December - Pipe Marches with a Glendaruel connection

The Sweet Maid of Glendaruel

According to TuneArch - The Scots Guards Standard Pipe Setting suggests that “The Sweet Maid of Glendaruel” follow “Campbell's Farewell to Redcastle.” Christine Martin (2002) prints the tune along with “Terribus” and “Corriechoillies Welcome to the Northern Meeting” as a medley for the dance The Gay Gordons.
Glendaruel is a glen in the Cowal peninsula in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, on the way to Tighnabruaich from Glencoe and is nearly as far to the south from Glencoe as Redcastle is to the north.

Glendaruel Highlanders

This quick step was written by Aberdeen Pipe Major A. Fettes (1845-1921) for the family of MacDougall-Gillies (d. 1925), a 19th century champion piper who was a native of Glendaruel, Argyll

Paul Cranford (2015) notes that modern piping versions of the march are in four strains, but that Cape Breton fiddlers (who play it as a jig) only play three parts[1].

I have always known it as Campbeltown Loch.

See below

Campletown Loch is a small sea loch near the south of the Kintyre Peninsula facing eastwards towards the Firth of Clyde, Scotland. The town of Campbeltown, from which it takes its name, is located at its head.

The loch is immortalized in the folk song of the same name, re-popularized by Andy Stewart in the 1960s.  Click here to hear the song and see images of old Campbeltown in its heyday.

In the song the writer Alan Cameron expresses his desire that the loch be full of whisky, a commentary of sorts on the fact that Campbeltown was originally a center of whisky distilling but that the price of whisky in the town itself was unaffordable. Click here for the words of all the five verses.

Chorus:
Oh! Campbeltown Loch, Ah wish ye were whisky!
Campbeltown Loch, Och Aye!
Campbeltown Loch, I wish ye were whisky!
Ah wid drink ye dry.

*Content mostly lifted from the Tunearch.org website