Pipe Major Ian Burrows (RSPBANI Project Manager) played a lament in memory of 500 pipers who lost their lives in World War 1, prior to the prize giving at the Ulster Festival of Solo Piping and Drumming Championships at Monkstown Community School, Newtownabbey on Saturday 18th April.
The bagpipes Ian played are 19th Century Peter Henderson bagpipes manufactured in Renfrew Street, Glasgow. During the 1st World War, they were played by Private Richard Maybin, 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles (Saskatchewan Regiment). Richard was killed on the 2nd June 1916 aged 21 years, during a major German assault in The Ypres Salient, where 80% of his regiment became casualties on one day. Richard had travelled to Canada to find work and enlisted into the Canadian Army in Manitoba. His personal effects and bagpipes were returned to his mother, Mrs Margaret Maybin, Lisnamurrican, Broughshane, Co Antrim, where they remained in a trunk in the attic for more than half a century before being discovered and restored by Mr Harold Bennett of Carricklongfield, Dungannon. Richard Maybin is commemorated on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Belgium and at 1st Broughshane Presbyterian Church.
