Obit followed by news story of the drowning.
Calum Campbell
Hebridean piper out of a long tradition
02 February 2005
Malcolm Campbell, piper and joiner: born Balivanich,
Benbecula 13 April 1937; married 1962 Morag MacRury (died
2001; four sons, three daughters, and one daughter
deceased); died Creagorry, Benbecula 11 January 2005.
Calum Campbell was a central figure in a rare community of
musicians devoted to the music and culture of the Highland
bagpipe.
He came of a family long steeped in the Hebridean oral and
instrumental tradition. His father, Calum Iain, was a noted
piper and tutor. His cousin Angus Campbell, who died two
years ago at the age of 102, was one of the most respected
Hebridean performers of ceòl mór - often referred to as the
classical music of the bagpipe - of the 20th century.
By Calum Campbell's day, the forces of modernity and
improvement had wrought enormous changes in Hebridean
piping. In 1909, the Piobaireachd Society introduced tuition
in the southern Outer Hebrides by "scientific means" - that
is, by musical notation - to what was still a largely
ear-learned community of Gaelic musicians, for whom function
and timing far outweighed technical proficiency as aesthetic
priorities. The society's tutors found a land in which a
practice chanter rested on the window-sill of every house
and "every father and two or more sons could discourse on
the national instrument".
The courses continued until 1958. By then, being considered
a good piper in South Uist and Benbecula did not mean being
able to play reels for a wedding dance for hours on end with
perfect rhythmic lift, as it had a generation or two
earlier. Rather, it meant performing to precise technical
standards as learned from notation, as it did elsewhere in
Scotland. But Campbell himself proved that the substance of
the old ways survived none the less: a keen ear, a rhythmic
lilt on the dance floor and a gift for extemporaneous
melodic nuance.
It was clear from early on that he had inherited much of his
forebears' musical facility. Having been tutored by his
father in the rudiments of the pipe, he began taking prizes
as a boy in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
In 1946, he gained a prize in the "under-14s" category at
the summer games held on Askernish Machair, South Uist, the
first year that the games had been held since the outbreak
of war.
He began making his mark as a senior piper in 1952 and 1953,
and by the 1960s was a regular prizewinner, known for
performing difficult pieces "in a masterly way, on a
beautifully toned instrument", as one observer recorded in
1961. His crowning year may have been 1982, when he swept
the boards of the local Flora MacDonald Cup with first
places in the ceòl mór, march and jig events.
Having worked as a joiner for many years, in 1984 he started
to teach piping professionally throughout schools in South
Uist, Benbecula and North Uist. He stood down just a few
years ago.
Campbell was known as much for his compositions as for his
performances. The tunes he composed, like the songs of
village bards in earlier times, commemorated mainly local
events and personages, such as his march Bain's Welcome to
Creagorry and his jig Hercules the Bear, composed in 1980
when the flight of the famous beast in Benbecula during the
filming of a television commercial caused headlines
nationwide.
In 1997 he composed a lament for Legend, a touring public
sculpture by Diane Maclean. The piece combined sculptural
form (a curving line of stainless steel following the
contours of the hillside) with a sensor-activated voice
recording of a 19th-century Gaelic poem interwoven with the
sound of the piper.
Calum Campbell was swept out to sea with his daughter
Murdina and her husband Archie and their two children, as
they tried to escape their flooded home in hurricane-force
winds.
Joshua Dickson
Island's anguish for drowned family
JOHN ROSS The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=47622005
Key points
. Two family cars found submerged in sea
. Island community in mourning
. 6,000 homes across the north and west of Scotland still
without
electricity
Key quote
"... this type of tragedy, where three generations have been
obliterated, puts it into a completely different
context" - Alasdair
Morrison, Western Isles MSP
Story in full THE family of five who died trying to flee
this week's
storm was less than 200 yards from a safe haven, it
emerged yesterday.
Archie MacPherson, 36, his wife Murdina, 37, and children
Andrew,
seven, and Hannah, five, with Mrs MacPherson's father
Calum Campbell,
67, were swept to their deaths as they escaped their
flood-hit home on
South Uist.
It emerged yesterday that Mr and Mrs MacPherson returned
from Glasgow
in 2002 to their native Uist to raise their children in
what they saw
as a safer environment.
Their two-car convoy was making the journey of less than
half a mile
on Tuesday night on an unclassified road between the
MacPhersons' home
in Kilaulay and Lochdar, where Mr MacPherson's parents
live, when they
were engulfed by huge waves.
The cars were later found under several feet of water in
an area which
was overwhelmed by the sea. Mr Campbell's body was found
in one of the
cars, while Mr and Mrs MacPherson were discovered
separately nearly
two miles away.
Yesterday more than 40 volunteers and emergency teams,
many of whom
knew the family, joined the grim search for the children.
At 10:15am
Hannah's body was found by a member of the public, little
more than
the length of a football pitch from her grandparents'
home. A
coastguard helicopter lifted police officers on to a small
island
where they were able to recover the body.
The search for her elder brother was called off as
darkness fell last
night and will resume today.
The tragedy has plunged the island community, which had
been trying to
recover from the worst storm in living memory, into deep
mourning.
Friends and relations spoke of their grief and shock.
In a statement issued through police, relatives paid
tribute to a
close and happy family whose deaths have devastated the
islands.
It said: "The respective families would like to thank
everyone who has
helped and ask for their continuing support."
Mr MacPherson's uncle, the Rev John Smith, said: "All of
us are truly
devastated and grief-stricken, but the family are very
grateful for
all the community are doing and all the various other
services
involved in the search. We have been overwhelmed by the
support.
"The young family came here from Glasgow a year ago hoping
to bring up
their children here because they loved the area, they
loved the
people, the environment, because it was so safe, yet all
this had to
happen.
"And truly everyone is broken-hearted on account of this."
Mrs MacPherson, a former personal assistant to the head of
Gaelic at
BBC Scotland, was the secretary at the 70-pupil school in
Lochdar,
which her children attended.
The headteacher, Mary MacInnes, said: "As many Hebridean
families do,
they felt the children would have a better quality of life
by moving
to the safety of Uist."
Ms MacInnes said she taught Mr MacPherson as a boy and
more recently
his children: "In a small community everyone knows
everyone else. It's
all just a complete shock."
A cousin of Murdina, who did not want to be named, said:
"These events
are just horrific, too horrible to take in. We are really
just trying
to come to terms with everything right now. It's
unbelievable."
Alasdair Morrison, the Western Isles MSP, who knew the
MacPhersons and
Mr Campbell, said: "If you live on an island or in a
fishing community
you are sadly all too often reminded about the power of
nature and the
might of the sea.
"But this type of tragedy, where three generations have been
obliterated, puts it into a completely different context."
Mr MacPherson was a self-employed builder.
Mr Campbell, from Benbecula, trained to be a joiner in
Greenock before
coming home to work on the family croft, where he married
Morag and
raised eight children. He was a bagpipe instructor who
played at many
weddings and was also a prolific composer, winning
numerous prizes. He
was widowed in 2001.
Meanwhile, an estimated 6,000 homes across the north and
west of
Scotland were still without electricity last night as
engineers
struggled to repair power lines damaged during the storms.
As the clean-up operation continued across the country,
650 Scottish
Hydro Electric engineers were trying to restore supplies,
which at the
storm's peak, left more than 85,000 people without power.
However, the company has said that the extent of the
problem will mean
that some houses will not have power back on until later
today and in
some cases Saturday.
Michilín
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