Annotation:Doctor Profeit (1)
X:1 T:Doctor Profeit's [1] (Towie) C:Alexander Walker & J.S. Skinner M:C L:1/8 R:Strathspey Q:"Slow when not danced." B:Walker - Collection of Strathspeys, Reels, Marches etc. (1866, p. 16) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion F:http://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/105875290?mode=zoom K:Bb F|B>c B/c/d/c/ B<B,B,>C|D>EF>A (B2 B<)d|c>d c/d/e/d/ c<CC>D|D>E G>=B (c2c) F| B>c B/c/d/c/ B<B,B,>C|D>EF>A B2 B<d|e<ge>c d<fd>B|{d}c>B{B}d>B (G2G)|| a|(b/a/).g/.f/ {a}b>f d<fB>d|e>cd>B (G2 G>)f|(b/a/).g/.f/ d<fd>B|G>e (d/c/).B/.A/ B>f| (b/a/).g/.f/ {a}b>f d<fB>d|e>cd>B (G2 G>)e|d>Bc>A B>F G>E|D>F (G/A/).B/.c/ dBB||
DOCTOR PROFEIT [1] (Towie). Scottish, Strathspey ("Slow, when not danced"). B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Composed by biography:Alexander Walker and the renowned Scottish violinist, composer and dancing master James Scott Skinner (1843-1927). Alexander Walker, born in Rhynie, Strathbogie, in 1819, and was quite a bit older than Skinner. They presumably met in Aberdeenshire, perhaps when Skinner was employed as a dancing master at the Queen's estate of Balmoral. Walker was also acquainted with Alexander Skinner, James Scott Skinner's older brother, and who arranged for Walker to be one of the judges at a fiddle competition (that may also have included J.S. Skinner, although he did not place among the winners). See note Walker's "annotation:Forbes Morrison" for more on this competition.
Dr. Profeit later succeeded Dr. Robertson as Commissioner of Balmoral, when the latter retired from the position in the 1870's, although at the time the tune was composed he was still practicing medicine at Towie. His obituary notice (in the British Medical Journal) of Feb. 13, 1897 reads:
We regret to have to record the death of Dr. Alexander Profeit, Her Majesty's Commissioner on her estates at Balmoral. Dr. Profeit has been in failing health for the last two years and was on the point of surrendering his commission at the time of his death. Dr. Profeit was a native of the parish of Towie, Aberdeenshire, and began his education at the parish school. He proceeded to the Grammer School of Aberdeen, and the University of Aberdeen, where he graduated in Arts in 1855. Two years later he qualified in medicine, and settled down in practice in his native parish. He afterwards engaged in practice in Tarland, and finally in the parish of Crathie. When his friend, Dr. Robertson, resigned the Queen's Commissionship, twenty years ago, Her Majesty appointed him to the vacant post, which he has since filled with singular success and acceptance. He took an active interest in local affairs, and occupied the office of Justice of the Peace, county counselor, and Chairman of the Parish Council. He was an agriculturalist of no mean note, and successfully developed the Queen's polled Aberdeen herd, which carried off many prizes and the leading shows in England and Scotland. Dr. Profeit's engaging personality, devotion to duty, and business capacity gained for him the esteem and confidence of his royal mistress and the household, as well as of the public at large. He had a quite unique acceptance among royal personages, from whom he received many tokens of regard and esteem. At Court, his services were indispensible. One of his last public duties was to take part in the arrangements for the reception of Czar, upon the occasion of his visit to Balmoral. {Ed.--see also Walker's tune for "Doctor Robertson (1)"}
Walker was an inventor (of surveying instruments, for example), agriculturalist, fiddler and composer of works collected in a volume published in Aberdeen in 1866. He was employed as a gardener for Sir Charles Forbes at Castle Newe, who was also his patron. While in Scotland he took a wife, Jean (11 years his junior), and at age 40 became father of a daughter, Maggie, followed by three sons (Charles, Alexander and George—Charles perhaps named after Sir Charles Forbes), After the American Civil War, probably around 1870, Walker emigrated to the United States, and settled near Williamstown, Massachusetts, where family (parents) had previously settled, and established a prosperous farm of his own. He and Jean had a daughter in America, Jeosie, born in New York in 1872. In the 1880 census for Williamstown his occupation is listed as a “surveyor and gardener,” while Jean “kept house” and “farmed”. Alexander also continued to compose music (according to Paul Cranford, who has found evidence he mailed compositions home to Aberdeenshire) although his American output is now lost. He is recorded as having helped survey areas of Williamstown in 1892 (at age 73), where it was noted that he was “a Scotch surveyor of some attainments and reputation”, and he lived to see the 20th century. This passage (from Arthur Latham Perry's Origins in Williamstown: A History, 1894, p. 28 ) is thought to refer to him:
...but the Berlin road goes past pretty good farms, and the last one (the old toll-gate farm) became noted for its productiveness under the ownership of Alexander Walker and his family, canny Scotch people from Aberdeenshire; the parents married there Aug. 6, 1856. Mr. Walker could handle the fiddle bow and the surveyor's instruments with about equal facility; but as the lines fell to him in this country in prosy times and non-piping localities, the Scotch reels and strathspeys, of which he was a master and even a successful composer and publisher, slumbered for the most part on the bridge of his fiddles, of which he invented and perhaps patented a prized improvement. Nevertheless, his residence at the head of the gorge, where the Fosters had lived for three generations, threw a sort of halo of music and good cheer up and down the valley, and proved to many persons a kind of subtle attraction not only for the Pass by Mount Hopkins beyond it.
