The Pipes are Calling

A pulp novel reprinted as paperback

The streak of reading Donald Barr Chidsey continues with one more book, The Pipes are Calling. This is an Ace paperback from 1959. It states “First Book Publication.” The copyright is 1959 but that cover statement of “First Book Publication” struck me as a little ambiguous.

I went to the indispensable Fictionmags Index to look for the title. What I did notice was a four part serial, “Glenallan of the Clans” in Adventure Dec 1, 1931 to Jan. 15, 1932. It was Chidsey’s first story in Adventure. I knew the main character in the Ace Paperback was Malcolm MacIldowie of the Glenallan Clan in Scotland. I found the Dec. 1, 1931 issue of Adventure at Luminist.org and did a comparison of the first chapters of pulp and paperback. It was the same. So this is a pulp reprint.

Malcom MacIldowie is the son of the leader of the Glenallan Clan in the Scottish Highlands. He is in London, sent there by his father to learn the ways of the Sassenach. He receives word that Prince Charles, son of the would be King James Stuart is returning from exile for an uprising. Malcolm gets into an altercation with a Capt. Fitzstevens of the dragoons while gambling. He is accosted by thugs on the way home and rescued by Lady Helen Hornsby, her brother, and a friend.

Malcolm returns to Glenallan to find his father on his deathbed. He becomes the clan chief and leads pretty much all the able bodied men to meet Bonnie Prince Charlie. Chidsey does the Scottish thing well with some snatches of Scottish Gaelic (which is spelled a little different from Irish Gaelic).

Chidsey does not pull any punches, the gathering of Scottish Highlanders is not overwhelming and also under equipped. By luck and the cowardice of some English commanders, the Highlanders take Edinburgh. Malcolm meets Lady Helen again and they have a whirlwind romance and marriage. She is all for the Jacobite cause.

The Highlanders are content having liberated Scotland from the German House of Hanover. Prince Charles wants to take it all going to London. Prince Charles finds the Scottish Lowlanders are not interested in joining and the same in England. The Highlander host retreats being forced to fight at Culloden Moor. Scottish bravery with broadsword cannot match disciplined lines of musket armed infantry commanded by the Duke of Cumberland.

Malcolm is badly wounded, found by his wife Helen and nursed back to health. They find Prince Charles and help him to a ship to take him back to France. There is a climactic fight with Capt. Fitzstevens and his dragoons.

I was half expecting the novel to end with Malcolm and others going into exile in the Carolinas as happened with many. He is off to France with Prince Charles.

This is a nice slice of pulp historical adventure from one of the greatest of pulp magazines. Chidsey’s historical fiction was generally late 16^th Century to early 19^th Century so this is right in his bailiwick. The Battle of Culloden Moor is well done (and tragic).

I liked this paragraph which has some relevance today:

“I hate Saxons because they want to make the world just like themselves. I hate them because they think everything they do is right, and that God in Heaven gave them special commands to do it just that way. . . We must all talk English. We must forget the Gaelic. Gaelic is wrong because Englishmen don’t wear kilts. So-- wearing a kilt is indecent. We must not own muskets or pistols. We might shoot Englishmen with them. But we much not even shoot one another, because Englishmen don’t approve of that.”

In World War One, Canadian Army marching songs were in Gaelic as Nova Scotia had the highest number of Gaelic speakers outside of Ireland and Scotland.