Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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47 eSTABlIShMenT OF ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ At the church-yard the same liberality in the distribution to every one who chose to drink, was observed; and the company happily parted without any fighting. 145 Through his musicianship and general celebrity therefore Denis Courtney had won over the public, from the lowest to the highest social levels, to his ‘union pipes’ – a term unique to him during his lifetime – and had firmly established their name in contemporary musical consciousness by the time of his early death. he was not immediately forgotten. In london in 1795 Oscar and Malvina renewed its attraction on Thursday evening... with encreased effect. A new Performer, much resembling poor Courtney, both in figure and execution, enlivened the opening of the Piece with his Union Pipes, accompanied by the original harper Weippart. Their performance was universally encored... 146 and in 1796 a reference there to a newly published satirical print showing John Courtenay or Courtney, a famously witty Irish-born Westminster parliamentarian, emphasises that it shows ‘Mr. Courtney the Irish Jester, not the Irish Piper’. 147 A london novel of 1804 has an Irish character say heaven is most like the lake of Killarney. There will be no want of music in heaven... For myself, I think the choicest instrument is the Irish bagpipe; and should Courtenay be gone there, we cannot have a better hand; I shall find him out, he is a sweet countryman of my own. 148 145 The Sun, london, 6 Sept. 1794. This obituary notice is unusually long by contemporary standards; it was much copied by other publications. 146 Morning Post and Fashionable World, london, 7 Mar. 1795. For the identity of this performer see below. 147 The Oracle, london, 15 Oct. 1796. 148 Bisset 1804: 33. This raises the possibility (but no more) that Courtney had his origins in Co Kerry, a county where his surname (and first name, as an anglicisation of the Irish Donncha) was common.
COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS 48 In 1811 he was being remembered in a Dublin article on the ‘Irish Bagpipe’: ‘the... celebrated Courtney has fully established the captivating sweetness of those [notes] in alt... [of] our national pipe’. 149 In 1817, in a Cork poem in praise of another famous Irish bellows piper, Denis Courtney’s name was still being linked with the term he had introduced: ‘And Courtney, with his union reed,/ To enraptur’d Princes gave delight’. 150 And as late as 1838 his name is still being invoked, by a union piper in leamington Spa boosting his instrument: ‘his late Majesty, george IV, was a lover of the Union Pipes, and appointed the celebrated Courtney as his Pipist’. 151 From P. O’Farrell ed., O Farrells Pocket Companion for the Irish or Union Pipes vol. 3, London, n.d. [c. 1811]. Presumably taken from the oral tradition of union pipers in London 149 Freeman’s Journal, 21 Mar. 1811, reprinted in Evening Telegraph, 1 Apr. 1911. 150 ‘On Mr. O’Connor, The celebrated Performer on the Union Pipes’, The Overseer, Cork, 5 July 1817. 151 Sic. Leamington Spa Courier, leamington, 31 Mar. 1838.
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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