Last week, we began our journey to the north of Scotland, visiting Inverness and driving up the A9 toward Caithness. We passed through the Black Isle (not an actual island, as I explained), and on the west there is a small town called Rootfield, about halfway between Beauly and Dingwall. This was where the British major general Hector MacDonald grew up, the son of a crofter. In Dingwall there is a monument to him, though probably the most well-known memorial is the popular tune “Hector the Hero” by James Scott Skinner. Below is the story of Hector the Hero, and at the end, a recording of the tune.
On March 25, 1903, one of the heroes of Victorian Scotland, Hector Macdonald, known as “Fighting Mac,” returned to his room from breakfast at a Paris hotel after reading headline articles about himself in a New York newspaper. He took out his pistol and ended his life. Two days later, the great fiddler and composer James Scott Skinner wrote one of his most famous and moving tunes, “Hector the Hero.”
Raised in a small town near Dingwall, north of Inverness, Major-General Sir Hector Macdonald had risen quickly through the ranks of the British army, distinguishing himself with feats of daring, discipline and leadership in Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, India and South Africa. There were those who dubbed him the greatest Scottish soldier since William Wallace. Macdonald had been appointed aide-de-camp to both Queen Victoria and King Edward VII, and was feted throughout the UK, though his humble origins did not prepare him for the gushing plaudits of society. His high position in the army was made possible by the Cardwell Reforms of 1871, which allowed for promotion based on merit, and abolished the purchase of commissions in the army by well-off seekers of glory who were not always the most qualified of military leaders.
That morning at the Paris hotel, Macdonald was startled to see his photo in the international edition of the New York Herald, accompanied by a story about “grave accusations” of “immorality” against him. Macdonald, who was commander of British forces in Ceylon at the time, had been given an ultimatum in London by the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Lord Roberts (whose life Macdonald had saved in combat in Afghanistan), to either leave the army or clear his name via court-martial. He was on his way to the court-martial when he made his fateful stop in Paris.
One of the shocks to society after Macdonald’s death was that this military hero, who was accused of homosexuality, turned out to have a secret wife and son. The British military required commitment from its soldiers and forbade marriage with rare exceptions. Officers were allowed to be married, but Macdonald married in 1884, several years before he became an officer.
We now know that before Macdonald made his fateful journey to Paris, he paid a secret visit to his wife and 15-year-old son in Edinburgh. The first anyone learned of this marriage was after his death, when Lady Macdonald presented proof to the authorities so she could take charge of her husband's funeral arrangements. This certainly upended Macdonald's brother, who arrived in Paris to retrieve the body, only to find it already gone. It also shook up Scottish societies who then pressured Lady Macdonald to allow a public funeral with full honors. She refused, citing personal reasons and her husband's wishes. Perhaps in his last visit to her, he had indicated his intentions. We'll never know.
After three overnight journeys by ferry and two trains, Hector Macdonald's body arrived in Edinburgh for a private funeral at Dean Cemetery at 6am on Monday, March 30, 1903. By Lady Macdonald's strict orders, no military from Edinburgh Castle were permitted to attend. The following Sunday, however, some 30,000 mourners stood in line at the cemetery gates so they could pay their last respects to “Fighting Mac.” Memorials were later built at the cemetery, as well as in Dingwall and Mulbuie.
Three months after his death, Macdonald was exonerated by a commission report stating that no evidence of a crime could be found, and blaming the scandal on “vulgar feelings of spite and jealousy in his rising to such a high rank of distinction in the British Army.” Macdonald’s high rank and lower class Scottish roots rankled the old guard. It did not help that he preferred to get to know local people during his command in Ceylon rather than spend his time with the upper class British officers. Ironically, none of the behavior of which he was accused was a crime in Ceylon.
Channeling the feelings of the nation, James Scott Skinner's manuscript of “Hector the Hero” describes the tune as “The Coronach – all crying together.” A coronach is a Gaelic keening song, usually improvised at a death, funeral, or wake. The first part of his tune, Skinner wrote, represented a “coronach sighing through the trees,” and we can hear what he means when we listen to Skinner's own recording of the tune. He played the first part entirely on the A string, with harmonics and slides up and down the string expressing the feeling of heavy sighing. The second part of the tune moves into a mournful and poignant minor key.
