This item is a collection of newspaper cuttings relevant to Highland and Gaelic life and culture from various sources arranged in a scrapbook. It includes traditional songs in sol-fa notation, articles on folklore, biographical essays and excerpts from publications such as “The Celtic Monthly”. The collection belonged to Iain Hamilton MacKay-Scobie and is dated “Bangalore, 1906”.
MacKay-Scobie was born in Berkshire in 1883 and grew up in Dorset. In 1920 he married Catherine Stretton, cousin of General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton (1853-1947).[1] He was an officer in the British Army and by the time of his retirement had reached the rank of Major. In 1930 he established the Scottish National Military & Naval Museum at Edinburgh Castle and remained its honorary curator until his death in Edinburgh in 1947.[2] He had an interest in piping and in military history and wrote several books and papers such as:-
- “An old highland fencible corps : the history of the Reay Fencible Highland Regiment of Foot, or Mackay’s Highlanders, 1794-1802, with an account of its services in Ireland during the rebellion of 1798” (published 1923, of which there is a copy in the Sabhal Mòr Ostaig library)
- “Pipers and Pipe Music in a Highland Regiment. A record of piping in the 1st Seaforth Highlanders” (1924)
- “The Statuettes from the Scottish Naval And Military museum” (1933).
Some of his papers have been retained in the archives of the National Library of Scotland in the John Telfer Dunbar Collection.
There are two pdf files here. The first is of the bound scrapbook, the second of the loose cuttings.
[1] National Census
[2] National Library of Scotland, Inventory Acc.12251, John Telfer Dunbar Collection
