Johnston, Calum

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Johnston, Calum

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  • Calum Aonghais Chaluim

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      Dates of existence

      1891 - 1973

      History

      Born in 1891, in Glen, near Castlebay, Barra, Calum Johnson, styled Calum Aonghais Chaluim, came of a family (Clann Aonghais Chaluim) of three brothers and five sisters, one of whom, Annie Johnston, was also a renowned tradition bearer.

      Having left Barra at around the age of fourteen, Calum Johnston found himself in Manchester where he trained to become a draughtsman. Although he later became a secretary of the Manchester Pipers’ Association, the city was unable to offer a satisfactory outlet for his love of piping. Later, moving to Edinburgh, Johnston followed his career in engineering and held a position with Bruce Peebles Industries Ltd., and where he also had the opportunity to keep up his piping and became secretary and treasurer of the Highland Pipers’ Society. Johnston was ‘discovered’ as a singer by the folklorist Hamish Henderson who asked him to appear at the Workers’ Festival ceilidh in 1951 where he sang a song, Òran Eile don Phrionnsa (‘Another Song to the Prince’), composed by one of the predominant Jacobite bards Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (‘Alexander MacDonald’). The next year he was again invited and where he performed songs and played the pipes.

      Over the next couple of decades, Johnston would record many, many items that are now preserved in the School of Scottish Studies Archives at the University of Edinburgh and now available through Tobar an Dualchais / Kisto Riches website. Shortly after his death, a whole issue of Tocher was devoted to the memory of Calum and Annie Johnston and such was the wealth of material that only a representative sample could be given.

      John Lorne Campbell clearly held Calum and Annie Johnston in great esteem when he wrote that:

      They represented what today is a very rare type — the cultured and educated Gaelic-speaking Highlander who could move in any society, but who had never forgotten or despised the Gaelic oral tradition which had been the ambience of their childhood. From this point of view, Anna and Calum were a remarkable brother and sister pair.

      Much of the material which Calum and Annie came by way of their MacNeil mother, styled Catrìona Aonghais ’ic Dhòmhnaill Mhòir (‘Catherine daughter of Angus son of Big Donald’), and two neighbouring MacKinnon sisters, Ealasaid and Peigi Eachainn ’Illeasbuig.

      Although Calum Johnston excelled in piping, especially in ceòl mòr, the classical music of the Great Highland Bagpipe and also singing òrain mhòra, or the great songs, his repertoire was quite varied and he made many contributions to the three-volume Hebridean Folksongs, co-edited by John Lorne Campbell and Francis Collinson. Conversing with the Danish musicologist, Thorkild Knudsen in 1967, Johnston expresses his way of singing songs:

      On his retirement around 1956, Calum Johnston and his wife, Peggy (also from Barra), returned to live in Eoligarry.

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      Castle Bay, Isle of Barra, Scotland

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      Related entity

      Johnston, Annie (1886-1974)

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      family

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      Johnston, Annie is the sibling of Johnston, Calum

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