Small portrait of Captain Neil MacLeod of Gesto

Captain Neil MacLeod of Gesto was born about 1770 and joined the British army in the 1790s, fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. He served under Sir Ralph Abercromby in Egypt and later acted as Recruiting Officer for the Highland Regiments. He was the last of a notable family of Skye tacksmen who lost their lands of Gesto in North Skye after a boundaries dispute with their chieftain, MacLeod of Macleod. Neil MacLeod of Gesto was a great authority on Highland music and was said to know all the music of piobaireachd and its history and traditions. Latterly he lived in Edinburgh where he spent most of his time researching in the national archives then stored in the cellars of the Parliament House; he came to be known as the 'parliament house ghost'. In 1828 he published his small book of 20 tunes in canntaireachd to illustrate the MacCrimmon 'system' of teaching and recalling bagpipe music.

A collection of 20 Highland bagpipe tunes in the spoken or sung form of canntaireachd was made by Captain Neil MacLeod of Gesto in Skye and first published in 1828. It is a record of what one of the last of the MacCrimmon pipers of Skye, John MacCrimmon (1731-1822), known as Iain Dubh, sung or recited as piobaireachd. Another collection of canntaireachd was made at this time or in the 1790s by Colin Campbell in Argyllshire and 168 tunes survived in manuscript form. The rescuing and editing of this form of an oral tradition in Gaelic tended to reduce it to a strict system which it may never have been.

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