I have listed a Miller Browne wooden flute on Ebay
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320518424190&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT
It would be interesting to know more about this Miller Browne & Co, Ltd. The NLI gives them as dealers in woodwinds and brass, but only notes an entry for 1941 and cites a single fife at that date. David lists this one as 1968, by which time two of Langwill’s indexes had been published. As an operating business, that would normally put Miller Browne out of contention for inclusion (or I’d be in there!) so William Waterhouse must have entered it after MB wound up. Or Lyndesay Langwill was blissfully unaware they were still operating.
It’s clearly a French style flute (the classic French Omega c key), so perhaps that’s where it originated. And by its length, presumably a high pitch band flute in F?
A web search yielded a few in museum collections, including one here in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. But wasn’t I surprised then to find that they are still available! Check this out:
Miller Browne 5365HP 5 Key Marching Flute Bb Resin Nkl Slvr
An authentic marching flute at a great price.
Slide head 5 key. High Pitch. Set up in our own workshops.
Note that it is called a Marching Flute, so the Northern Ireland marching bands are presumably their main market.
I’m guessing they are made in Pakistan now, but it is just a guess. I wonder if they always were?
I’d be interested in knowing what people think of the name Irish flute applied to a band flute in F, as David does in the Ebay promotion. How do we define Irish flute? Does it have to be in D, does it have to be wood, does it have to be conical, does it have to have 6 open holes (can it have 4 like a Siccama, or 7 with a thumb hole?). If Ireland were France, it would have to be made there, like Burgundy or Champagne.
Given that Northern Ireland is currently not Irish, is a French designed, Pakistani-made (?), high pitch, Orange order marching band flute in F an Irish flute?
Don’t ask me, I don’t know!
Terry
Let me suggest that any discussion of the questions raised by Terry be kept civil, factual, and non-sectarian. Thank you. - Mod.
I think he puts Irish in the title to flag it for Irish flute players. You try to include as many words as you can to flag is for searches.
[ Post edited in accordance with my suggestion above. - Mod. ]
Jon 54 percent of the people in Northern Ireland consider themselves British and want to remain so …
Terry Their is no such a thing as and Orange Order marching band, the bands are independent and command a fee to accompany Lodges.
Also i believe these flutes are used by the A.O.H bands and the Republican bands.
[ Post edited in accordance with my suggestion above. - Mod. ]
Not too many orders this weather Terry?
Rather more work than I’d like at the moment, planxtydt. But thanks for asking.
Lucky I enjoy it!
Terry
So what key is the flute? Not as a matter of whether it is Irish (Dave Copley makes an F flute
for irish music, John Skelton helped design it, I’d call it an irish flute), but just to know.
We’d need confirmation from David, but I’d guess a flute in F at British High Pitch (A452-455). Kneller Hall, the authority on British military band matters, capitulated and went over to modern pitch in something like 1932. (The Philharmonic movement had done so, on Doctor’s orders, in 1895.) But for some reason this didn’t seem to rub off on all the NI marching bands. David might be able to tell us why. Perhaps ready availability of lots of nice discarded military band instruments?
Perhaps I should put my question in the negative - what sorts of flutes are definitely NOT Irish flutes? Joannie Madden and others use the modern Boehm for playing Irish music. Does that make the Boehm an Irish flute?
Or does the expression mean whatever you want it to mean, like “folk music”? ‘It’s all folk music. Leastways, I never heard no horse play guitar.’ (variously attributed).
Terry
I think being an ‘Irish’ flute is a matter of degree. There may be no flute that is definitely
not an Irish flute, but some flutes are more plainly instances of what we have in
mind. In short, the sort of flute on which ITM is usually played by professionals is the
paradigm Irish flute. With some variation allowed
for the instrument’s key. That a flute isn’t in D doesn’t seriously disqualify, IMO.
I agree with Jim that we generally define from the center and not from the boundaries. This flute would certainly be at the edge of the circle that comprises Irish instruments. But really I am with Terry on this one. If you can call this marching band F flute an Irish flute then you can call any flute an Irish flute. (If somebody plays a Jew’s Harp to accompany an Irish tune, is it an Irish Jew’s Harp?)
As far as the 54% of people living in No. Ireland who consider themselves British (does it follow that they don’t consider themselves Irish?), about 76% of Americans consider themselves Christian (down from 86% in 1990). Most of them are definitely not Christian, if we define the word in the positive, benign terms. (Today, two-thirds of Americans still support the death penalty, according to the Harris Poll.)
It is Sunday morning and I’m soon off to Mass so I am thinking liturgically. Later in the day I’m playing my American flute in Nagel’s, in Kilfenora, for an afternoon session. Or is it an American Irish flute?
Do we? “Define” literally means to set the boundary.
