Och, science!

Scottish scientists recreate Shackleton's whisky

Och, crivens, the Omanis can spiel a pipe like ony Scotsman!



The dancing is something too! Here's much more:



Thanks to Mrs. Peculiar, who was delighted to happen upon such an Omani piper at the Santa Fe Folk Art Festival earlier this summer.

To their great credit, McCallum Bagpipes is willing to accomodate the special needs of far-flung pipers:

Two military pipe bands belonging to the Sultan of Oman, who ply their trade seated upon the backs of camels, are suffering badly for their art. Proud men, resplendent in white uniforms and seated on bedecked and braided camels, they look magnificent until they smile, when they reveal large numbers of missing teeth.

This is the inevitable result of their mounts lurching unexpectedly when they are playing, thrusting 18 inches of rigid hardwood into their mouths.

The Sultan, a lover of the pipes - he has five other more fortunate bands which are not camel-mounted - has now asked Scots craftsmen to redesign the bagpipes with a bendy blowpipe to save his musicians from injury.

McCallum Bagipes, a bagpipe manufacturer from Kilmarnock, has come up with something that flexes as the camels sway graciously across the sands. Stuart McCallum, a director of the company making the camel-

friendly pipes, said: “I was amazed when I got the request, but I designed the device using computer technology.

“It's a flexible plastic tube that bends as the camel moves and can be adjusted in length, depending on how tall the piper is. There's a padded bit on the tip as well for extra comfort.”

What my ancestors got up to when they weren't blind drunk or thieving cattle: The Curling Song.

More curling songs here.

There have been some really interesting musical oddities on the last couple episodes of Performance Today. There's really not much music out there that will literally drop my jaw. But such was the case yesterday when I heard a fairly typical orchestral opening of an 18th Century concerto, waited for the soloist to come in, and heard a jaw hap. Really! The composer's name is Albrechtsberger, he wrote seven of these (really!) and you'll find the excerpt a ways into the first hour here, at about 14:15. (Performance Today, alas, doesn't allow linking of specific pieces; probably copyright/record company issues.) The whole thing may be had here, and if any reader would like to donate a copy for review, feel free!

Not much can follow a concerto for jaw harp and orchestra, but the next day's show included a very, very alla Turca piece by one Dmitri Kantemiroğlu, or Cantemir, a Moldovan who spent quite some time at the Ottoman court in the late 1600s (at 9:43 in the first hour). Later, we get a fiddle and orchestra number that contains a Nathaniel Gow composition (at 45:45, also in the first hour). It's actually one of my favorite numbers from the Gow collection, Three Good Fellows Down in Yon Glen. My edition notes that it was "a favourite of Neil Gow," so I wonder if Nathaniel was the actual composer, though a piece by his son may perfectly well have become a favorite.

Update: A complete finale movement from a jaw harp concerto is now to be had.

Lastly for tonight, here's by far the best online resource I've seen for Scots language: bilingual in Scots or English, with numerous sound files of speech and song, and extensive discussion of the several regional dialects of Scots. When you hear the singer in Old Blind Dogs pronouncing wh as f, know that it is characteristic of "the Doric o Scotland's Nor-Aist".