Hello to all,
I just thought that I would make a call to some you young researchers out there to, for the first time in many years, do some original research regarding the uilleann pipes.
If you go to all of the descriptions of the pipes on the internet and in books, both scholarly and amateur, you will find that the information contained is quoting the same sources over and over again.
What are needed are new visits to European libraries, newspapers, theaters, etc and other sources of possible information to shed new light on some of the many un-answered questions and unsubstantiated theories such as:
When and how did the name of the pipes change from Union to Uilleann.
Who actually made the first D set of pipes.
Were the first pipes made in Ireland, Scotland—where?
How long have the pipes actually been in America?
When did the pipes cross over to traditional players among the common people from the pass time of wealthy gentlemen such as lord Walker “Piper” Jackson?
Were flat pipes actually considered to be in “concert” pitch during their day?
What is the full name of O’Farrell who wrote some of the first piping books.
Were the 18th century Pastoral pipes and Union pipes one and the same at the time?
Are there manuscripts and diaries that haven’t been published?
I could actually continue with quite a long list but I just wanted to give you the gist of what is needed,
An older name for this instrument was the Union pipes; the earliest uses of this in print date from the late 18th century. Why they were called Union pipes isn’t known; theories include the union of sounds the various pipes obtain, or the Act of Union of 1803 (which post-dates the earliest usage), or to the pipes being used all through the Union itself. “Uilleann” means “elbow” in Irish Gaelic; it was first connected with the pipes in reference to a line in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, which mentions a “woolen” bagpipe. An antiquarian speculated that this was actually in reference to an “elbow” bagpipe, thus the uilleann pipe. This notion was picked up by a member of the Gaelic League, W.H. Grattan Flood, who at the beginning of the 20th century declared uilleann pipes to be the correct name, and Union pipes a corruption of it into English. This theory is no longer considered valid by modern researchers, none of whom consider Flood a reliable source of information.
Peter,
You are making my point. There is definately doubt as to anything in Gratten Floods books. Most of his stuff was based on loose research and personal openions. For example he says that O’Farrell’s first name was Patrick. Where did he get that Idea? Lay his book and others like it aside and find something new.
As to finding old pipes in D that does not answer the question as to who made the first set. All that shows is that some of the pipemakers made D pipes. It does show however that the D set was not invented by the Taylors as many seem to think.
One theory which has never been extensively explored is that Union refers to the Act of Union, 1801, whereby the Dublin Parliament was merged into Westminister. I’ve floated this theory before and been laughed at, but at the time, Political Union was on many peoples minds. For example, I’ve been told that many Irish streets were named Union Street and subsequently renamed following the rise of Home Rule, Sinn Fein, Easter Rising, Independence and the Free State.
I’m not going to defend this theory with my life but I think that it might interest some people.
Something that has bothered me as well about existing research is that it does not seem to look beyond Ireland and Scotland. Only grudging acknowledgement is ever given to the fact that bellows-blown pipes were developed in France, and that these in turn may well have come from earlier Moorish instruments. With the overwhelming number of different types of bagpipes in France alone, let alone the rest of Europe and the middle East, I doubt whether the real history of UPs will ever really be discovered. To pretend that Scotland suddenly invented the pastoral pipes in isolation, and that UPs were developed only from these strikes me as somewhat myopic.
I think Breandan Breathnach looked into Grattan Flood’s creation of the Uiileann name , and so did Nicholas Carolan.
As for old D pipes, Sean Donnelly has made a good case for the elder Kenna as the first maker of intstruments that can be called union pipes (and Kenna in marking severa linstruments as ‘Kenna ‘inventor’ Mullingar’ seems to want to make the case himself) so when finding D pipes by Kenna, wouldn’t that also make them the first union sets pitched in D?
We all know what what usually is meant by the statement they made the first d sets: that the Taylors were first to move towards the wider concert sets of today.
but i agree with you there’s too much recycling of the same old same old.
