longer himself, was forced to terminate the lovely arrangements that had been in place in the House for generation upon generation. (Though, it has been noted previously, meetings of pipers at The Grey House did continue on a more ad hoc basis when John Callum returned for long periods over the summer months through subsequent years.)
Again, records show menus, whisky bought, the buying of canteens and plate – all denoting a time, from the late nineteenth century on, of what, for the region and the social status of the Sutherland family, counted as considerable largesse. Callum Sutherland’s wife, Elizabeth Nichol, was herself a talented cook and household manager and extended the gardens that she’d inherited from her mother-in-law and her husband’s family so the range of produce that the House could provide for its own kitchens was always varied and substantial. In this, it continued a tradition that had been set in place all those hundreds of years ago when the original ‘Grey Longhouse’ had been such a focus for meeting and music – and the bowls of broth that were served always a highlight of the evening’s entertainments.
See now how the House has girth and gables. See the six windows across the front – the corner with a window on either wall – and that can be a drawing room, if you like, the place where later Roderick’s son Callum will have the presentations of piping, the grand meetings where players from all over Scotland are invited to perform. There’s the original sitting room known as the ‘Music Room’ now, if you please, for that is the
preferred
room for friends to gather in and play, take instruction from each other, listen. In the meantime it’s enough that Callum’s father extends, onto the side of the House, those separate quarters where pupils can come and stay, guests be billeted and made comfortable for as long as they need to remain there, to teach and offer demonstrations. And it won’t be many more years until there will be a great dining room, in this same Grey House, a long table set for twenty people some nights – can you imagine it? And yet one needs no imagination for there were those that at the time wrote about the use of the House in this way, in certain papers and journals,
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as being similar to those famous accommodations in Skye as they may have been at a much earlier time when the MacCrimmon family
of pipers created their College of Music there for the boys and young men of the Highland region, this back in the fifteenth century, and its foundations going back earlier than that. And you can think about
civilisation
then, the glint and polish of it, you can think on it well enough and take that information back to your great concert halls of Europe, to your maestros and conductors, take this back to the lords and ladies and princes and kings of London and Berlin and Vienna …
That there could have existed in that time, in that remote part of the world, before orchestras, before concert halls … Such a place. And would the ladies of that time, the fifteenth century, have had their dining rooms and quarters fitted in that kind, to accommodate the composition of music, to school the young in the playing of a fine and difficult tune? And would the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge have envisaged that, while their own rooms and gardens were just beginning to be established, there was, on a far promontory on the remote island of Skye, a College of Music for men and boys from all over Scotland? And you can see it, can you not, in your
imagination
? That School of the North West, and its kitchens and the warmth coming from the big fireplaces in the rooms where the musical education took place, and the composition and the practice, long rooms for treading out the beats? In other places than here this is written about in full and with great detail.
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How there would be a large fireplace such as John Sutherland’s father had built for his own dining room, in this century just past, and in the large kitchen where his wife, John’s mother, like her mother-in-law before her, and Anna and Mary and Elizabeth before then, still makes the bowls of soup
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but she has girls from the crofts around to help her by now, and has so caught up, with the leisure time available to her, in her reading and writing
that her husband has even made for her a Schoolroom under the eaves of the main building where she teaches her little son, her only child, and
sometimes
local children come for their lessons, they can play with young John afterwards, for she doesn’t want him getting lonely, through the mornings, anyhow, they can come before their parents need them back up in the hills.
So you can understand the tithing is working well enough. And by the time of the death of ‘Old John’ in 1911 his son Callum has already started giving classes in the Music Room his father created and planning how these may be extended, adding to the House at the sides of the front
elevation
. He had carved for himself the date, 1930, above the newly widened entrance, following exactly in style and manner the stone carving upon the lintel above the door put in place by his father before him in 1878.
That lovely work done by the man from Tain who’s making all the new extensions for Callum now, the Schoolroom as mentioned, the panelling on the Music Room wall – and what laird could stop him? What factor? Law? By now, who or what could have ever prevented this … House? For that same family that had allowed the original Sutherland to keep a thin corridor of land have now, in the same spirit and act of political will, let the Sutherlands increase that land further up the side of Ben Mhorvaig behind the House, selling it to them in return for the Sutherlands putting forest there and for managing a portion of their own land. So The Grey House of this account, of these papers and inserts and parts, has for itself all the view in its own glass – of a forest and hills all the way up Ben Mhorvaig and beyond, to the hidden lochs and burns overlooking the Sutherland flats …
The same House.
