Rummaging Through the Tune Archive.

I did a funeral this afternoon and re-discovered an old favourite tune.   At this service all the family wanted from the pipes was to lead the procession from the mortuary chapel to the gravesite.  I don't do that very often and the last couple of times the family specifically wanted Amazing Grace, which I can do, but it isn't much of a processional.

So I paged through a couple of tune books and there in my big, black binder full of xeroxes and hand-scribbled scores was Lord Lovat's Lament, which I haven't done since, oh, maybe Clan Donnachaidh Band days, i.e., back in the late '80s or early '90s.  And it's a great little tune, very melodic.  It works well both as a very slow air and as a proper quick step.  I probably played it somewhere in between.  (You can't slow march a congregation of civilian mourners, now can you.  Not with a motorized hearse on your tail, anyway.)  The tempo was indeed slower than the folks in the video above, although I really like the tempo they've chosen.

What a beautiful little tune that is.  That has to go back into the standard repertoire.

(Hmm.  I wonder how it works on the  melodeon.)


[ADDENDUM: It works a treat on the melodeon; at least it does on my C/G]