San Antonio College Library

"John Gibson pieces together the history of eighteenth-century West Highland pipers and piping and documents their changing social conditions after the suppression of the last Jacobite rebellion. Challenging the conventional view that the decline of piping was caused by the ban of Culloden pipes and pipers by the Disarming Act in 1746, Gibson reveals that traditional dance and bagpiping continued to exist in the Highlands until at least the mid-nineteenth...

The work is the result of over thirty years of oral fieldwork among the last Gaels in Cape Breton, for whom piping fit unself-consciously into community life, as well as an exhaustive synthesis of Scottish archival and secondary sources. Reflecting the invaluable memories of now-deceased new world Gaelic lore-bearers, John Gibson shows that traditional community piping in both the old and new world Gàihealtachlan was, and for a long time remained,...

In 18th Century Scotland, Mack MacAsh, a rebellious youth who tried to escape from a slave mine, is caught and deported in chains to America. On the same boat is the mine owner's son, travelling to his plantation in Virginia, and with him is his fiancee, Lizzie Hallim, who helped MacAsh escape. She and MacAsh will meet again and love will bloom.