Rona Lightfoot is well known in the Scottish folk world as a standard-bearer of all things traditional. This week she gave a talk at one of the daily Pipe Up! events where she discussed the oral traditions of bagpipe tuition, Canntaireachd.
She told us: “Canntaireachd is the way to teach the pupil a tune in the absence of manuscript. During the war when I grew up there was very little you could do to send away to Glasgow or wherever to get pipe music: that was the last thing on people's minds. But the local pipers taught me many tunes: my granpa, my uncle, my father: people like that taught me by word of mouth rather than having the thing written out for you.
“That's really what it is: it's a traditional way of parting company with your tune to your pupil.”
Coming up as a young female piper in the fifties and sixties, Rona experienced some resistance from certain more old-fashioned players – despite her obvious talents at the instrument. Her determination eventually led to Rona becoming the first female to take part in the esteemed Bratach Gorm, or Blue Banner, pibroch competition.
She told us: “After much correspondence and quoting the Sex Discrimination Act and so on they changed the constitution and women are allowed to play if they achieve the standard.
“It's quite odd that men that were so keen on the highland bagpipe, they didn't want women to have anything to do with it at all., it was a man's instrument.