There’s been some valuable research done on early pipe playing, particularly on Courtney, and in more recent years we’ve heard a lot about the instrument’s roots in upper-class parlours, ‘gentleman pipers’, etc. It’s all good stuff. However I’m always interested to see references to musicians further down the social ladder in the same period. Arthur O’Neill for example, writing about the 1780s or thereabouts, refers to some “common pipers”. Now this might just be a harpist’s snobbery, but it’s not the only evidence I’ve noticed. As a fairly common piper myself (using the term in its broadest sense) I find myself wondering what they played and how they played it.
From the evidence that is left it looks as if the remaining harpers, by that point, played a sort of hybrid art music, combining airs from a distinctive Irish and Scottish harp lineage with repertoire from the concert hall and drawing room. Irish tunes with ‘variations’, for example, played for tradition-minded rural landowners and farmers. I suppose Courtney was doing something similar on the stage - he was aiming at an urban, fairly well-off audience. But what were the ‘roadway’ pipers playing at the same time? Simple dance tunes? Popular songs? Something else? Who was listening? I suppose the Goodman manuscripts give a flavour of it, but as usual with anything beyond the orbit of the urban upper and middle classes at the time it’s difficult to get any information not mediated through someone else’s preconceptions.