Ailte vhor Alech – the End of the Road.
The same House.
Nothing can prevent its place. It is written. A shelter for the people who live here: my family, the Sutherland family. Farmers, agriculturalists, landowners. Musicians.
Walk through with me, through these lovely rooms – and comfort is here and warmth and music. In a place so remote – the lit-up colour and detail of a whole world.
The difference between good and bad piobaireachd playing is the same as that between good and bad reading or writing. The good reader pays attention to his commas, his question marks, full stops and the meaning of the words he is reading. The bad reader drones out a whole page without pausing for stops, without altering his pace, and without raising or lowering his voice.
Yet another rule could be stated that the conventional variations are to be played so as to keep the original melody of the ground, in other words so as to bring out what are called the theme notes and not to make them subordinate to the variation notes. Sometimes the strong accent is on the variation notes, but the theme notes should not be clipped away to nothing.
On the other hand the final A of the Taorluath and the final E of the Crunluath are not to be dwelt on. The older pipers (that is to say counting from the revival of piping in 1700) used to stand for Taorluath and Crunluath doublings and to play these doublings considerably faster than the singlings. They also repeated the ground after the Taorluath doublings and after the Crunluath doubling. Thus the Crunluath singling was played about the same pace as the first variation singling.
Nowadays as a rule the ground is only played once and the tendency is to increase the pace gradually throughout the tune, playing a variation doubling only a little faster than the singling and playing the singling of the next variation about the same pace as a doubling. This may be well enough but it is a pity to forget the old way. The old way had more variety, sometimes we would have a variation in the middle of a lament played quite briskly and then the player would slow right down for the singling of the Taorluath.
My own criticism of present-day playing is that the ground and earlier variations are played too slow, and the singlings of the Taorluath and Crunluath played too fast. However, as I have said already no general rule can be laid down except perhaps this: The two extremes to be avoided are dragging and hurrying, and it should be remembered that a piobaireachd ground or variation can be played slowly without being dragged or played briskly, without being hurried.
In conclusion I am going back for a minute to the other forms of music. In connection with them it must be remembered false fingering is a horrible error and that never should a desire to get in all the gracenotes he can manage, slacken a piper’s vigilance against playing false notes. Steadiness is more important than speed.
For what can you do to stop a thing once you’ve started? You don’t stop it. The laying out of the ground, the setting forth of the beginning. The music that’s always been in his head getting to hear itself now he’s coming to the end.
It’s like walking, over this hill, another hill.
And look at the sky, it’s lovely here. And the sound of the tune is laid out everywhere in the ground around him, beneath his feet … Like a map of all the places he knows and he’s been to, and of history and his own life and the people in it, each part with its own particular sound, and he’ll find the notes for them, even …
For this one, that one …
He can name them all:
There first –
Callum Sutherland.
Elizabeth Sutherland.
He can name them.
His father. His mother.
There, Roderick John. He was Callum.
Name him. His father.
And Elizabeth. His mother.
Before she was a Sutherland – a Nichol. From Crieff.
So, too – Elizabeth Clare.
His own mother.
And himself?
Name himself?
The one who’s lying here now? Himself?
Or was that his father?
Himself?
Or is he the son?
That Callum?
And –
Callum …
And others …
Because others are here. The people in the House and what must they think of him …
What must they think …
Iain.
And Helen.
And her daughter, Katherine Anna.
And her mother, Margaret MacKay.
Her mother, Margaret MacKay.
Her mother, Margaret MacKay.
The people at the House and what they thought of him
(transcript
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)
And all of it true. About how it happened that morning. You wouldn’t credit but it actually did take place the way it’s been said. I’ll always
remember
the whole thing in detail, all through the time leading up to us realising he’d disappeared with our little girl.
It was a nice enough morning. I’d been out to see to the dogs. Margaret had the water on to boil. It was still early but she was thinking he’d want a cup of tea, he always did, and she would take it in – I had to know that, of course, that she’d go into his room first thing with the tea. But … As I said before, I’ve had to stand aside for him in the past, I can do that. Anyway, I don’t mind having something myself at that hour, and Margaret and I always take breakfast together later. But the difference this morning – that none of us had any idea then that his room would be empty. That his bed would be made and tidy. That was a shock, all right. For he’d been weak,
hadn’t he, and ill so long we thought that anything could happen with him. The doctor had said as much.
That every breath could be his last breath.