The Wee Macgreegor

Title	The Wee Macgreegor
Subtitle	Highland Patrol
Dedication
Composer	Amers, H. G.
Arranger
Date	1905
Style	Patrol
Instrumentation	Salon Orchestra
Score/Parts	Download
Audio
Notes	Henry G. Amers’s The Wee Macgreegor (1905) takes its title from one of the great publishing sensations of Edwardian Glasgow. The character of “Wee Macgreegor” was created by the Scottish journalist J. J. Bell in 1901, and quickly captured the popular imagination through a series of humorous stories written in Glasgow dialect. First gathered into book form in 1902, Wee Macgreegor sold tens of thousands of copies within weeks, sparking a cultural craze so strong that the boy’s favourite sweet, Scottish “taiblet,” flew off the shelves. Sequels, stage plays, and even a silent film followed, charting the mischievous lad’s adventures from childhood into the First World War. The spelling of the boy’s name is significant. Bell’s original stories and the 1905 Hawkes & Son edition of Amers’s music use the double-e form—Macgreegor—while later publishers and cataloguers often “corrected” it to the conventional Macgregor. Amers, however, was following the popular spelling of the day, and his title is a snapshot of the literary fad in full swing. Musically, Amers paints a picture of Scotland by weaving in well-known national melodies. Listeners will hear quotations of Annie Laurie, Blue Bells of Scotland, Oh! Fhairson Swore a Feud, and the lively Johnny Cope—familiar tunes that anchor the piece in the cultural sound-world of turn-of-the-century Scotland. In drawing on this Glasgow phenomenon, Amers allied his music with a character beloved across Britain. For audiences in 1905, The Wee Macgreegor would have carried not only a jaunty Scottish flavour but also the instant recognition of a household name. Today, it remains a charming musical relic of the moment when a fictional Glasgow boy, in his broad dialect, became a national celebrity.