This will be my last post on this subject for a while. But to steer you back to my original thoughts, some of you so far are simply quoting the old research that is out there. The origin of the name “Union”, Gratten Flood— all of this stuff is old hat.
Here is I mean by original research: When I was putting together the introduction to my first publication of “O’Farrel’s National Irish Music for the Union Pipes” I spent many hours at Harvard University going through old theater posters. I found that the earliest mention of the “Union” pipes was in the pantomime of “Oscar and Melvin” at Covent Gardens in London, in the early 1790’s (since I do not have my papers in front of me I cannot be more exact but it was around 1791). The piper performing was named Dennis Courtney who played on the “Union” pipes. This is the earliest mention of Union pipes so far.
Another interesting point is that there is a drawing of Courtney playing his pipes, it shows him playing a long chanter off the knee (Pastoral pipes?) but they are called Union pipes. The drawing on front of O’Farrell’s book shows him playing the same type of long chanter off the knee. In my opinion it does seem that the Pastoral and the Union pipes were, at one time, one and the same. The only documented use of the name “Pastoral” has been in the Georgeagan’s (sic) turor, while the name Union appears to be more widespread.
I hope that this give you an idea as to the kind of “new” research that is needed.
Disappointed, I was never able to find out O’Farrel’s first name.
The other side of that, is that “union” could be the anglicization of the gaeilge. the souces that record union were no doubt written in english. It could potentially be a bastardization of uillinn (“elbow,” as distinguished from “war” pipes) or or a voluntary re-assigning of a close phonetic eqivalent by a society ashamed of its language.
I think it’s very hazy as to where it originated, but I have a real hard time with the jump that the surviving oldest recorded mention (250+ years) in a language not endemic to the culture, of a marginalized and ignored instrument of a marginalized and ignored culture is necessarily 1) a reliable report 2) actually the oldest term used for the instrument.
By the 17th and 18th centuries Gaeilge was still the main language of the vast majority of the native population, english being spoken mainly by the settlers and aristocracy (Duffy et al. 1997). To me, “uillinn” seems a perfectly intuitive name and fitting with the language demographic of the time, whereas “union” leaves us scratching our heads as to exactly what way it was meant et cetera.
thought of this myself for quite some time, and it does seem reasonable, especially when trying to legitimize (or legalize) an element of the culture held in disdain by the powers that be (“Liberty Cabbage” “Victory Steaks” “Freedom Fries”).
What made me eventually shy away from this theory is that the term seems to predate 1801, and, if that were the reason for it, would make no sense prior to the passing of the Act.
Since a set of UPs cost a year’s wages, even two hundred years ago, I doubt most of the unemployed natives would have had access to a set anyways. UPs were probably the provenance of the wealthy few, the “gentlemen pipers”. O’Farrell made his way teaching and performing in Scotland, not in Ireland. I would tend to give credence to names and terms coming from the gentry.
Don’t forget that there was a strong political movement in Ireland since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In this respect the Act of Union was the end, rather than the beginning (obviously it began something else). People had been pushing for a union of Dublin and Westminister parliaments for decades prior.
I’m not going to comment on this topic anymore. From some of the PMs I’ve received, I can see it’s still a sore point with some people.
I have to agree that there is every possibility that the term ‘union’ was merely an interpretation of uilleann when filtered through an auto-anglicizing sieve. Especially if someone, once upon a time, pronounced the ‘uil’ as ‘yool’. It is a tiny phonetic leap to go from ‘yoolin’ to ‘union’.
Last Sunday I was playing at a session in a loud and crowed bar. A bar goer came up to me (well across a table and several musicians) and asked what I was playing. “Uilleann pipes” says I. The man says, “ah…Dylan pipes” and leaves.
For fecksake Antaine, by all means join Grattan Flood’s ranks if you will and make the argument in favour but Pat just said Grattan Flood is totally old hat and he didn’t make that up you know. The articles I mentioned by Breandan Breathnach and Nicholas Carolan have made more than clear his ‘uilleann’ as a name for the pipes was totally made up and that he was a total and utter crank. It is universally accepted that uilleann is not the original name used for the pipes and that there is no gound for assuming that it was the original name as gaeilige..
