"Farewell to the Creeks"

Played in a set: Ballindalloch Castle/Atholl Highlanders/Farewell to the Creeks

Played as a jig, it is actually a (jig-time) pipe march.

When chords are played by guitar, the Amix setting can readily be played capo II.

“Farewell to the Creeks� is a well-known north country tune composed by Pipe Major James ‘Pipie’ Robertson of Boyne, Banffshire, in 1915 when he was a prisoner of war in Germany.

The Creeks are a natural feature of the coastline by Portknockie on the southern shore of the Solway Firth; they are spectacular rocky inlets caused by heavy sea erosion. The most famous natural feature of that part of the world is the Bow Fiddle Rock, named for the strange shape it has developed through this erosion. This is a part of the world that James Robertson grew to appreciate while in his younger days holidaying with his uncle, and which he remembered while being kept in solitary confinement in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1915 (he was not a model prisoner, and was awarded the Meritorious Service medal for his work in the field of annoying the hell out of his captors). He wrote the tune onto a piece of yellow blotting paper, which he spoke of having retained in his possession after the war.

It is the vehicle for Hamish Henderson’s popular song "The Highland Division’s Farewell to Sicily,� also called “Banks of Sicily,� composed while he was (an) Intelligence Officer for the Highland Division in World War II. G. W. Lockhart (in Fiddles and Folk, 1998) relates that Henderson had been viewing the smoke curling from Mt. Etna’s crater in the distance behind the Pipes and Drums of the division’s 153 Brigade, when the band launched into “Farewell to the Creeks.� “Without hindrance,� said Henderson, “the words came flowing to me.