Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

75
SPreAD OF ‘UnIOn PIPeS’
The Cork Pipers’ Club, the first Irish pipers’ club, was founded in
Cork city in March 1898 when the bellows instrument (as distinct
from the recently revived mouth-blown pipes) seemed on the verge
of disappearance. 273 For bellows pipes, the Club seems from newspaper
reports of its early years to have favoured the term ‘Irish pipes’
but not infrequently used ‘union pipes’. The term had survived the
vicissitudes of the second half of the century and was being used naturally
by a purposeful group of nationally minded piping revivalists
and gaelic league supporters. ‘The piper with whom we are best acquainted’,
said Fáinne an Lae, a national gaelic league newspaper,
in the very last days of the century, ‘is the player of the Union pipes...
the Union piper’. 274
In Irish America, to which many professional bellows pipers and even
pipe-makers emigrated after the Famine, the instrument led a comparatively
flourishing existence when compared to its condition in the
homeland. The terms used for it reflected usage in Ireland: ‘Irish pipes’
was the most favoured term, but ‘union pipes’ was also widely used
among professional and amateur players there. Charles Ferguson of
limerick, for example, was playing ‘union pipes’ in new york in
1860; 275 as was Thomas Kerrigan of longford there in 1876; 276 ‘six
union pipers’ at a concert there in 1890; 277 John Coleman and P.W.
Mulqueeney in new Orleans in 1892; 278 and James C. McAuliffe of
limerick in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1899. 279 At the end of the
273
Mitchell-Ingoldsby 1998: 6–12.
274
Fáinne an Lae, 9 Dec. 1899.
275
New York Herald, new york, 24 June 1860.
276
New York Herald, new york, 2 Apr. 1876.
277
Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, new york, 20 Dec. 1890.
278
Daily Picayune, new Orleans, 1 Feb. 1892.
279
Wilkes-Barre Times, Pennsylvania, 12 Oct. 1899.