PS 213 – I got a Kiss of the King’s Hand

      Fhuair mi pòg o làimh an Rìgh

Primary Sources

Fhuair mi pog o laimh an Righ / I got a Kiss of the Kings Hand  R.26: 21r
KB Thuair mi pog o’ laimh an Righ / I got a Kiss of the King’s Hand  KB.6: 14

Notes on Gaelic Title

Fhuair mi pòg o làimh an Rìgh Fhuair mi pog o laimh an Righ / I got a Kiss of the Kings Hand R; Thuair mi pog o’ laimh an Righ / I got a Kiss of the King’s Hand KB. I got a Kiss of the King’s Hand. The earliest-recorded pibroch name is found in a section of the Wardlaw MS originally written between 1683 and 1690. What survives is fair copy made by the author, c. 1700:

NLS ms 3658, page 249
Fuoris Pooge i spoge i Rhī. I got a kiss of the Kings hand (NLS ms 3658, p. 249)

See R.D. Cannon, ‘Who got a kiss of the King’s hand? The growth of a tradition’ in Defining strains: the musical life of Scots in the seventeenth century, ed. James Porter (Peter Lang: Oxford, 2007), especially note 6; a preprint is available here. Angus MacKay’s spelling thuair correctly registers that fh is sounded ‘h’ in fhuair, instead of being silent as is usually the case.

Roderick Cannon (2009), rev. Barnaby Brown 2016

Archive Recordings

1953 Pipe Major William MacLean: story from Wardlaw MS / Highland bagpipe
1959 Malcolm R MacPherson: Highland bagpipe
1961 Pipe Major John D Burgess: Highland bagpipe

Other Material

2002 William Donaldson: Set Tunes Notes

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