Hi,
Do you guys know a good book about the history of the UP ?
Nic
O’Neill’s Irish Minstrels and Musicians has a lot of history of pipers and harpers. It’s hard to find a printed copy but Bill Haneman and some friends put the text online (it was written 100 years ago and so is now in the public domain).
I ordered a copy via Google Books for somewhere around $10. It’s a facsimile edition, so some of the pages are hard to read.
There is a second book by O’Neill.. actually it came before Irish Minstrels and Musicians… and is called “Irish Folk Music, a fascinating hobby” fisrt published in 1910… it also contains “O’Farrell’s tretise on the Irish or Union pipes” and “Touhey’s hints to amateur pipers”.
http://books.google.com/books/about/Irish_Folk_Music.html?id=QggtAAAAYAAJ
You should be able to follow links on the left to buy a hardcopy. I was just doing some research using the second one this past weekend - ask bensdad 
…looking for wardrobe tips?
tk
No… perhaps once completed (for which I am in need of bensdad’s help) I’ll share it with you!
It’s in the back issues of An Píobaire, Iris na bPíobairí, the journals of the Seán Reid Society. Maybe some of it went by here over the years, too.
I’ve always thought a coffee table book on the pipes would be great. Name your price. Heard that Chicago piper Jim Maguire had an interest in such - but only on the Taylor brothers’ work. Which would be great, but a bit like a book on the history of the car that had nothing but Chevys.
Maybe a website? Collate photos of the old sets, stories, bios. Links to info contained elsewhere. Recordings.
Interesting idea Kevin 
I’ve been entertaining thoughts of writing a book for years. But I’m afraid that there are such better minds suited to the task.
I’m a historian and have written articles for journals, but I’ve always been deeply fascinated with the old sets. I’m fascinated by the evolution of the instrument and associated instruments and the history and stories of the individual old sets.
I’m also intrigued by the number of sets that seem to be languishing in various places throughout the world. It’s more of a selfish endeavor really, but I’d desperately LOVE to get my hands on as many old sets as I can to record dimensions and specifics etc. I’ve been blessed with the opportunities to examine Coyne, Rowsome, R. Reid, Harrington and others and it thrills the pipemaker and the historian in me, I’ve actually re-reeded a r. reid boxwood set and been the first to play it in over 100 years. It seems to me that too many of these sets are sitting namelessly in boxes in the “misc. woodwind” section of some museum somewhere.
Not as such, but think you might find the Pastoral and Union Pipe chapters of Hugh Cheape’s National Museums Scotland book interesting/relevant.
No no, a real website. 
uilleannobsession.com’s a start, sure. Good nostalgia value as well. 45k jpgs that open in their own popup window? It’s like it’s 2003 again! Mission Accomplished! 
Maybe an uilleann pipes website ring? Then we can pine for 1996, urgh… 
To make the book complete there could be chapters on players and pipemakers, to carry on where O’Neill left off.
RORY
There really isn’t one that I know of, and perhaps a good one could not be written.
I say that because “history” is, strictly speaking, based on written accounts and/or documentation (as opposed to folklore) and there has been nothing that I know of written or documented about the origin and development of the uilleann pipes, or indeed about any sort of bagpipe.
I just read through the chapter in Irish Minstrels and Musicians and O Neill really says nothing about the history of the uilleann pipes.
What he says about the origin of the bagpipe as a whole is the typical folklore for which there is no actual evidence, such as
“The bagpipe belonged to the Celts, and its existence can be traced to their colonies all the way from ancient Scythia via the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean to the shores of Britain.”
This is utter nonsense. The fact that O Neill regards Grattan Flood as the great expert on bagpipe history tells you all you need to know.
Since there’s no historical (written) account, another approach is Hugh Cheape’s, which is to look at the actual surviving instruments in museums and see what they have to tell us.
