Angus MacKay 1812 – 1859
A memorial to to honour Queen Victoria’s piper was unveiled in 2010 at the spot where he was last seen alive on the banks of the River Nith just north of Glencaple (see map) in 1859.
Angus MacKay was the first personal piper to the Sovereign and he served Queen Victoria until 1854 when he was moved to The Crichton Institution in Dumfries as, by 1853 he had become ‘insane’ (probably as a result of syphilis). The most common delusion in his case notes was that he was married to Queen Victoria and that Prince Albert had “defrauded him of his rights”.
Angus MacKay disappeared from the banks of the River Nith on 21 March 1859. The cairn which marks this spot today pays tribute to a man with a remarkable life story…
Born in Raasay in 1813, son of the prominent musician John MacKay who was also a piper. Angus learnt to play at an early age. When he was 13, Angus was awarded a prize by the Highland Society; he also won the bagpipes at the Edinburgh competitions in 1835.
With the Highland Society support, a collection of piobaireachd (Highland pipe music), complete with historical notes, was published under his name in 1838. The tunes were set in modern ‘scientific’ staff notation and the volume rapidly became a standard work. His royal appointment came later in life, after a visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to the Highlands in 1842.
Queen Victoria first heard the bagpipes on this first visit to the Highlands. They stayed at Taymouth Castle with the Marquess of Breadalbane who had his own personal piper, John Ban MacKenzie. Queen Victoria was much taken with the idea, writing to her mother, “We have heard nothing but bagpipes since we have been in the beautiful Highlands and I have become so fond of it that I mean to have a Piper, who can if you like it, pipe every night at Frogmore.”
The Queen decided she should have her own piper and the Marquis of Breadalbane recommended that MacKay be appointed to the post. He became the first Piper to Her Majesty on 25 July 1843. He was also a noted composer of Pipe music, publishing a volume of reels and strathspeys aswell as the collection of Piobaireachd.
As well as playing regularly after breakfast, MacKay played at balls and special occasions including the erection of a cairn in 1852 on the top of Craig Gowan to commemorate the Queen’s acquisition of the Balmoral Estate. The Queen wrote that he played for the hour it took to build the cairn and “some merry reels were danced on a stone opposite”.
However, his services came to an end in 1854, as a result of mental illness.
He was granted a royal pension and committed to Bethlem Hospital and later transferred to the Crichton Institution in Dumfries when he was 43.
A few years after moving to Dumfries, he escaped from the institution in 1859 and drowned in the River Nith, at the age of 46.
The memorial cairn in his honour was funded by donations to an appeal by Piping Times magazine, with a local landowner giving permission to erect the cairn. As well as this memorial, he is commemorated in the poem The Last Vision of Angus MacKay by local author Tom Pow, which is included in Best Scottish Poems of 2008 published by the Scottish Poetry Society.
The cairn unveiling was attended by Robert Wallace, editor of Piping Times, Dumfries Provost Jack Groom and Hugh Drysdale, who constructed the memorial.
Extracted from the following websites:
www.pipermckay.com (information from another piper – different spelling!)
nationalgalleries.org – with thanks for the main picture