Some years ago, my piping friend Andreas Virnich-Hartmann sent me a copy of a photo that was for sale online.  “Jim,” Andreas asked, “Would you happen to know who this piper is?” I was, as they say, gobsmacked. This was the most beautiful photo of the great player and composer John MacColl that I had ever seen. It’s not often one gets to see pics of our greatest players in full flight on the competition platform.  The photo was a commercial shot, likely used on postcards or in a Magic Lantern viewing system, and has been colourized. It would not have been taken in colour.

John MacColl (1860-1943) studied with the great Glasgow piper Donald MacPhee in the late 1870s. He soon rose to prominence, not just as a successful competitor, but as one of our leading composers, particularly of competition marches. He was a uniquely talented man. His son John once wrote of his father:

He did tell me of finishing a dance, throwing off his kilt (having running shorts underneath) competing in the hundred yards race and then putting his kilt and things on ready for the next dance. This, of course, was just as a professional to augment his prize money for the day. Naturally his major earnings came from playing the pipes, dancing and teaching.

Unlike today, the games circuit was lucrative for one so versatile, and the ability to earn £40 in an afternoon in the late 1800s afforded him the leisure to pursue yachting, golf, shinty, fiddling, Gaelic singing and composing.