About the “pastoral” bagpipe he says
“Surveys of collections in museums in the UK might give an impression of the Pastoral bagpipe being the National Instrument (of Scotland, as opposed to the Highland pipe), such is the wealth of the material evidence…the Pastoral pipe is a musicological enigma with very little information on its emergence, no clear chronology of this process, and minimal information on its makers… there is no clear evidence on where this instrument may have first been made or by whom… without exception the earliest surviving instruments carry no makers’ mark… The assumption has been that the Lowland pipe was a precursor of the Pastoral pipe although the evidence for this is meager… the Pastoral pipe was still being made in Scotland in the early 19th century, a generation or two after the Union pipe evolved sui generis.”
About the Union pipe of the late 18th and early 19th century, many surviving instruments are marked and the list might surprise some:
Malcolm MacGregor, London
John Dunn, Michael Dunn, Newcastle
Robert Reid, James Reid, North Shields
J Massie, Aberdeen
James Sharp, Aberdeen
John Naughtan, Aberdeen
Hugh Robertson, Edinburgh
Bannon, Edinburgh
Robert Scott, London
Nicholas Kerr, Edinburgh
Donald MacDonald, Edinburgh
James Kenna, Dublin
Obviously Union pipes were being widely made in Britain, the centres being Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, and Newcastle.
There are mentions of Union pipers performing in the late 18th and early 19th century at venues connected with Scottish Highland Gaelic culture, such as
-The Highland Society of London (pipers included Richard Fitzmaurice, Patrick O Farrell, John Murphy, John MacGregor, Dennis Courtney, Malcolm MacGregor, and James McDonnell)
-The Perth Gaelic Society (Malcolm MacGregor on Highland pipes, Union pipes, flageolet, and German Flute)
-The Aberdeen Highland Society
The idea of an e-book on pipes and piping is very attractive. Here’s a lovely (free) e-book on the musical instruments collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, that demonstrates the potential of the medium. North-east tionól attendees will recognize Neil MacMillan demonstrating the Northumbrian pipes. I know they have Uilleann pipes (BK did a demo a few years back), but they’re unfortunately not featured.
Musical Instruments by Darcy Kuronen
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/musical-instruments/id629551271?mt=11
Denis Brooks has an unpublished manuscript he wrote on the history of bagpipes which I read parts of 35 years ago. There is a good section on the union/uilleann pipes. He visited museums and collections and said the history is rather clear based on existing evidence and that Flood and others distorted the evidence to try to prove their theories, many of which have since been dis-proven. He points out that the union pipes did not evolve from the border pipes or any other Scottish instrument. The bores are very closely related to some French bagpipes which over-blow into the second octave. Some French bagpipes play well into the second octave today. They are also close in bore to the first oboes, which were developed by Hottetere. He was one of the originators of the oboe as well as the Hotteterre family made bagpipes, including the musette du cour. Bates, in his book on the oboe, states that the oboe owes its’ origin to a bagpipe chanter and did not descend from the shawm. The bellows was also used by french bagpipers. The Northumbrian smallpipes probably descended from the musette and some early examples have shuttle drones. There are those that reject the French influence on these pipes, stating that they were in existence before the musette came into being. There are no examples to support this idea. Many want to believe in a Scottish or border origin for these pipes not based on history but on nationalistic sentiments. Lots of rubbish has been published based on such sentiments, rather than historical research.
A couple of weeks ago someone handed me a gaita (Spanish) bagpipe and asked me if I could get it going. I knew nothing about the instrument, but with a little research found out the gaita is a very old kind of bagpipe dating from perhaps a thousand years ago or more. In fact, speaking of ancient bagpipes, there is a bagpipe which appears on a coin from the first and second century AD http://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol6/6_18/foxo_6_18.pdf but no indication if it had an upper octave.
Listening to examples of the gaita on YouTube I learned it has an upper octave and a conical bore. The chanter on this gaita was in Bb, but there was a second chanter too, in D. Tiny little finger holes! Anyway, I was able to get the reeds going and the things played pretty well. The instrument had a single drone which was long and low in pitch. I was unaware that bagpipes with a 2nd octave, other than the uilleann pipes, existed. The upper octave is obtained much like the recorder by half-holing the thumb hole. Sounds like the bagpipes (not necessarily the gaita) go all the way back to the ME.