Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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23 eSTABlIShMenT OF ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ and he played Maggee Lawther with much effect. The instrument was particularly well adapted to the room. 66 For a period Courtney now disappears from the prints, but he doubtless went on to capitalise on his successes, performing unreported at Vauxhall and elsewhere, and privately for the ‘noble personages’ who had patronised his first stage appearance. Within a few years it was said of him that ‘The principal nobility of the three kingdoms are well acquainted with his excellence’. 67 A muck-raking publication, attacking the prominent nobleman Charles howard, 11th Duke of norfolk (1746–1815, also known as ‘the dirty Duke’ and ‘the drunk Duke’), says of howard: Although no person can be more tenacious of the dignity due to high birth, or more jealous of the privileges of Aristocracy, yet his appearance, manner, and habits, are strikingly plebian, and his companions are selected from the very dregs of democracy. The principal friends and attendants on his grace, are a Mr. Se—ge—ck, a subaltern actor belonging to the haymarket Theatre, Mr. C— n—y, the celebrated performer on that harmonious instrument the bagpipe, and the noted Captain M—r—s, whose excellent songs have acquired him such unbounded popularity. 68 The reference to the ‘dregs of democracy’ is a reminder that the American War of Independence, which concluded in 1783, would have been fresh in the minds of Courtney’s audiences, and that the events of the French revolution formed a prominent part of the political background to almost all of his six years in the limelight in Britain, from 66 The Times, london, 17 May 1788. This third spelling of Courtney’s surname in as many notices, two of them in the same paper, is typical of the lack of uniformity found in print for his name. 67 Hibernian Journal, Dublin, 4 Jan. 1793. 68 [Pigott] 1792: pt 2, 10–11. Thomas Sedgwick (d. 1803) was a bass singer much in demand as well as an actor. Thomas Morris (1732–1818), a retired soldier who may have been <strong>Irish</strong>, was a well known bon viveur and a writer of both respectable and obscene songs. For both see highfill et al. howard famously
COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS 24 the fall of the Bastille in 1789, the year after his london debut, to the guillotining of robespierre and the closure of the Jacobin Club about the time of his own death in 1794. All of his aristocratic patrons would have been greatly exercised by the revolution, and those of a Whig outlook in politics, such as Charles howard was, would generally have at first sympathised with the revolutionaries. Illustration on following pages: ‘Maggie Lawder with Variations’ as published in Dublin, seemingly during Denis Courtney’s visit there, January–July 1793 would only allow his servants to wash him when he was dead drunk. By coincidence another contemporary <strong>Irish</strong> piper named Denis was also taken up by a drunken english nobleman: ‘les lords lieutenants d'Irlande... ont le droit de créer chevalier qui il leur plait, ils en ont quelques fois fait une plaisanterie assez mal placée, à ce que je pense. le duc de rutland, après avoir un peu bù, fut si charmé d’un certain aveugle, joueur de cornemuse, qu’il lui ordonna dè se mettre à genoux et le créa Chevalier avec l’epée et l’accollade. Cet homme depuis ce temps se nomme Sir Denis * * *, il continue cependant son premier métier et va jouer dans les maisons pendant le diner, c’est un homme vraiment habile sur son instrument, dont j’avoue à ma honte que je ne fuis pas grand amateur’. [The lords lieutenant of Ireland... have the right to make whomsoever they please a knight, and as a result they have sometimes made, in my opinion, the odd pretty unfunny jest. The Duke of rutland, after having had a drink or two, was so charmed with a certain blind bagpiper that he ordered him to go down on his knees and created him a knight by sword and by embracing him. This man since that time is called Sir Denis * * *. he continues however with his first way of life and goes to play in people’s houses during dinner. he is a man really skilled on the instrument, of which I must admit to my shame that I am not very fond. – present writer’s translation] (De latocnaye 1797: 110–1; 1801: 120. A published english translation Rambles through Ireland 1798: 1, 165–6 identifies the piper as a ‘Denis O’grady’, which seems confirmed by a later poetic reference to ‘O’grady, that fam’d piping Knight’ (The Overseer, Cork, 5 July 1817). he was doubtless a bellows piper. Charles Manners, 4th Duke of rutland, was lord lieutenant of Ireland from 1784 until his death in 1787. he was popular in Dublin for his conviviality and hospitality, and drank himself to death in office.
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