Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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87 DeMISe OF ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ rowsome and associates in Dublin of ‘Cumann na bPíobairí Uilleann’ or the ‘Uilleann Pipers’ Club’, a social musical club in Thomas Street which acted as a focus for the traditional musicians of the city and beyond. 324 This was formally established in 1940, 325 during the years of the Second World War, and continued into the 1970s, chaired by rowsome until his death in 1970. By the 1940s, the term ‘union pipes’ was obsolete, and feiseanna and oireachtaisí were awarding certificates for participation in competitions for an phíob uilleann. 326 The older term was still known and used in speech and print of course (as it still sometimes is today), but instead of being a vigorous living term, it now had an antiquarian flavour. It now had to be explained as being the same as the uilleann pipes, and it is referred to as a term formerly in use. Séamus Ó Casaide, the last champion of the Dublin Pipers’ Club’s understanding of the term, died in 1943. A whole generation of Irish bellows pipers and followers of the instrument had grown up with ‘uilleann pipes’ as a term of choice, and a decisive shift in usage had taken place. A consequence was that the recent term would now be used ahistorically to refer to all Irish bellows pipes, including those belonging to the period before ‘uilleann pipes’ was coined. When invitations were sent by Cumann na bPíobairí Uilleann to a fleadh or festival in Athlone in May 1951 – an invitation that would lead later in the year to the setting up in Dublin of a national (and eventually international) traditional-music organisation Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCÉ) – ‘Uilleann Pipes’ was the term used. 327 From its earliest competitive fleadhanna ceoil festivals, modelled 324 rowsome 1968: 58. 325 nPU Seán reid Collection, items SrF2D1-2. 326 See for instance a 1940 Feis Átha Cliath certificate for participation in the competition for ‘An Phíb-Uilleann’ (nPU Seán reid Collection, item SrF2D1). 327 nPU Seán reid Collection, item SrF5D26.
COUrTney’S ‘UnIOn PIPeS’ AnD The TerMInOlOgy OF IrISh BellOWS-BlOWn BAgPIPeS 88 on the gaelic league feiseanna, CCÉ also consistently used píob uilleann, ‘uilleann pipes’ to designate its bellows piping competitions, 328 and among its early printed Aims and Objects was ‘to restore the playing of the harp and Uilleann Pipes in the national life of Ireland’. 329 Under the influence doubtless of Seamus ennis, son of James and also a leading Irish bellows piper, who went to work as a music collector for the station in Britain in 1951, the BBC in london also called the instrument ‘uilleann pipes’, 330 and this doubtless spread the term in Britain in the 1950s through the highly popular BBC folk programmes that ennis was involved in. Occasional rear-guard actions in support of the older term took place, notably in 1954 by William A. Cocks in the 5th edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians – ‘Irish Union Pipes. This is the correct name, the mock-gaelic term “Uilleann pipe” is now discredited.’ 331 – and as late as 1958 in the periodical Céilidhe Record, ‘the organ of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’. This short-lived publication consistently talked about ‘union pipes’ in editorial text, to an extent that a puzzled reader wrote in to ask why it was referring to uilleann pipes in this way. 332 But when in 1968 a new Dublin-based international organisation dedicated to the promotion of the Irish bellows pipes, and with full membership confined to pipers, was set up with the title of na Píobairí Uilleann, 333 the twentieth-century term could be said to have finally triumphed after more than sixty years of existence. 328 See various early fleadh programmes in nPU Seán reid Collection, passim. 329 nPU Seán reid Collection, item SrF49D21. 330 BBC internal documentation, accessed Oct. 1996. 331 Vol. I, 346. 332 Céilidhe Record, longford, May 1958. 333 The name was put forward by Seamus ennis at the first meeting, according to participants, and agreed by acclaim.
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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