Back to irishpiper’s last post, you may disagree but the points you bring up are incorrect. Yes, pipes in Ireland seem to have been used in battle before they died or were stamped out in the 18th century. Which is exactly why the revivalists decided to call them “war pipes” when they pushed for a two drone version of the Scottish bagpipe to get some sort of facsimile of the old thing going again. “War Pipes” - sounds sort of exciting doesn’t it? Really gets the blood going. But don’t be fooled into thinking that these “war pipes” are the result of a continuous, unbroken tradition of mouth-blown piping in Ireland. All modern authorities, Scottish and Irish, who’ve done any work on the subject agree on this point. “The present mouth-blown pipe used in Ireland may be regarded as a revival of the Scottish instrument after the native instrument had disappeared.” - Tomas O Canain in “Traditional Music in Ireland” p. 81 “Piping has not come down to us uninterruptedly from ancient times… The traditional manner of playing on the war pipes was lost, then, sometime during the eighteenth century. The present vogue dates back to the opening years of the present [20th] century when members of pipers clubs in Cork and Dublin strove to re-awaken an interest in the instrument… In music, piping and drumming techniques, dress and drill, the organisation of pipe bands in Ireland may be regarded as an offshoot of the Scottish movment.” - Breandan Breathnach in “Folk Music and Dances of Ireland” pp. 78-79. These two (noted uilleann piers as well as historians) ought to know a bit about it. Roderick Cannon also writes “It is clear from references in literature that some form of piob mhor was played, but it died out in the early 1700’s… No specimen of the old Irish bagpipe survives, but there are some indications that it was essentially the same as the Scottish.” - “The Highland Bagpipe and its Music” pp. 21-22 No one writing in the past 75 years disagrees on this point. In answer to your question “How can revivalists take a third drone from a Highalnd (sic) bagpipe and make Irish Warpipes?”, its not really complicated. You take a Highland bagpipe, remove a tenor drone (wait, I did forget something, put a cork in the stock or sew up the bag) and begin to refer to it as a “war pipe”. And that is exactly what they did. There is even a story someone posted elsewhere in this forum about one of these 20th cent. Irish regiments waking up one morning and finding that their three-droned bagpipes had become two-droned bagpipes because their commanding officer had received an order to “amputate”. Later, they may have even had bags made with just two drone-stock holes. Wow, how DID they do it? As to your statement “It is clear that the bagpipe existed in Ireland long before Scotland”, clear to who? Certainly not to any of the authorities in this field. The notion that the Irish settlers in Argyll (check your spelling of this and Dalriadans) brought bagpipes with them in 470 A.D., is pure fantasy. I quote “The first record of some sort of ‘pipe’ in Ireland is at the eleventh-century Aonach Carman” from “The Companion to Irish Traditional Music” p. 14, published in 1999 as well as in Breathnach and others. And most scholars doubt that this even refers to a bagpipe. Bagpipes came to both Scotland and Ireland from the continent (probably via England, oh no, calamity of calamties!) around the same time, definitely by the 15th century and no earlier than the 11th. Your joke about the Irish giving the bagpipe to the Scots who haven’t caught on yet might be funny if it wasn’t the millionth time I’d heard it and that a lot of people, like you, seem to believe that its true. It may even smack a bit of nationalism which makes for bad history and bad music in my opinion. For the same reason, I don’t think we should grasp too tightly to the term “uilleann” which was invented in 1911 by Gratton Flood in an attempt to “Irishify” the instrument as much as possible and place its origins back to the 16th century when Shakespeare mentioned “woolen pipes”. Total rubbish. Again see Breathnach who blows this one out of the water. Watch out for Gratton Flood and watch out for nationalistic agendas when it comes to history and bagpipes. For some reason, bagpipes in particular seem to attract this kind of crud. In my humble opinion, I believe we could all do the world of music a service if we stopped repeating these bogus mythologies and got on with the real thing.
I have one final thing…Irish Warpipes, or GHB, or The Great Highland Bagpipes, or The Scottish Agony bags, or what ever terminology you use to describe Celtic pipes that are mouth blown are NOT Uilleann Pipes, and no more History Lessons or page quotes. Got way of topic!!!..end of story…
Yes, I can see why you don’t like history and don’t want any more quotes. The truth gets in the way of your prejudices. Your true colors are apparent with statements like “Scottish agony bags”. No one argues that the pipes you mention are uilleann pipes. As far as going off topic, you were the one who took us there with your “history lesson”. Except it wasn’t history.
The warpipe is what it was..an instrument for WAR..
The ‘war’ in warpipe refers to the Gaelic word for ‘great’ (mhor is pronounced war) , not the English word for conflict.
