In “The Clarke Tin Whistle” Bill Ochs states:
“The earliest literary reference to the instrument is from 1825”
Inspired by this, I decided to attempt to search for 19th Century literary references to the term “Tin Whistle”, and also the term ”Penny Whistle”
So far, the examples I have found of the use of these two terms have been, in the main, somewhat derogatory:
Heart of Darkness
By Joseph Conrad, (serialised in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899)
Chapter I
“…Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a two-penny-half-penny river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached!..”
The Wrong Box
R L Stevenson (with Lloyd Osbourne), 1889
Chapter XII
“…It is singular enough that a man should be able to gain a livelihood, or even to tide over a period of unemployment, by the display of his proficiency upon the penny whistle; still more so, that the professional should almost invariably confine himself to ‘Cherry Ripe’. But indeed, singularities surround the subject, thick like blackberries. Why, for instance, should the pipe be called a penny whistle? I think no one ever bought it for a penny. Why should the alternative name be tin whistle? I am grossly deceived if it be made of tin. Lastly, in what deaf catacomb, in what earless desert, does the beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship? We have all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps alarmed by the works of Mr Mallock) defends human hearing from his first attempts upon the upper octave.
A really noteworthy thing was taking place in a green lane, not far from Padwick. On the bench of a carrier’s cart there sat a tow-headed, lanky, modest-looking youth; the reins were on his lap; the whip lay behind him in the interior of the cart; the horse proceeded without guidance or encouragement; the carrier (or the carrier’s man), rapt into a higher sphere than that of his daily occupations, his looks dwelling on the skies, devoted himself wholly to a brand-new D penny whistle, whence he diffidently endeavoured to elicit that pleasing melody ‘The Ploughboy’. To any observant person who should have chanced to saunter in that lane, the hour would have been thrilling. ‘Here at last,’ he would have said, ‘is the beginner…”
The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1
Page 88
(Letter written in 1883)
“Nor you, O Penny Whistler, grudge
That I your instrument debase:
By worse performers still we judge,
And give that fife a second place!”
Roughing It
By Mark Twain, pub 1872
Chapter XV
(the words are purportedly those of Brigham Young)
“…Once a gentleman gave one of my children a tin whistle - a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done - the man escaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted for vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. But they never caught him. I am not cruel, sir - I am not vindictive except when sorely outraged - but if I had caught him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would have locked him into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death. By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assail!) there was never anything on this earth like it! I knew who gave the whistle to the child, but I could, not make those jealous mothers believe me. They believed I did it, and the result was just what any man of reflection could have foreseen: I had to order a hundred and ten whistles - I think we had a hundred and ten children in the house then, but some of them are off at college now -I had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking things, and I wish I may never speak another word if we didn’t have to talk on our fingers entirely, from that time forth until the children got tired of the whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman!..”
Brother Jonathan: or, The New Englanders, Volume 1
By John Neal , 1825
Chapter IV
“… As for Mr Archer, I have no patience with him. He uses big words; and reads the superb language of Job, with his little voice, very much as if he were sounding a charge, with a tin-whistle, or a twopenny trumpet.”
Rob Roy
By Sir Walter Scott, 1817
Chapter 10.
“Do you not know”, she said, with some surprise, “our motto – the Vernon motto, where,
Like the solemn vice iniquity
We moralise two meanings in one word
“And do you not know our cognisance, the pipes?” pointing to the armorial bearings sculptured on the oaken scutcheon, around which the legend was displayed.
“Pipes! - they look more like penny-whistles - But pray, do not be angry with my ignorance…”
I’m wondering. Does anyone have any further (19th century) literary references for either “Tin whistle” or “Penny Whistle”?
Also, anyone got any idea what a “ twopenny trumpet” looks like?
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