Pibroch - Titles and Subjects

Titles and Subjects

The Gaelic titles of pibroch compositions have been categorised by Roderick Cannon into four broad groupings. These include:

• Functional - salutes, laments, marches and gatherings.
• Technical - referring to strictly musical characteristics of the pieces such as "port" or "glas", terms shared with wire-strung harpers.
• Textual - quotations from song lyrics, usually the opening words.
• Short names - diverse short names referring to places, people and events similar to those found in Scottish popular music of the period.

Pibroch in the functional category were most commonly written for or have come to be associated with specific events, personages or situations:

• Laments (Cumha) are mourning tunes often written for a deceased person of note. Laments were commonly written as a result of families being displaced from their homeland, a practice that was very common after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.
• Salutes (Fàilte) are tunes that acknowledge a person, event or location. Salutes were often written upon the birth of children or after a visitation to a prominent figure such as a clan chief. Many salutes have been written to commemorate famous pipers.
• Gatherings (Port Tionail) are tunes written specifically for a clan. These tunes were used to call a clan together by their chief. The tune structure is usually simple so that it could be recognized easily by clan members.
• Rowing pibroch are more rhythmic tunes used to encourage rowers while crossing the sea.

The different categories of pibroch do not have consistent distinctive musical patterns that are characteristic of the category. The role of the pibroch may inform the performers interpretative expression of rhythm and tempo.

Many pibroch tunes have intriguing names such as "Too Long in This Condition", "The Piper's Warning to His Master", "Scarce of Fishing", "The Unjust Incarceration" and "The Big Spree" which suggest specific narrative events or possible song lyric sources.

The oral transmission of the repertoire has led to diverse and divergent accounts of the names for tunes, and many tunes have a number of names. Mis-translation of Gaelic names with non-standard phonetic spelling adds to the confusion.

In some cases the name and subject matter of pibroch tunes appears to have been reassigned by 19th century editors such as Angus MacKay, whose book A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd or Highland Pipe Music (1838) included historically fanciful and romantic pibroch source stories by antiquarian James Logan. A number of pibroch collected by MacKay have very different titles in earlier manuscript sources. MacKay's translated English titles became the commonly accepted modern pibroch names, sanctioned by subsequent Piobaireachd Society editors.

Roderick Cannon has compiled a dictionary of the Gaelic names of pibroch from early manuscripts and printed sources, detailing inconsistencies, difficulties in translation, variant names, accurate translations and verifiable historically documented attributions and dates in the few cases where this is possible.