New Quincy Master Plays the Bagpipes, But Is Dedicated to Department-Building

When the term begins this September and the days are warm enough to keep the windows open, people walking down DeWolfe St. may hear strange sounds coming from the top of Quincy House. That will be Chrales W. Dunn, the new Master, playing his bagpipes.

Although the dopesters have speculated about the identity of the new Master for months, the name of the Scotland-born chairman of the tiny Department of Celtic Languages was never mentioned. Dunn is a relative newcomer to Harvard; he's been a professor for only three years and is an not of Quincy House, but of Lowell.

Dunn will do to Quincy House is uncertain. The new Master had had no time to meet at length with retiring Master Bullitt and has only just begun the job of straightening out his affairs before undertaking new responsibilities.

Quincy House residents should have no trouble getting used to Master Dunn. A tall, blond, good-humored gentleman, he looks 35 years old but is actually 50. He calls himself a "professional Scot."

Born in Arbuttnott, Scotland, Dunn lived in Edinburgh until he was 12, when his family immigrated to Boston. Hisf father was a Presbyterian clergyman (there are seven in Dunn's immediate family) and his mother a graduate of the University of London. "We came over in a ship called the Celtic," Dunn recalls.

Dunn's specialty is medieval literature of Scotland and Ireland, but his academic capacities are enormous and his interests awesome. At Ontario's MacMasters College, he majored in and English with a Latin-Greek option, but he also managed a full program of chemistry courses. "I was interested in the courses we used to call 'radio-active', which, as you know, have become rather important," Dunn says.

But during graduate school, Dunn finally decided to commit himself to medieval language and literature; he received Harvard degrees in that field. He won a post-graduate Dexter travelling fellowship and recalls that "the money was supposed to be for a Harvard man visiting the cathedral towns of England." He persuaded the fellowship officials to let him try something else, arguing that "it wasn't a very good time to be seeing the cathedral towns of England and I had seen them all anyway." He went instead to Cape Breton to study the Scot-Gaelic settlements there, and took his bride, a Bryn Mawr girl named Cambell, along on a honeymoon.

Since that honeymoon-research trip, Dunn has been happiest as a travel-scholar. His interest in Celtic fluctuates between medieval literature and the few remnants of authentic Celtic culture in the world today. "They call it 'folk' culture," Dunn says, "but they're more than folk to me--they're friends. My wife and I go to Cape Breton every chance we get."

After the first year in Cape Breton, Dunn's career took the wandering course usual for young scholars. He taught at Stephens, a two-year college for girls in Missouri, and then at Cornell, Toronto, and N.Y.U. Sabbaticals took him back to the British Isles many times; it was while in Britain on a Guggenheim that he received the offer from Harvard.

During his wanderings, Dunn produced a file-full of articles, two books, and two children. They won't live in Quincy House, though; Peter, 19, is at at the University of Massachusetts; Deidre, 20, is at Mount Holyoke.

Like all new Masters, Dun is concerned about what his new responsibilities will do to his academic career. "I came to Harvard intending to build up Celtic studies," he says. "Since 1940, when the department was founded, Harvard had only awarded two M.A.'s--and no Ph.D.'s--in Celtic. Everybody interested in the field was asked to do his work in English. Now we have nine Ph.D. candidates working in Celtic studies and we are accepting more."

At Harvard, Dunn had taught Celtic Literature in Translation, Middle Irish, Early Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and seminars on Middle Celtic. He won't say how many languages he can speak or read. "But if I were isolated on a desert island," he speculates, "I would quite naturally study whatever was at hand, I suppose."

Dunn is presently at work on both a study of "Scots in America" and his "lifework"--a literary history of the twelfth century, a three-volume undertaking of which the first volume isn't quite finished.

He claims his contact with the Houses has been limited by his departmental obligations. Yet he is now caught up in interviewing freshmen for Lowell House selections, he is a regular visitor at Lowell, and he lunches weekly at an English table in Quincy. Still he admits a need to learn more about the Houses: "I was invited to live in a House when I was a graduate here," he says. "I can remember which one."

Dunn fields questions about off-campus living, the new House selection system, or special House courses with a smile, a nod, and a frank confession that he has had very little time to think about any of them.

Nor has he yet planned anything special for Quincy. "Right now I'm thinking only about adding a member to the Celtic Department," he says. After that he intends to get down to this new business--learning about undergraduates. "My wife and I have always tried to entertain students, though," he says. "We're interested in what students want to do with their lives.

Of the Master's many chores, Dunn seems particularly intigued with the job of finding new tutors. But again he hasn't had time to explore just how many Quincy needs, and in what fields. "Master Bullitt hasn't handed me a platform," Dunn says, "but he's suggested the job will be great fun and I'm inclined to think that's true."

There's likely to be some fun for Quincy House, too. Dunn is known to wear a dress kilt to formal Lowell House dinners, and he and his wife excel at Scottish country dancing. As for the bagpipes, "the upper pent-house of Quincy," he says, "is a very suitable place for them."

Unfortunately, he plans to keep the windows closed.