Believed to descend from Clan Donnachaidh, ‘the children of Duncan’, one source of the Reid name is from the Gaelic ‘ruadh’, indicating someone with red hair.
• On the battlefield, James Reid was the first piper to be tried for high treason.
• Serving as piper to Lord Ogilvy’s (Forfarshire) Regiment during the Rising of 1745, he was left behind as part of the Jacobite garrison that had taken Carlisle.
• Captured when the town surrendered, he argued at his trial that he was a musician, not a soldier – but the court deemed that the pipes were ‘an instrument of war’, and he was accordingly hanged, drawn and quartered.
