Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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15 FOrerUnnerS OF ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ In an english letter of 10 July 1751 the ‘Irish Bag-pipes’ are unambiguously defined as a distinct bellows-blown instrument by henrietta Knight, lady luxborough (c. 1700–56), writing from Barrells hall, Warwickshire, to the poet William Shenstone in london; the musician referred to was a trooper guarding horses on her estate: I sat last night agreeably... hearing one of the grass-guard Dragoons play on his german flute; which he does very well: he has also a pair of Irish Bag-pipes, with which he can play in concert; they having sixteen notes, and the Scotch but nine. he has no pipe to put to his mouth, and but very little motion with his arm; his fingers do the chief... 34 In 1758 a ‘pair of fine Irish bagpipes’ was being raffled in Traquair on the Scottish borders; 35 they had belonged to a deceased piper James Smith: evidence possibly that local pipers were taking up Irish instruments. Certainly an ‘Irish pipe’ inflated by bellows was known in lowland Scotland at the period, and was recognised by a highland bagpipes player and knowledgeable critic Joseph MacDonald, writing in 1760, as an instrument distinct from the common run of lowland bellows pipes. he speaks of the most variegated kind of Pipe, which is the Irish Pipe. This they have neither a regular Sett of Musick or Cuttings for, but they have diversified it into Surprising Imitations of other Musick. 36 34 [luxborough] 1775: 277. This 1751 reference is the first known occurrence of a frequently published eighteenth-century distinction made between the Irish and Scottish pipes, by which the Irish are characterised as being powered by the bellows and having a range of two octaves while the Scottish are mouth-blown and have a range of nine notes. In fact bellows-blown pipes with a range of eight or nine notes were common in Scotland in the eighteenth century: see also note 155 below. 35 eytan 1999: 26. 36 Cannon 1994: 76. lowland bellows-pipes chanters typically had a range of nine notes, which could be increased according to MacDonald by ‘adding Pinching
COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS 16 In 1766 a blind professional musician Mr James Mullin had come from london to Derby to perform ‘Several extraordinary Pieces of Music on the Irish Bagpipes, german flute and Violin’. 37 The Scot James Tytler, editor in edinburgh of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, played on the ‘Irish pipes’ according to his friend the poet robert Burns, 38 and Tytler would have been speaking from personal experience when he also applies this term to the instrument in 1778, and describes it in the encyclopaedia as the ‘softest, and in some respects the most melodious of any’ bagpipes. 39 From about 1765 to the end of the century london and other musical instrument sellers are regularly advertising two kinds of bagpipes – ‘Bagpipes, Scotch or Irish’ – for sale, 40 and some claim to be making them. 41 By 1779, less than a decade before Courtney appears in london, notes… By this, their Chanter has the most of the Flute Compass’. If the contemporary Irish pipes he refers to were more ‘variegated’ or varied than these, they would have had a range comparable to that of geoghegan’s ‘new or pastoral’ instrument, and probably, like it, have had a capability for producing various semitones by crossfingering. They may even have been geoghegan’s instrument; he was Irish, and it is an open question whether his pipes were seen as Irish in Scotland in 1760. By ‘other Musick’ MacDonald doubtless meant the kind of popular classical music he had just been writing about, by such composers as Corelli, Festing and handel. 37 Derby Mercury, Derby, 19 Sept. 1766. 38 r.h. Cromeck, Reliques of Robert Burns, quoted in Stewart 2009: 79. 39 [Tytler] 1778: 954. 40 See halfpenny 1964: 100–101 for a 1765 robert Bremner advertisement; Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Bath, 17 Aug. 1769, for a Thomas Underwood advertisement; Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, london, 13 June 1770, for a henry Thorowgood advertisement; and A Catalogue of Vocal and Instrumental Music... for a John Welcker advertisement [c. 1775]; etc. 41 John Welcker [c. 1775] for example: ‘John Welcker... Manufactures and Sells the following Instruments... Bagpipes Scotch or Irish... Bagpipe [reeds]...’ (in catalogue of note 40). Welcker lists so many instruments of his manufacture that it might be suspected that he is factoring them for other manufacturers, but he also gives a separate list of instruments that he only imports (including ‘Welch harps’ and ‘Irish harps’).
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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