Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS 62
them. If a trend is to be seen, it is that this new term is particularly
favoured by professional pipers, especially Irish pipers (and sometimes
Scottish pipers) playing outside Ireland who may have regarded
themselves as being in Courtney’s modern public tradition of concert
and stage performance.
This has already been seen in the cases of Shannon, Topham, and
Murphy. By 1800 yet another prominent Irish piper has appeared to
take Courtney’s place on the British scene: a ‘Mr. Farrell, Performer
on the Union Pipes’ is advertising a ‘la Braugh Pleasurah’ 187 at
Cheltenham races in July 1800 and playing familiar Courtney fare at
a public breakfast: ‘favorite Scotch and Irish Airs, and Pieces of
Music, with that favorite rondow, in Oscar and Malvina, and Magie
Lawder, with new Variations. After the Performance there will be an
Irish Jig, Danced by Two natives’. 188 Always using Courtney’s term,
O’Farrell (whose first-name initial was ‘P.’) 189 later appears in
london, in 1803, in partnership with Weippert on the harp, 190 and
with another harper ‘Mr. Dizi’. 191
187
Irish Lá Breá Pléisiúrtha, a fine pleasurable day.
188
O’Farrell also advertised as a ‘Teacher and Maker of the Union Pipes’ (Morning
Post, london, 1 Apr. 1806), and later that ‘All kinds of Pipes, Scotch, Irish, and
northumberland, are made and repaired, and may be had of him’ (Morning Post,
london, 30 June 1825). According to highfill et al.: 11, 95, about 1795 a sonata
was published by the english composer Thomas Costellow to which was added
an air in a ballet The True Lover’s Knot as it had been performed at Drury lane
theatre by Mr ‘O’Farrol’ and the harper Weippert. But in fact the sonata was
published about 1802 (watermark date 1802: British library online catalogue,
29 Aug. 2011) and 1800 is still the earliest definite known date for O’Farrell.
For other details see Donnelly 2008: 23.
189
Sanger 2011: 21.
190
E. Johnson’s British Gazette and Sunday Monitor, london, 19 June 1803.
191
Morning Chronicle, london, 13 Aug. 1803. In 1806 O’Farrell was playing ‘a
favourite Irish Air and rondo’ in the german Theatre, leicester Square, london,
with another harper ‘Mr. Duchatz’ (Morning Post, london, 19 May 1806). In