Brown's Around: A Musical Century

When Belle’s father died, her mother, fearful of having her children taken into care by the authorities, took a house in Blairgowrie on the site of what is now the police station. So Belle grew up in a house, and not until she married her second cousin Alec Stewart did she travel occasionally with him in Ireland.
School was far from pleasant, because traveller children were despised and bullied, but the love of her family saw Belle through those difficult times.
She first came to the notice of the folk music world when local journalist Maurice Fleming was asked by song collector Hamish Henderson to look for the composer of a song called The Berryfields of Blair. Maurice found Belle and her family and recorded them for the School of Scottish Studies.
In the sleeve notes to the Topic record of The Stewarts of Blair, made in 1965, Hamish Henderson wrote, “collecting on the berryfields was like holding a tin can under the Niagara Falls. However, when we got back to Auld Reekie and began sizing up what we had collected, it was clear that the really fabulous contribution had been made not so much by the nomadic travellers among whom we had camped as by the Stewart family of Berrybank, the aiders and abettors of the whole operation.“
Belle became one of the last great oral tradition bearers of Scotland’s ballads and folktales. She was both admired and respected the world over and was honoured with the BEM by the Queen for her services to her country’s culture. She died in 1997.

Founding The Vale of Atholl Pipe Band
In the same year that Belle Stewart first saw a Caputh sky, an Association was being set up in Highland Perthshire to maintain and encourage the traditional art of Highland piping. There have been struggles along the way, but a century later The Vale of Atholl Pipe Band has established itself as one of the most exciting and innovative bands in Scotland.
This will be a much publicised centenary so I’ll highlight just some of its achievements. In 1977 under Pipe Major Ian Duncan, the band joined the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association and entered the competition circuit, finishing sixth in the Grade 4 Championships.
The following season brought a clean sweep - all the Grade 4 Championships including the World title. A mere seven years after entering the ranks, the Vale of Atholl Pipe Band was officially appointed as a Grade 1 Band, a lofty position which it holds to this day, with victories along the way in the European and British Championships and appearing three times in the top three placings of the World Pipe Band Championships.
It’s a fantastic achievement, but there’s much more to the band than the competition side. Colour and pageantry don’t come cheaply and fund-raising is a vital part of any band’s make-up.
Along with sponsorship from Robert Wiseman Dairies, the Vale hosts the enormously successful outdoor Highland Nights which have been held over the summer in Pitlochry’s Recreation Ground for the past forty years - yes, forty years - to an audience of countless thousands of visitors from all over the world. And these Highland Nights are the trying-ground for the very youthful members of the Novice Juvenile band, a band every bit as important to the Vale as its big brothers and sisters elsewhere in the ranks.
Belle Stewart and The Vale of Atholl Pipe Band might not appear to have too much in common, but in this era of the global village, it’s fitting to be able to celebrate the achievements of two world-renowned exponents of Scottish culture.