William Sutherland was born in Wick in 1878, according to his army discharge papers, a date different from the 1880 given on his death certificate. His father was a stone mason. Mr Sutherland left his parents at the age of nine to be a herd laddie. He never spoke of his own family but the crofters he lived with were very good to him and he started dancing there. It always amused him that his first medal was not for dancing but for riding a donkey backwards at a circus.
He could win locally but could not beat the dancers who came up from the south. The earliest recorded success that we have is a medal, photographed among the memorabilia, won at the Tournaveen Games in 1891 when he was 13 years old.
He dated his dancing education from when his lessons started in Glasgow, where he went to take out indentures to a tailor. He later shifted to Aberdeen as a journeyman in a trade he practised throughout his long working life, eventually in Wellington at Docherty's then later at Bedford's.. He used to say that, "I have a good trade at my fingertips." By this he meant that he was independent and beholden to no one. He always worked on piece rates - payment by item made.
Tailors at Bedford's worked on a wooden platform about a yard above the floor where they all sat without cushions, tailor-style. This was not cross-legged in a child's manner, it was more in the Pacific Island attitude with, say, the right foot almost under the opposite buttock, but with the left leg where the cloth was draped bent over the right knee. In his sixties Mr Sutherland could fold both his legs so that each foot rested high on top of the opposite thigh, lotus style. To amuse me he would sometimes walk on his knees with his feet folded that way. He made my kilts and school trousers.
He served in Egypt during the Boer War as evidenced by the Mediterannean medal from Queen Victoria shown in the picures of his memorabilia. He was a sergeant serving in France in the Great War with the 3rd Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders . He was a fire warden in Wellington during World War II. His was a long military involvement. His regimental number is 114 780.
He was not a supporter of the Jacobite cause saying to grandson Ian, "Remember that we did not come out for Charlie." Of course there were several times more Scots fighting at Culloden for the Government than there were Sassenachs.
There is a significant point about his movements. He said any number of times that it was not generally realised in Scotland that the William Sutherland listed in the Scottish prize records of the Northern Meetings as being from Thurso was the same William Sutherland as that from Aberdeen - one and the same central character as in these recollections.
Mr Sutherland was taught by John MacKenzie in the 1890s, who in turn was taught by John McNeill Snr. (Take care with your generations of the McNeill dancers. Another later and unrelated John was a great contemporary of Mr Sutherland's.)
The war years apart, Mr Sutherland won the Highland Fling at Braemar for eighteen consecutive years and the Highland Reel at Aboyne for a similar stretch, I think. He won the sword dance at Aboyne for 17 consecutive years. At that time they were the premier meetings in Scotland. Cowal was not the important meeting when he was dancing that it later became, and I don't think that he competed there.
I have several times seen the printed evidence of his dancing record published in two books of results of the Northern Meetings in the possession of the late Mr Hilary Glasgow, J.P., Turakina. These books were loaned to my parents on a couple of occasions decades ago. They were sewn, soft bound and the spines were deteriorating. The Glasgow family may still have these valuable records. Mr Sutherland competed successfully all over Scotland. He was several times presented to Royalty and danced on Command.
In my childhood, there were numerous older Scots people living in New Zealand who were aware of Mr Sutherland’s dancing record and, though he was a pariah in dancing circles here, no one disputed that his record in Scotland was brilliant. This record was ignored by New Zealanders, particularly from around 1940. This attitude contrasts with the respect that New Zealand born pipers had for the Scottish records of Murdo MacKenzie and George Yardley and the pleasure they took from them. Those pipers’ records pale beside Mr Sutherland’s.
He taught in Scotland where his greatest pupil was James L. MacKenzie (his dancing and deed pole name not his given name, which was Cowan if my memory serves me right). James came to dominate dancing there after Mr Sutherland emigrated. James Kinghorn also learned from him in Scotland.
One of the important reasons for the emigration was that James MacKenzie started to win competions over his teacher. The other reasons were a pulled calf muscle, sciatica and, I suspect, the loss of his wife in circumstances which alienated Mr Sutherland from the Presbyterian Church. Mrs Christina Mathieson-Sutherland was ill for some years, eventually dying of TB. Some months later the minister visited and enquired after Mrs Sutherland’s health which upset Mr Sutherland. He did not remarry and he returned to Scotland once. His sciatica left him for good on his final journey through the tropics.
Mr Sutherland came to Dunedin in 1923, his only child Christina following reluctantly later. Daughter Christina was latterly Mrs Croxford, wife of the policeman in Temuka. They had two sons, one Ian also a policeman and the other, Norton known as Bil was a geologist who went to Australia retiring back to New Zealand. I was a guest of Mrs Croxford when Mr Sutherland was living with her in his retirement in 1959. As an elderly man he lived with my parents, then with Grace and Hilary Glasgow on their Turakina farm, where he died in 1967.
There were sports meetings all over the country after World War I. Almost very stop on the main trunk had its sports meeting. However, the central North Island circuit of sports meetings consisted of Turakina, Dannevirke, Wanganui, Hunterville and Taihape over summer. 1925/6 was a vintage year. The pipers on the circuit included the father and son Mackenzie, Bob Thomson, Jack Cameron (Mataura), George Yardley and Albert MacIntyre (Christcurch). The main dancers were Mr Sutherland, Jimmie Kinghorn, Davey Bothwell and D. MacKenzie (Dannevirke).
New Zealand born Albert MacIntyre had a particularly good tour and John won over his father in the Piobaireachd at Dannevirke. Of the 23 dancing events, Jimmie won 11, Mr Sutherland ten and the outclassed Davey Bothwell managed two wins. At 46 and injured, age was against Mr Sutherland. He had left one country partly because of an ascending pupil to meet a similar situation in another.
The photograph of Mr Sutherland dancing Seann Triubhas in the trews was taken at Dannevirke in 1926 by Ronald Currie of Days Bay who gave it to my family. I still have the original of the greatest photo of a highland dancer. As drafts of this memoir have circulated the copies of the photo have multiplied. (Ron Currie, brother of pipers Jack and Wal Currie, could play a tune.).