Professor Hugh Cheape, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, UHI, formerly National Museums Scotland
1. What is your object and how did it come to be in your possession?
My object is a buff HMSO or Stationary Office A4 format file labelled ‘The Black
Chanter of Clan Chattan’. Is this public property then? I was working in the National
Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh and, as public servants, the Stationary Office
supplied us with our working tools. The file holds a pile of paper from 1983-1988
about this museum object, ‘The Black Chanter’, and records a relatively wide-ranging
research effort intended to explain and contextualise it.
2. Why have you chosen this object for the Macphersoniana project?
I have chosen this object as reprise of a topic which I believe is still important for
Macphersons and the folk of Clan Chattan. An object such as a small pile of paper
which was generated over thirty years ago will be under critical threat of disposal –
the more so since it was crafted in a pre-electronic age when computers were not
yet available to all ranks in the civil service – but it was a professionally induced habit
to ‘file’ work papers and this type of research was rarely finalised and awaited
redemption. It seemed relevant to preserve references, scraps of narrative, and even
opinions and attitudes.
3. Why is this object important to you and what does it mean to you?
This object is important to me because it preserves information assembled on a
piece of our nation’s history and culture whose significance may not always be
recognised – while perhaps being widely quoted for being something that it is not.
To help to perpetuate the significance of ‘The Black Chanter’ for future generations
was a duty of mine at the time. From May 1983 until July 1984, I worked on a
development study for the Clan Macpherson Museum on commission from the Clan
Macpherson Association and the Council for Museums and Galleries in Scotland
(now Museums Galleries Scotland). Having then worked in the National Museums for
nearly a decade, this was an opportunity to focus on a local rather than a national
topic and to evaluate dimensions of kinship and clanship in a Gàidhealtachd setting.
The file is important also because my interest went wider than ‘The Black Chanter’ to
include pipes and piping in Scotland and Europe. In my view, the conventional
account of the Highland bagpipe – the ‘grand narrative’ – was very poor history. That
the Black Chanter could be misrepresented was demonstrated by an essay in the
piping literature in January 1988 that was a travesty. The elements of my response
to this are embedded in the HMSO file.
4. What does this object tell us about what it means to be a Macpherson?
The Black Chanter of Clan Chattan is a ‘clan relic’ and part of the inheritance and
collective memory of Macphersons. It was fortuitously saved from the sale of the
contents of Cluny Castle in 1943 and bought at auction by the Clan for the Clan.
Perhaps the most significant statement has been made by the great Angus Macpherson in 1955, writing in his autobiography, A Highlander looks back, and
‘maintaining ….. that [the clan heirlooms] were the property of the clan, and only
held in custody by the Chief, and when such custody ended should have been
handed over to the clan …… without the stain of commercialism being put upon
them’. As piper of great distinction and representative of the vital Macpherson
dynasty of pipers, his view is precious and should be before us while we contemplate
Macphersoniana. If my ‘object’, the modest buff HMSO file, can add vicarious
strength to his words and help us all to understand the Black Chanter and its
complexities, then it might be claimed to still have value.
Macphersoniana 