I was looking for a piece of sheet music I thought I had and was having trouble finding it. I ended up going to Jim McGillivray's pipetunes.ca site and started cruising around. Jim has biographies set up for the various composers who's tunes are available for download there. Of P/M Donald MacLeod, Jim wrote "Rarely a day of piping goes by that I don't play at least one Donald MacLeod composition." This gave me pause to look at Wee Donald's list of compositions and arrangements and it is indeed impressive and full of classic and great pipe tunes, including some of my favorite tunes to listen to and play. I'm not sure there is another composer of pipe music who has as many to his credit. Maybe Willie Ross and a couple of others come close, but I would bet that Donald MacLeod still leads that list.

As it turns out I found the tune I was looking for in Book 4 of MacLeods's Collection, which I already own. Here's a list of tunes in his collection, Books 1-6. http://www.bagpipelessons.com/MacLeod_Index.pdf Not all were written by him, but some of the best and most familiar on this list were. "Susan MacLeod" is one of the finest strathspeys ever written IMHO, and many of his other tunes are right up there.

Besides his compositions and arrangements, his piobaireachd tutorials, performance standards, military service and ambassadorship were all legendary. I doubt there is anybody who plays the pipes today who hasn't been influenced by Wee Donald MacLeod in some way or another.