Issue 1512: Mrs Macpherson of Inveran
- Object
- Mrs MacPherson of Inveran (Dance)
- Submitter
- Bob Parsons
- Assigned to
- Anselm Lingnau
- Priority
- Normal
- Disposition
- Ignored
- Description
-
It is a common mistake to spell Macpherson with an uppercase P. John Drewry wrote the dance for the pipe reel, “Mrs Macpherson of Inveran” by P/M George S MacLennan, and will have known the correct spelling. You have the tune listed with the correct spelling. The Macpherson family who owned The Inveran Hotel used the lower-case p. as does the Clan Macpherson Association. No hard and fast rule as these Clan names are translations from the Gaelic, but it should be remembered that Macpherson is not a patronym. The Inveran Macphersons were a great piping family which included the great 19th Century piper, Malcolm Macpherson (Calum Piobaire). I submit “Mrs Macpherson of Inveran” as the correct form.
Previous Actions
- Date Sept. 23, 2018, 12:59 p.m.
- User Unknown
New issue submitted
- Date Sept. 23, 2018, 1:15 p.m.
- User Anselm Lingnau (anselm)
Assigned changed to »anselm« (previously »None«)
Disposition changed to »Ignored« (previously »New«)
In the “Bon Accord Book”, the name of the dance is spelled in all caps at the top of the page, which is not helpful. John Drewry, however, refers to the dance in four other places in the book, namely the table of contents, the “Notes” on pages 42 and 43, and the description of Jennifer's Jig on page 45. In each of these instances, “MacPherson” is spelled with a capital P.
It is our policy at the Strathspey SCD Database to follow the original publication of a dance as far as the spelling of dance titles is concerned. In this case this means that we will be leaving the entry unchanged. This will not be an issue for searches because these proceed in a case-independent fashion, so people looking for “Macpherson” in its correct spelling will still find the dance.
Thank you for taking the trouble of pointing the issue out to us; we will keep it in mind when we refer to “Macpherson” in a context where the spelling is not dictated to us by original sources.