Roundabout, Thornliebank was known as the model village, because of the Crums’ commonsense philanthropies. There was a commodious village club, the facilities of which, and especially the library, were greater than the membership fees. Sport was not the feature of country life that it has since become everywhere--perhaps because that was still the era when Shanks’s pony was the steed on which people put their odds. It was also the era of mutual improvement expressed in musical and literary endeavour. In the Literary Society my sphere was humble enough, though I recall the labour with which I set forth the fruit of researches on such subjects as the history of railways.
The Thornliebank Choral Union was nothing extraordinary, of course, except perhaps that its daring members constituted me their treasurer, and managed to renew their courage when the annual meeting recurred. But Thornliebank’s chief musical fame was derived from its brass band, into the glories of which I was never initiated. It had (speaking from memory) twenty-four pieces; and was in much demand for excursions and celebrations over a pretty wide territory. The pay for a long day’s activity wouldn’t be more than twenty-five or thirty dollars--think of that, ye who inhibit musicians from playing with a Pageant Chorus, because of a union punctilio.
A long day’s activity? Many a Saturday morning have I been wakened at five o’clock by the band playing itself through the village on the way to Glasgow, there, at seven, to lead its employing multitude to a boat for a journey down the Clyde. The band walked the five miles to Glasgow, and played most of the way. Practice in daylight maybe saved the cost of candle-light.
Some little time before I left Scotland there came to Thornliebank a designer for the Crum Mills, who had a very fine tenor voice. He was a little unlike some of our native singers, such as John Semple, whose bass was one of the most sonorous I have ever heard; who gave to his solo work a genius of interpretation I have never known excelled, but who couldn’t read a note, and relied entirely on his unfailing, memorial ear.
Our tenor was a technician, with a passion for the science of melody, and a determination to excel in the professional world--which he has since done in two continents. He is George Neil, conductor of the Toronto Scottish Chorus, one of the sweetest lyric tenors you could wish to hear, and a relentless worker in the cause of perpetuating Scottish songs.