Review: Harlaw Scotland 1411

When Soundyngs started back in January 2022, we were already 11 years after the 600^th anniversary of the Battle of Harlaw.  Our first post held up John Purser, author of Scotland’s Music, as a writer we admired for his broad-church open-armed sense of what that category might encompass.  This project demonstrates both his musical and academic prowess.

The year this 2-disc CD (2011) was the proper 600^th anniversary of this battle, fought between Highland and Lowland armies in the countryside north-west of Aberdeen.  Harlaw marks the high-water mark for the ambitions of the Lord of the Isles to reach beyond the Gaelic Highlands, although his aims may have been to protect the north from the ambitious men of the south.  Although on the day the Gaels won, with significantly more casualties, proportionally, that fell on the Stewart side, the retreat of the northern army left the Lowland dynasty more firmly in control of the greater Scottish nation.

The battle was fought for control over the Earldom of Ross. The Highland army, led by “Black” Donald of Islay, Lord of the Isles – had marched east and south, to assert and protect his claim to the Earldom of Ross. This claim was contested by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, illegitimate son of the infamous Wolf of Badenoch.  The Stewart claim was supported by the Duke of Albany, a ruthless and ambitious man who had extended tentacles into many regions of Scotland in a period when James I was imprisoned in England. Many men from Aberdeenshire – including from the city itself – also marched out to stop the northern advance, fearing their lands would be devasted. The absence of the monarch in this period made for difficulties resolving dynastic tensions between great houses using more peaceable legal means; this was a moment of terrifying instability for ordinary Scottish folk drawn into the conflict, as well as for the great men at the heart of the dispute and their immediate followers.

Harlaw left many dead and generated a wealth of cultural responses which John Purser and musician Bonnie Rideout have curated into a fascinating double album project.

Disc 1 contains different musical responses, and disc 2 holds additional narratives and interviews that provide those interested with well-researched historical and ethnographic information. For those who can, please buy the CDs, because the liner notes also provide invaluable information about performers, instruments, and sources. One of many problems associated with streaming services (the tracks are separately available on e.g. Spotify) is that the integrity of larger vision, and the explanatory provision afforded by the liner notes, are stripped out.  Older forms of physically packaged music allowed for listeners to become informed and educated; streaming assumes a more fragmented, surface level of engagement.

Musical responses to Harlaw included some from the point of view of the Gaels, and some from the point of view of the Scots speakers from around the region the battle took place. Both are represented here, showing the evolution of the story in music as it encountered different cultural moments.  A strength of the project is the involvement of so many instruments – triple pipes, highland pipes, small pipes, fiddle, lute, theorbo, flute, guitar, piano, clarsach and harp, and of course voice, with credits to musicians who straddle the folk-art Scottish music lists.  This event left its mark on all these indigenous repertoires.

Track 2 on CD 1 gives us the ‘brosnachadh’ incitement to battle, a poem that works through the Gaelic alphabet in alliterative style, urging warriors to fight. This is performed, we learn from the liner notes (and not from streaming services, note), to a tune called ‘Cogadh no Sith’ (War or Peace) chosen by singer and piper Allan Macdonald. This tune is an ancient piobaireachd, a pipe tune from the ceòl mòr repertoire, although played here on the small pipes to allow the voice space to sound.  We then explore the tune itself, and its history as an accompaniment to valour in battles. From there, we move on to enjoy a Renaissance tune played on the clarsach with the voice of Andrew Hunter and Ridout this time playing viola as a substitute for a viol; another pipe tune, called Black Donald’s March to Harlaw; the ballad with words published by Allan Ramsay in 1724,; a modern piano reflection on this; another piobaireachd, played by Rideout on the fiddle, published by Daniel Dow in 1776; a lute version of this; the strathspey dance tune “Rothiemurchus Rant”, written about the home territory of the Earl of Marr; and a pipe lament for Red Hector of the Battles (Hector MacLean, killed at Harlaw).  Next, at track 12, we hear the “Battle of Harlaw” ballad in the version known to the American collector Child and John Ord of the Bothy ballad collections, sung here by the wonderful Elizabeth Stewart, with diddling chorus, which reflects the oral traditions transmitted by Elizabeth’s Traveller community. Bonnie Rideout’s ensuing fiddle tracks – the “March from Harlaw” and the “Battal Garlan” – capture other tunes for lute commemorating the event.  Finally on this side, “Cath nan Enn” (Battle of the Birds), an ancient piobaireachd, sees a dialogue between triple piper Barnaby Brown and Rideout’s fiddle. What this gives us – in track order – is a clear sense of the historical evolution of the musical repertoire associated with the battle.

CD 2 – the narrative – revisits some of the CD1 as this helps to illustrate particular historical stories and interviews.  Elizabeth Stewart, again, tells us am evocative ghost story from the region, a vision seen by her grandfather of a headless knight on horseback in armour riding, presumably, from the battle, who rode through the Traveller camp in the dead of night; John Purser’s voice threads the stories together as the expert historian.

Harlaw – Scotland 1411 was a wonderful example of a project that both entertains and educates, and I wish, I really really wish, that the care put into the research could be fully reflected in the streaming services.  But it isn’t.  So, if you can, do try to find the actual CDs, and a means to play them.

Further Reading and Listening

• John Purser, Bonnie Rideout, et al., Harlaw: Scotland 1411 (Tulloch Music 505,. 2011) – if you really must, it’s on Spotify …. But do try to get hold of the CDs, because the whole is even more than the sum of its parts. To order CDs, contact John Purser via his website here.
• Ian Olson, Bludie Harlaw: Realities, Myths, Ballads (2021) – literary focus
• John Sadler, Clan Donald’s Greatest Defeat: The Battle of Harlaw 1411 (Tempus Publishing, 2002) – general history