“Irish flute” does not mean much to me. It seems to imply a flute that is suitable to a musical tradition. If I say “Band flute” I could make a value statement if it qualifies or not, but I couldn’t really define the flute itself. If I say “6-keyed flute, high pitch Key of F” it is more specific than saying “simple system band flute” marketing terms like “Vintage” and “Celtic” seem at best short hand for a general group of flutes, but in general worthless, where as “boxwood flute” seems to have better defined boundaries.
Fife has specific meaning to me depending on where the term is being used. On Ebay, it is a marketing word that can mean anything from a plastic whistle to a whole slew of other things that you blow into to make sounds. To the laypeople, that is what they are, and unless Ebay comes up with a dictionary of definitions and enforces it, they will be sold as such.
So to you “Irish Flute” might mean one thing it means something different to someone who asks “what is that Irish flutey thing on Titanic”. When they search ebay for Irish flute tin whistle he will find a whistle that is most likely not made of tin. Not that I can put a value statement on any of this other than it seems it just is.
Maybe yous can tell me if it is high or low pitch, as the flute is not in playing condition i have bluetacked the holes. It is not as loud as the Rudall and Hawkes f equivalents very weak in comparison
I have lined it up with these flutes for comparison from the centre of the embouchere to the first tone hole the Miller Browne is about 3/4 of an inch longer and i always thought that meant it was lower pitch if this length is longer plus the overall length is to, but what do i know i’m just and Electronic and Electrical Technician 
i have a hard enought time getting my piccolo to pitch in never mind defining flute terminology or pitch.
I see everyone and their dog listing flutes as Irish so i used the word too, even though at the end of the day technically their is no such a thing as an Irish flute!
Irish flutes are made by Hammy, Martin Doyle, Glenn Watson, Sam Murray, Marcus Hernon, Francois Baubet, Ari De Keyser, Eamonn Cotter … but what do the other guys (Olwell, Grinter, Pol Jezequel, Stephan Morvan, Chris Wilkes, etc. etc. et. al.) make, if not Irish flutes?
They make flutes for Irish music based on English simple system concert flutes.
Their is no such a thing as an Irish flute, just a flute used for Irish music based on English simple system concert flutes people that referred to these flutes as Irish and the name stuck.
One of the makers tells it as it is if you care to read this you will see the term is INCORRECT
from a makers site
These flutes are based on the mid-19th century English concert flutes which later became popular for Irish and Scottish traditional music and which are also being picked up in other traditional musical styles in more recent times. The flutes themselves have come to be commonly known as “Irish flutes”, a term which though historically incorrect, is understandable by the fact that their use from the late 19th century to the present time became closely associated with Irish traditional music!!!
The Bozuki has been used in Irish music from the 60s are you going to claim that as an Irish instrument as well??
Butler made flutes in Dublin, so his would be an Irish flute… 
youse guys are funny 
I believe the first use of the term Irish flute, in print at any rate, was in the first ed. of “The Irish Flute Player’s Handbook” in 1990, although the passage was written at least 5 years before that. At the time I put it in quotation marks, aware that it had the potential to be a misused and even contentious term. I intended Irish flute to refer to the development of the simple system flute towards newly made, modern pitch instruments that were becoming commonly used to play Irish traditional, and other folk musics
Since then, the use of the term Irish flute has become extremely widespread (except in Ireland) and although it has largely become a meaningless term since being appropriated for commercial purposes ( a bit like “world music” )
I suppose if one had to define the current use of Irish flute it would be any simple system flute in any material, in any pitch, with or without keys, that’s used to play mainly Irish, but any type of folk music
It’s not a term that I use anymore, nor have I ever heard anyone who was in anyway engaged with the Irish traditional music use.
P.S. Miller Browne, or someone operating under that name are still supplying Bb band fifes, or rather something that superficially looks like a fife. Among the worst instruments I’ve ever seen. I don’t think they relate the earlier Miller Browne stuff though.
All the Best
Hammy
Consider ‘tin whistle’ ‘penny whistle’ ‘irish whistle’ etc. None literally fits (Clarkes are made in England),
but I say ‘Irish whistle.’ Over the years it seems to be the least misleading and most informative.
Same with ‘Irish flute.’ That’s what I say when people ask me ‘What’s that you are playing?’
Rather hard to find anything better to say, whatever its inadequacies.
If they show more
interest I tell them about conical flutes, Boehm flutes, how the latter replaced the former
in symphony orchestras so the former became affordable to Irish musicians who
played Irish traditional music on them and how more recently copies of these old flutes
are being made for Irish music…Somewhere along the line they make polite excuses and hurry off.
There is a phenomenon called ‘breaking the butterfly on the rack,’ which consists of
demanding a kind of precision of something impressionistic that it cannot have.
Given the rather complicated history of the instruments we play,
‘Irish flute’ serves as well as, and is as informative as, anything else
we can say–unless our audience is prepared to hear the saga.
It’s just a phrase. Not against the rules to lighten up.