So add this in with the arguement! The Gaelic title,“an piob mhor” (the pipe, great) is, when pronounced properly, is “on pive war” that’s because of the process called linition. This factor, I believe, is at the root of the confusion about “WAR” pipes. Now I know alot of people who are into military history, and love to append all the “Romance” (see my previous posting) to it, the complicated story is that the high status instrument of the Gael was the Harp, oridginaly a “4 angled form of harmony” (read the Irish myth the “Second Battle of Moytura”)that is, a LYRE or in Gaelic “cruit”. The 3 angled form of harp with a good, strong, fore pillar, that could take the tension of metal strings, appeared about the 8th century A.D. (the “clarsach” or plain of strings), this can be seen on St. Modoc’s Bell Shrine. This instrument was used to accompany the pre- battle oration of a king,queen and/or doine usal (nobles) and their Fili (poets). This"rosc cath" oration was meant to get the fever for battle, raised to the pitch needed to over come the natural reluctance to kill “other” people. This use of musical instruments for war can be found in many different cultures around the world, (Drums, Flutes,&etc.) In the book “Armstrong’s Old Irish and Highland Harps”, there is a table of grace notes and their names, and all the movements of grace notes, now on the GHB, that are used in Piobaireachd,are there! Piobaireachd, is"Piping",otherwise known as Ceol Mor (h dropped)or"The Big Music", all this gracing was done on the Harp, and then put on the Pipes.
After all the invasions in both Ireland and Scotland (1000-1400 A.D.) the Harp lost ground to the “Great Pipe” as music for the “Nobles”. However Pipes and Piping, Harps and Harping, moved back and forth between all of the “Islands” the water around them was a highway NOT a barrier! It is possible that all the styles of gracing that are used on the Uilleann Pipes today, reflects the survival of the techniques of the “Ancient” Pipes of Ireland, and why not? Ask any Scots piper where his gracing came from, and the answer would be “Remote Antiquity” the Dream time. I think the picture is complicated, but needlessly mislead by Scots versus Irish/ Irish versus Scots, arguements, and if you study the history of the" Pastoral Pipes",you will find that the Lowland Scots, the Northumbrian English, and the Irish, took part in the developement of what is now the “Irish” Uilleann Bagpipes.
Sean Folsom
P.S. With the mouth blown Uilleann Pipe “Practice” chanter (in D) by Music Services Ltd.( that’s the one with the rubber wind tube going into the chanter top, and has a plastic chanter reed that overblows the octave), you could tie that into a bag with drones and have a modern mouth blown UP pipe, but the regulators could be a problem…I know there’s a Rube Goldberg/ Heath Robinson genius out there somewhere who could do it! S.F.
Free Tinker..stop being so over dramatic..have a sense of humor…My Scottish friends call them " Agony Bags" I thought it was funny.
Sure, I’ll have a sense of humour when I hear something that’s genuinely funny. Cliche, worn-out slurs directed towards the things this forum is supposed to be about are, at best, distracting, and unhelpful and perpetuate confusion and ignorance around the subject. At worse… well I think I went over that. But just to show you I’m not a total stick in the mud, how’s this - 
?
My god, an outbreak of knowledge, how refreshing.
If anyone’s interested in the history of piping in Irish reghiments in the twentieth century, get in touch with the College of Piping in Glasgow and ask for relevant back issues of the Piping Times. David Murray knows a huge amount on this subject and he’s put a lot of it in print.
I don’t think a Ross system could produce something that would make a mouth blown Uillean pipe easy to do. You could plug one in, but the tubing has unfortunate effects that would probably drive your double reeds haywire, and possibly your drones as well. There’s no reason someone expert at reedmaking and pipe construction in a variety of styles couldn’t produce mouthblown drones, regulators, and chanters that worked in a similar way to Uilleann pipes, but sound the same they could not.
Cheers,
Calum
Is it possible to pop into the second register on a mouth blown chanter? Has that ever been done? That would be the biggest problem.
The problem with a Ross canister is that it removes some, but not ALL humidity from the air. There’d probably still be enough to play merry hell with Uilleann reeds, I’d bet…although I could be wrong since I live in a climate that is about as moist as the Mojave Desert. But if someone invented a mouthblown set, I’d still call them Uilleann pipes, just to continue the flamewars…heh heh heh. Unless you’d all consider actually saying in public “Yep, got me a new set of them Pogue Pipes…”
Dave
And if Andreas made them, and they were really cool… you’d have (oh gawd this is awful)…
Vogue Rogge Pogue Pipes
That was terrible 
Careful now… down with this sort of thing.
And if you add three R&B Sirens, each singing and piping simultaneously, you might call 'em En-vogue Rogge Pogue Pipes. 
… and now, I must run away… 
Yes Bag Lady, the mouthblown Flutes, Clarinets, Saxes, Oboes, etc. can and do overblow the octave(s) all the time. more air pressure, and jaw clamping, with/ or with out the “octave” key(s). And believe me it works on Uilleann Chanters as well. The plastic reed is the secret on the UP chanter, as it has to be immune to slobber, or at the very least the vapor from the lungs, throat and mouth. I found that the UP plastic reed would NOTwork in my regular D chanter,or any others (I know I tried) just on the poly-penco UP “Practice” chanter it came with, from Music Services Ltd. Their reed did “spruce up” the Pakistani chanters (read that subject on the other posts) better that the reeds that came with them from Pakistan. I’ve got one from 2001, that I can measure up and give the specs, but I think they’re still available. Sean Folsom