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9 3 26 20130712 26 ~ HISTORICAL ~ COINCIDENCE OR CONNECTION Keith Sanger T HE FAMILY who were to eventually be- come the Marquises of Breadalbane were one of the most successful branches of the Campbell house of Argyle. By the late 18th Century they held lands extending from the coast at Lorn in Argyle through to Aberfeldy in central Perthshire, close to where they established their main Scottish Family seat at Taymouth Castle at the east end of Loch Tay. As benefited a family who throughout their history usually managed to land on the right side of any political turmoil, they amassed and preserved a large amount of family papers which are now among the General Deposits in the National Archives of Scotland. These in- clude a series of expenditure books specifically for Taymouth, with separate books for the kitchen, cellars, housekeeping and so on. These include some general accounts between John, 4th earl, (and later first Marquis) of Breadal- bane and a James Lea and A Marquis, who seem to have been the resident household ad- ministrators. These particular accounts contain a miscella- neous group of expenditures including in the volume which runs from 1787 to 1796 and listed under the date of 24th November 1788, ‘To gave to Mr Docharty The Irish Piper £00- 10-06’. 1 This on its own is of interest as a record of an otherwise little known Irish Piper, but the interest increases when less than a year later on the 7th September 1789 there is an entry for ‘Mr Campbell, Player on the Irish Pipes £1-1-0 (the old guinea in other words)’. 2 Mr Campbell appears again in June 1798 but this time just described as ‘The Piper’ and re- ceived ten shillings. 3 Unlike Mr Docharty it is possible to provide far more background to Mr Campbell. Ac- cording to the Edinburgh Post Directories from 1793 to 1802, Charles Campbell who adver- tised himself as ‘Teacher of the Irish Pipes’ was living at the ‘foot of Blackfriars Wynd in Ed- inburgh’. It is clear however from the Breadal- bane Accounts and another reference to him in September 1787, when according to the Duke of Gordon’s archive; ‘Charles Campbell, piper was paid two pounds ten shillings Sterling for his trouble in coming through from Badenoch and playing for 8 days at Gordon castle’, that although latterly based in Edinburgh he also travelled to other engagements. So what were the ‘Irish Pipes’ that Campbell played and was he also a player of other pipes, bellows or mouthblown. Well, the second part of the question is probably the easiest to an- swer. Both the Earl of Breadalbane and the Duke of Gordon had their own estate pipers, at that time the MacGregor family on the Breadalbane estate and several different High- land and Lowland bellows pipers on the Gor- don estates. So it would seem likely that Charles Campbell was a specialist on his ‘Irish Pipes’. To suggest what exactly the pipes were is more difficult, but as I have pointed out else- where, there is a coincidence in that just as Campbell appears teaching in Edinburgh,

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