NEW YORK — Of course there were to be bagpipes Saturday, the eve of Tartan Day, when Carnegie Hall is hosting a lineup of stars. Among the luminaries of Scottish traditional music expected were Julie Fowlis, who was featured on the soundtrack to Disney’s “Brave,’’ and Dougie MacLean, a singer-songwriter whose “Caledonia’’ has became an anthem for Scottish sports fans.
The event, “Scotland’s Hoolie in New York,’’ is also the Carnegie Hall debut of an aging celebrity who flew into New York on Tuesday, accompanied by a personal bodyguard, before taking up residence at a high-security location on the Upper East Side. This VIP, unannounced on the program, was expected to bring goose bumps to listeners during the final performance of Robert Burns’s “Auld Lang Syne.’’
The surprise guest, considered a national treasure in Scotland, has never been seen wearing tartans. The dignitary in question is a 270-year-old folk fiddle, covered in what looks like full-body floral tattoos, which belonged to dance master William Gregg.
It was Gregg who taught a 17-year-old Burns dance steps. And it was Gregg whom the young poet sought out, as he later wrote, “to give my manners a brush.’’ While there is no direct evidence that Burns played this fiddle, its sound would have been on his mind when he composed the jigs, reels, and gracefully tripping strathspeys that continue to resound in any space where Scottish music is celebrated.
Today, the instrument is among the most popular items on show at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, and it is a Scottish national treasure, said Suzanne Reid, the conservator for the National Trust for Scotland who accompanied the Gregg fiddle on its trans-Atlantic journey. She was nervously monitoring the humidity levels at Freeman’s Hindman auction house in Manhattan, where a reporter was granted a brief private audience.
“It is an integral part of Scottish identity,’’ accordionist Gary Innes, who organized the Hoolie, said in an interview. “To have it played in the most famous concert hall built by a Scot’’ — Carnegie Hall’s construction was funded by Scotland-born Andrew Carnegie — “is very special. It brings people together.’’ (Innes was also to perform in the Hoolie with his folk-rock band Manran.)
For the teenage Burns, dance lessons with Gregg were a pivotal stage of his self-designed education and an act of rebellion against the conservative Presbyterian values of his father, a ploughman, who, Burns wrote, “had an unaccountable antipathy against these meetings.’’ Gregg’s dance school, at the Bachelors’ Club in rural Tarbolton, was a steppingstone on Burns’s path to becoming cultured and, Innes said, most likely a place to meet women. A stained patch on the violin’s shoulder, darkened by contact with skin and sweat, seems to embody the memory of music-making and dancing in snug country parlors.
On Saturday, violinist Duncan Chisholm was to place his chin on that spot while playing the Gregg fiddle at Carnegie Hall.
“Just to be able to hear it gives you a connection to Robert Burns,’’ he said. “To listen to this instrument that he listened and danced to and purportedly played as well — it’s just lovely to hold something like that in your hands.’’
Chisholm added, “We don’t know the situations this fiddle has been in, the many parties it’s been at, the conversations it’s had with people like Burns. These instruments have a story, but it’s a story that will never be told.’’
