Members of the round table closed their eyes, nodded their heads and swayed to the classic Scottish tunes emanating from the sound system. Open University professor William Donaldson lectured on 18th century Scottish music to an audience of about 15 people at Harvard University Wednesday. Donaldson, an expert on traditional music, was the latest speaker in a series of lectures about musical culture in the 1700s. Speaking quickly in a thick Scottish brogue, Donaldson said he sought to quell the myth that illiterate and uneducated peasants in the Scottish countryside had an oral tradition of passing down folk music generation to generation. ‘There is this magical lore in the peasant tradition that is simply not true,’ Donaldson said. Rather, 18th century Scottish music resulted from an influx of Italian and English musicians as well as Scotland’s own performers, he said. The music is known as Jacobite, so named for England’s Scottish King James whose ousting drew Scottish ire and, Donaldson said, spurred the rise of nationalistic music in Scotland. ‘People sang of what it means to be a Scot,’ he said. ‘They sang about tradition.’ He said the bagpipe and the fiddle are the two main instruments used in classic Scottish music. The pipe acts as three instruments and creates quite a cacophony, he said. ‘I once busted my ear playing pipes in a confined setting,’ he said, eliciting laughter from the crowd.’ Audience members, whom Donaldson led in a rousing chorus of one Scottish number, said it was this tradition and appreciation of the music that drew them to the lecture. Dirk Hillyer, chair of Salem State University’s music department, said he is a fan of traditional music because it fosters community participation. ‘When I was in Scotland, I took part in a c’eacute;ilidh [Gaelic for jam] where everybody is jamming and drinking, having a good time,’ he said. Attendee Joseph Fineman said he grew up listening to classic Scottish tunes as a child and attended a high school rich with folk tradition. For others, this was a night of firsts. Natasha Sumner, a graduate student pursuing her doctorate at Harvard, said she had never been to a traditional music lecture but found it relevant to her studies of Celtic language and literature. ‘Traditional music is all about participating,’ Sumner said. ‘It’s not about just sitting and listening.’