Skinner's “Hector the Hero,” has become a staple of Scottish music. It is a beautiful lament written in slow 6/8 time, which is something like a slow waltz, though a lament is rarely used as dance music. A prolific composer, fiddler, violinist, and dancing master, James Scott Skinner was a Victorian Scottish hero himself, attracting thousands to his concerts, and composing over 600 tunes, many of which are still central to Scottish traditional music. His funeral in 1927 attracted 40,000 mourners, including his friend Harry Lauder, walking behind the pipes of Pipe Major G.S. McLennan.
On the back of the manuscript for “Hector the Hero”, Skinner urgently wrote, “Play in the Kirk on Sunday & get the Minister to announce, as this is a national Calamity – my eyes are full.” He asked his publishers to make the tune available immediately, and managed to include it at the last minute in his magnum opus, The Harp and Claymore, which was published in 1904. The tune was marked “suitable for pipes – piano – violin.”
My first rather unremarkable encounter with the “Hector the Hero” was merely on paper in The Harp and Claymore. It was when I heard the moving rendition by the great fiddler Buddy MacMaster from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, that I realized what a great tune it is.
The tune took on yet more meaning for me when I learned that Buddy MacMaster chose to play “Hector the Hero” for the funeral of his mother. I recently asked Buddy's niece, Andrea Beaton, in her own right a well-respected Cape Breton fiddler, what she knew about the tune. She wrote that “it’s always been referred to as a funeral tune, as far back as I can remember. It’s how I remember my elders talking about it and where I heard it played most often.” The Cape Breton fiddlers have it right. Skinner wrote the tune as a lament, expressing the grief of a nation.
Skinner himself recorded “Hector the Hero” in 1905, 1910 and 1922. I'm not sure that most contemporary players of the tune know much of its origins, but it has nevertheless become popular for its beauty. It was recorded by the Bothy Band in Ireland in the 1970s, by Celtic Fiddle Festival (a trio of Irish, Scottish and Breton fiddlers), by Tommy Peoples, and by various pipe bands. The Scottish folk-rock band Wolfstone recorded it on fiddle, and the Transatlantic Sessions series features the tune as played by Aly Bain and Jenna Reid. Tony Cuffe and Tony McManus recorded solo guitar arrangements of the tune, and bands like The Munros turned it into an upbeat tune played on electric guitar.
There was hope for more information about Hector Macdonald during the centennial of his death in 2003, since military archive material held by the old India Office in London were classified for 100 years and then released. One researcher into Macdonald's life, Dr. Kenneth MacLeod of Ullapool, had left an extensive letter about his research with solicitors in Dingwall, and upon his death in Massachusetts in 1998, required the papers to be sealed until the centennial. Alas, in 2003, nothing new was revealed, or perhaps whatever was found was kept under wraps by someone for future release.
Without documentation, the story of Hector Macdonald remains a tragedy clothed in mystery. But thanks to James Scott Skinner, we have a beautiful tune to commemorate “Fighting Mac.”
Complete info about finding my book MusicScapes of Scotland: Vignettes from Prehistory to Pandemic (from which the above writing is drawn) is available at this link.
I believe there may be a recording of the performance Buddy MacMaster gave at the 1987 Scottish Fiddle Rally in Boston, where I first really came to appreciate the tune “Hector the Hero,” but I have not been able to locate it as yet. The following recording was made at the 1990 Scottish Fiddle Rally, where I played the tune, accompanied by guitarist Tony Cuffe. (Audiophiles listen at your own risk: this is from an emailed digital version of a cassette version of an unedited digital live recording!)
What a great bit of writing Ed. I knew nothing about Hector as does probably most people. Thanks for writing.
Thank you for this history, Ed. I have somewhere a recording of Colin and me singing this in an SFLA concert -- maybe 22 years ago -- and it's such a beautiful song, so full of admiration and grief. What a terrible history we have of making life difficult for those who don't fit our notions of propriety. I especially appreciate your publishing this particular article during Pride month. It will mean a lot to many people.