Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
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73<br />
SPreAD OF ‘UnIOn PIPeS’<br />
instrument. 260 On the other hand Patrick O’Connor’s only pupil,<br />
griffin of limerick, describes his instrument in 1819 and again in<br />
1841 as the ‘Chromatic Organ <strong>Pipes</strong>; being an improvement on the<br />
construction of the ancient <strong>Irish</strong> pipes’. 261 A Dublin <strong>Irish</strong>-english<br />
dictionary of 1817 262 refers to the ‘píobshionnaich, a pipe blown with<br />
bellows’ (which is further developed by a Scottish dictionary of 1911<br />
as ‘pìob-shionnaich, <strong>Irish</strong> bagpipe’, deriving it from ‘sionnach, valve<br />
of bellows, pipe-reed’). 263 In 1833 in Sydney a set of ‘<strong>Irish</strong> <strong>Union</strong><br />
Chord Bagpipes’ is advertised for sale. 264 All the foregoing can be<br />
considered trumped by the Scottish piper Mr graham who is 1836<br />
was performing in hereford on the ‘”royal Patent” improved <strong>Union</strong><br />
<strong>Pipes</strong>’. 265 Thomas O’hannigan, visiting Britain in 1844, is described<br />
as the ‘celebrated Performer on the recently improved Chromatic and<br />
Diatonic <strong>Union</strong> <strong>Pipes</strong>’. 266 A late term for the instrument is also found:<br />
the northumbrian bagpipes specialist William A. Cocks, writing in<br />
1954, refers to ‘hybrid union pipes’; 267 this seems to be a term of his<br />
own devising which he applies ahistorically to bellows pipes with a<br />
foot-joint resembling the earlier geoghegan ‘pastoral’ type of 1743.<br />
260<br />
‘There was some years ago, playing in the taverns of Dublin, a blind piper named<br />
Talbot... his own pipes, which he called the “grand pipes”...’ – William Carleton,<br />
Tales and Sketches, Illustrating the Character, Usages, Traditions, Sports and<br />
Pastimes of the <strong>Irish</strong> Peasant, James Duffy, Dublin, 1845, quoted in An Píobaire<br />
vol. 7, no 4 (Sept. 2011): 23–4<br />
261<br />
Donnelly 1994b: 94; Manchester Guardian, Manchester, 10 nov. 1841.<br />
262<br />
O’reilly 1817: ‘píobshionnaich’ [no pagination]. The term is also found in O’reilly’s<br />
‘new edition’ of 1821, and in Armstrong 1825, a Scots gaelic dictionary.<br />
263<br />
MacBain 2nd ed 1911: 324 (these terms are not in his first edition of 1896) .<br />
eamonn Ceannt, writing in An Claidheamh Soluis, Dublin, 29 July 1911, has<br />
‘valve, an sionnach’ as an <strong>Irish</strong> term for a ‘union pipe’ valve.<br />
264<br />
Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Saturday 9 nov. 1833<br />
(reference courtesy Keith Sanger).<br />
265<br />
Hereford Journal, hereford, 24 Aug. 1836.<br />
266<br />
Carolan 1994: 48.<br />
267<br />
Cocks 1954: 345–6.