Looks like we have two forums talking about the same thing
See also the thread on Irish Union Pipes in Boston, c1812. I didn’t know any other way to “merge” these two conversations, so I just bumped my original post, which did generate some good discussion. Keep them going, start a new thread if you have a new line of research to pursue.
This is as good a time as any to share the following quote from liner notes to a Michael Gorman/Willy[sic] Clancy record. It is part of an elaborate description of the instrument:
“the air for the bag is supplied by a sort of bellows, pumped by the elbow, instead of being blown in by the mouth, as in the war pipes; and the player is usually seated, and rests the pipes on table instead of standing and marching, as in war pipes . . . The Uileann pipes are almost unversally known as lilting pipes . . . As the dance music reaches Boston, it is quite common to find a piano with the group, playing the fundamental chords and rhythms. It sometimes plays together with the pipes and fife – the latter with the old style tuning, the piano with the new; but they all go on blandly at the same time, and no appear to enjoy himself the less. All the instruments of all types and ages and with all sorts of tunings, play together with gusto and zest, the dancers in with an occasional bit of mouth-music lilting, and a whopping good time is had by all.”
All complicated by the fact that when NPU was being formed in 1968, Breandan Breathnach asked the group what should we be called and Seamus Ennis supplied, ‘Na Piobairi Uilleann’ and there we have it.
Peters totaly correct here.
W.H. Grattan Flood totaly made it up. Some of his “proof” included quoting Shakespear with his woolen pipes and actualy some editions of the same play have swollen pipes too.
Rubbish.
Shakespear could spell fine. If he mean’t uilleann pipes he would have written it. The term uilleann pipes has appeared in some medieval texts but briefly, along with other colloquial musical terms like cuisle ceol, fear feadan, etc.
Flood jumped on this and told the masses that the instrument was and should have been called this all along. He was an “Oirish” spin doctor. A late victorian antiquitarian. The same kind of loo-laa that went digging up the Hill of Tara looking for the Ark of the Covenant…
He wrote an obituary for Tom Rowsome (Leo’s Uncle) when he died in 1929 and in it he was going on about how the name of the instrument is Uilleann “incorrectly called Union pipes”. The cheek, imagine telling a Rowsome that they got the name of the instrument wrong and their family has been playing it for years.
Antaine,
I would disagree with the anglicisation theory. Up til the 1840’s the greater percentage of the players and makers of the instrument probably didn’t really speak Irish. They were mostly the upper class gentry.
Around the time of the Famine, landlords lost tons of money so they couldn’t afford musicians as full time members of the household but to keep things going they would commission an instrument to be made, pass it on to the local talented person on conditions that they do a few free gigs now and again.
Patsy Touhey’s dad was a piper to a local landlord as was his grand-dad.
This also also would have marked the point in time when the instrument started to move from the upper classes to the plain people of Ireland.
The Union title probably comes from the union of the chanter and regulator(s). Although it is very possible that the terms Pastoral Pipes and Union Pipes existed side by side as names for the same thing, just as Uilleann and Union existed side by side for a good while.
But Mr. Sky is right more research is neeed.
Tommy
Dismissing Grattan Flood is a bit excessive. No scholarship is perfect. Francis O’Neill’s work has tons of errors.
I’ve spent my fair share of time going through public records, newspapers, and books and MANY errors creep in. I’m most astonished at how much discrepancies there are between birth, death, cemetery, and newspaper records. (I wish that dead people were able to fill out their own death certificates.)
From my family history, my father was born at home in Chicago in 1922 and the family did not file a birth certificate until he needed one for school many years later. (The Irish nun saw him when his older sister was going to 2nd grade; she said he’s big enough to start 1st grade and started a year earlier than he would have otherwise.)
Having said that, I’ve read newspaper accounts of events that I have run and wonder if I was at the same event! Total rubbish gets printed. And then people tell me about the event based on the news account and it seems like a Twilight Zone episode to me.