Page 10 - What's In A Name - The Barry Pipes Canon

WHAT’S IN A NAME? The Barry Pipes Canon • 2005 - 2018
From Set&Link, newsletter of RSCDS Toronto
The Duke of Perth
British throne. Although listed as a member of the Jacobite Peerage, this entitlement was never recognized in Britain, likely due to his involvement in the 1715 uprising. It would seem that The Duke of Perth reel is named in recognition of this man.
The 18th Earl of Perth, John Eric Drummond, is the current Chief of Clan Drummond, and continues to lay claim to the old Jacobite title as 15th Duke of Perth. His Grace resides at Stobhall, a former hunting lodge on the River Tay near Perth, with Castle Drummond, the real headquarters of the Clan, being about 20 miles distant. ◼︎
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Duke of Perth, as we all know, is a popular SCD reel. It probably goes back aeons. Miss Milligan saw fit to ensure that it was included in the first book of dances produced in 1924 by her fledgling Scottish Country Dance Society. Music had long been in place to complement this old dance. Even a couple of alternative names existed for it – Brown’s Reel and Clean Pease Strae.
But was there a real Duke, and if so, when did he come into the picture? It all seems to go back to Clan Drummond, whose forebears of Hungarian heritage landed in Scotland in 1068, two years after Norman Conqueror Bill arrived at Hastings (and all that!).
This family combination of Celt and Magyar quickly settled in as landowners. Within a mere 500 years or so, James, Lord Drummond, was created Earl of Perth in 1605. About 100 years later, the 4th Earl was entitled Duke by the exiled James Stuart, Pretender to the
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Weel done. Cutty-sark! And in an instant all was dark!
Robbie Burns aficionados will recognize that couplet as an excerpt from Tam O’ Shanter, one of his best (and longest) narrative poems, in which Tam with a surfeit of John Barleycorn under his belt, happens across a coven of dancing witches. They are shedding their clothes in wild abandon, and one of the witches, Nannie by name, is stripped down to a short chemise called a cutty-sark which happens to be too small for her comely figure. (Never thought I’d be able to get a bit of soft porn into this column!)
Castle Drummond, built by John, first Lord Drummond, was restored in 1890. The original keep still stands and the castle is noted for its gardens based on a 17th century Scottish Renaissance garden.
[Ed: Ann Edge emailed to add that Drummond Castle, mentioned in last month’s WHAT’S IN A NAME? is located near Crieff and that the gardens were used in the filming of Rob Roy. She also said,
“I am from Perthshire and grew up a few miles from Drummond Castle. The Duke of Perth was one of the first dances I learned.”]
Cutty Sark
switched to the wool trade between London and Australia, until being sold in 1895 to the Portuguese, whose crew refund to her as Pequena Camisola (“little shirt” in Portuguese). Her home port moved from London to Lisbon, then to Falmouth in Cornwall before she was retired in 1954 to a dry dock at Greenwich on the River Thames, almost 100 years from her launching.
A few decades later, the aforementioned Nannie was carved into the figurehead of a newly constructed Tea
Clipper, one of the famous three-masted sailing vessels which competed for the race to bring a cargo of tea from Shanghai to London. This Clipper was of course named the Cutty Sark. Launched in 1869 at Dumbarton on the Clyde, the Cutty Sark journeyed regularly to and from China and then
Meanwhile, not to forget
Cutty Sark – that brand of
blended usquabae from
Speyside’s Glenrothes Distillery.
And of course, there’s that popular RSCDS jig from Book 40 which is on the November Monthly Dance programme. ◼︎
The Cutty Sark was damaged by fire on May 21, 2007. Fortunately, she was undergoing restoration at the time so about 50% of her had been removed including the figurehead, masts, rigging and planking.