Strathdon

A visit with Jonny Hardie

Our last significant stop on our music & walking tour in the north of Scotland was at the home of a great musician, fiddler, singer, guitarist Jonny Hardie, founder of the Aberdeenshire band Old Blind Dogs (more about them next week!).

Not only did we visit Jonny, but we stayed at his home, since his wife, Kym, has set it up as a B&B that could accommodate our whole group and provide meals as well.

And that home is amazing. Built in 1604, it was handed down through his mother’s family, and has quite a history.

It’s located near Strathdon in the western part of Aberdeenshire. Strath means valley in Gaelic, and the Don is the name of the nearest river. Strathdon means “valley of the river Don,” in the same way that Strathspey means “valley of the river Spey,” and Strathclyde, “valley of the river Clyde.” The River Don is one of two major rivers flowing eastward into the North Sea at Aberdeen, the other one being the River Dee.

Jonny’s mother was a Forbes, a family well represented in the area. Not far from the house, downhill toward the river, is a grassy field which used to be the location of the family’s castle, Castle Newe (pronounced Nyow, like what a cat says except with an N!). In fact, the house was originally the coach house for the castle.

In the 1920s, the family went bankrupt and had to sell the castle, which was then taken apart, stone by stone, and used to build the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen. This Institute is a center for the study of ethnology, folklore and ethnomusicology, and sponsors conferences such as the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention (or did, at least, until the pandemic).

Of course, there was a ton of stuff in the castle, and much of it was sold off, but the rest was brought back to reside in Jonny’s family house, called the House of Newe.

It’s a fascinating home, wherever you look. Below are views of the dining room with its old, elaborately carved chairs. The wide angle shot on the left shows much of the room. In the center of the back wall is a portrait of one of the family ancestors who used to help run the East India Trading company, which helps explain the origin of some of the items in the house.

The shots below were taken during one of the musical events we enjoyed while staying with Jonny. He invited various guests to join him during different times that our groups paid a visit, including fiddler Charlie McKerron of Capercaillie, the singer Jenny Sturgeon, and guitarist Pete MacCallum, who is playing with Jonny below. In the background, you can see part of the living room.

The panorama shot below captures more of the long living room. There are portraits of family members on the walls, along with imaginative paintings by Jonny’s grandfather. Toward the right on the wall is a display of spears, some of them quite vicious looking, arranged around an old suit of chain mail. The mail has a bullet hole in the chest showing what happened to the last person who wore it in battle.

A room at the far end of the living room has been outfitted as a recording studio, and many musicians have recorded in the house, included the great band Session A9.

The house is so interesting that I have to show you a bit more, and although this is a private home, it is also a B&B, so it’s sort of public as well. Below are some shots from upstairs, including the hallway where many guest rooms are available, the serpentine pillars (holding up nothing right now), which may have come from India, and a view down the steps showing a carved coat of arms.

The Strathdon area, like much of Scotland, is full of historical memories — battles, tombs, artifacts dating back to the Picts and earlier, standing stones — and it is located in part of the Cairngorms National Park, so the scenery is quite beautiful. The Burn o’ Vat, the strange glacial rock formation we talked about and viewed in an earlier post, is less than 15 miles away. Some of the surrounding landmarks are commemorated in the titles of tunes. William Marshall wrote a number of tunes for members of the Forbes family, including one for Sir Charles Forbes of Newe and Edinglassie. J.S. Skinner wrote a slow dramatic air about nearby Corgarff Castle, which Jonny accompanied us to, so he could tell the tragic story of what happened there.

Next door to Jonny’s house used to be the home of Castle Newe gardeners, one of whom, Alexander Walker, lived there in the mid 1800s. Apparently, when his young child died in the late 1860s, Walker left his job at the castle and emigrated to Williamstown, Massachusetts. He wrote some wonderful tunes, now available from Cranford Publications in Nova Scotia. One of them was co-written with J.S. Skinner before leaving Scotland.

Long ago, I learned a tune by Alexander Walker from a great Cape Breton fiddler, Carl MacKenzie. It’s called “The Free Gardener,” which refers to the Order of Free Gardeners, a fraternal society founded in Scotland in the 17th century before spreading to England and Ireland. It was not unlike the Freemasons, which was a guild for stonemasons. It’s a beautiful tune, with an unusual second part. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that it had been written in the house next door to Jonny’s. At one point during our stay, Jonny and I walked next door to play the tune in front of Walker’s old house.

Below is a recording of the tune. You might enjoy this, if you can give the benefit of the doubt to the sound quality of a unique recording made from the audience of a January 1995 concert, with myself on fiddle, accompanied by the great Cape Breton pianist Barbara MacDonald Magone. It starts with the Free Gardener by Alexander Walker, goes into Littlejohn’s Hame, a strathspey by J.S. Skinner, and finishes with the reel Brumley Brae, by William MacPherson of Elgin.

After saying farewell to the Hardies, we drove on the last leg of our tour, back to Stirling, our starting point.

First, though, we had to drive over a very old stone bridge over the River Don, the Poldullie Bridge, which was built in 1715. Somehow it survived a huge flood in 1829, when the river came up almost to the top of the arch, which is 25 feet above the normal water level. Below is a shot I took of the bridge before we crossed it.

Along the way, driving through Cairngorms National Park, we stopped at a ski resort, where we had a bite to eat at the cafe. I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of the sign they posted!

Here’s a map of our whole Northern Tour. I hope you’ve enjoyed it! Next week I’ll share one more article with you from my MusicScapes of Scotland book, this one focusing on the music of Aberdeenshire, as represented by Jonny Hardie’s Old Blind Dogs. The band is still going, in its 35th year.