Association Leadership Spotlight: The Eagle Pipers Society

The competing piping, drumming, and pipe band world might tend to think of an “association” as a group that governs contests. Its primary function is to work with all members to develop, uphold, and safeguard rules designed to make its events equitable and fair for all.

But the piping and drumming world has far more small organizations—often called “societies”—whose main function is camaraderie, not competition.

One of the most well-known is the Eagle Pipers Society, the Edinburgh-based group founded in 1963 by Captain John MacLellan MBE and Pipe-Major George Stoddart, to bring together pipers of all levels and interests in a collegial atmosphere that fostered nothing but an appreciation of the common bond of Highland bagpipe music.

The first meeting place was “The Eagle,” a historic pub on the Lawnmarket of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, so the group named itself the Eagle Pipers Society. (Founded in 1690, the pub changed its name in 1964 to the Ensign Ewart.)

“The Eagles” thrived for a few decades, eventually moving meetings to the West End Hotel on Palmerston Place in the Haymarket area of Scotland’s capital city. As seems inevitable with any group of serious pipers, a few competitions were organized, and the most celebrated was an invitational MSR event that attracted plenty of interest and participation.

The Eagle Pipers fizzled in the 1980s due to the lack of an energized committee, skipping and cancelling meetings. For three decades, the group lay dormant until it was resurrected in 2010 by a small group of dedicated and excellent pipers, including Euan Anderson, Jenny Hazzard, Colin MacLellan, and Iain Speirs.

The reborn Eagle Pipers committed to meetings every other Tuesday night and found a home at the Scots Guards Club across from Haymarket Station. The meetings have ever since featured the same “conviviality” (a term current Honourary Pipe-Major and Fear-an-Tighe Euan Anderson uses), with communal playing, performances by accomplished guest and member pipers, and encouragement to up-and-coming players to get up and have a tune before an appreciative crowd.

The popularity of the re-hatched Eagle Pipers Society has made their distinctive necktie a frequent part of solo pipers’ kilted ensemble. It’s perhaps no coincidence that non-competition regional piping societies and clubs have sprung up worldwide.

In 2022, the Eagle Pipers took on the running of the annual Captain John A. MacLellan Memorial Dinner-Recital. Each August, they have delivered the prestigious event at Edinburgh’s Caledonian Waldorf Astoria Hotel, building its stature as one of the world’s preeminent piping competitions.

(Membership to the Eagle Pipers Society is open to pipers of any ability or location. New members receive the famous Eagles necktie in a welcome package.)

In our ongoing Association Leadership Spotlight series, we’ve talked to many competition-running organizations. We also include organized groups that focus on camaraderie and fellowship, so we were pleased to get together with Eagle Pipers Society President Douglas Gardiner and Euan Anderson to hear about the organization and what makes the Eagles fly high.

We thank Douglas Gardiner and Euan Anderson for their help with this piece.

Stay tuned to pipes|drums for more Association Leadership Spotlight features coming soon.