I’ve seen this a number of times and never really understood it. Does anyone have any further insight into what exactly this means?
Greg
Hhhhmmmm…
When Pat Sky said someone should do some research, I don’t think he meant that we should do it on this form and TODAY.
Time for some mature reflection. Time for a sharp exist!!
I guess W.H. Gratten Flood has been pretty much outed at this point.
OK. I don’t suppose there’s any point in using the term: “Irish Pipes”. Like it or not, this has become the vernacular in many a situation, especially in The States.
I know, I know. There’s the whole piob mhor tradition as well as the tradition of Irish music on the Highland pipes…
t
I didn’t say that was definitely what it was, I can totally see how it just as likely may have been a construction of the Gaelic Revival or similar movement.
As for Shakespeare’s spelling, the English language was going through reform where the spelling was only beginning to become standardized. No two spellings of even Shakespeare’s name attributed to his hand was even spelled the same way. If anything him calling uilleann woolen and a later copyist “correcting” the spelling to swollen sounds completely reasonable. Extremely few if any of Willie’s manuscripts survive and his plays were reconstructed after his death by his friends quzzing former actors on lines they remembered. Even if Shakespeare had seen, much less knew how to spell uilleann pipes (and i’m still not saying that was definitely the name at the time) between other actors, friends, publishers, republishers etc there’s plenty of room for screwing up uilleann to woolen.
It is a hazy origin. Just remember, for eighty years it was “universally accepted” that the Titanic sank in one piece, although there had been reports to the contrary. Despite 1500 witness the popular theory put forth by some of the more aristocratic of the survivors was “universally accepted” and stories to the contrary were silenced.
That is, until it was found…
Language changes and evolves and uilleann now exists along side (and more popular than, in some circles) union as the name of the instrument. Which one is the chicken and which one is the egg hardly matters, for it is what it is. The Unionist movement and the “union of sounds” speak for “union” pipes, whereas the characteristic bellows speaks for “uilleann.” I personally feel, that first, second or third, “uilleann” is both more intuitive and descriptive and so that is why I choose to use that term (not to mention the possible link to the Act of Union is enough to sour me on “union” altogether).
I would find it terribly amusing if the precursor to the instrument did arrive in Ireland via French origins and both “union” and “uilleann” turn out to be gaelicizations of some original French term 
There were no full time musicians in the Big Houses back then. They had jobs and were expected to play at dinner and for entertainment as part of their responsibilities that might have included being a groomsman, etc.
O’Neill mentioned that there was an Irish piper for every day of the year in England at one time during the 1800s. When Turlough McSweeney went to Edinburgh, he went to a rooming house that housed 16 Irish pipers (pre-1893).
Out of all the explanations, ‘union’ and ‘unison’ (meaning the same thing) as being the baritone regulator matching the chanter sound is the most satisfying explanation for me. Connecting up to Shakepeare, etc is a dead end.
Grattan Flood may not have justified the usage of ‘uilleann’ but he is a key person for putting the term into play. 1968 was a chance to set it right but that didn’t happen.
‘uilleann’ is mentioned in Walker’s Bard book 1786 but you won’t see the term ‘uilleann pipes’ until 1900.
Oldest mention of ‘union pipes’ in print is 1788 - The Times of London.
‘Patrick’ is the best guess on O’Farrell’s name. Someone had penciled ‘P’ in the copy that is at the British Museum. I’ve reviewed the copies of O’Farrell’s that O’Neill owned and no mention of O’Farrell’s first name appears in those editions (or in O’Neill’s books).
The basic evolution is from a set of 3 or 4 drones and chanter. The chanter has a foot joint. Next step is take off the foot joint, close off the chanter, and you now have a baritone regulator. Take off one drone and fit it into the stock. Take the foot joint off the chanter and you have an 'uilleann pipe chanter. Voila, a chanter that can play legato and staccato along with 3 drones and one regulator playing in unison (union) with the chanter. Union pipes.
Later on, they separate the air feed from the stock for the drones with an on/off switch.
Today, on most sets, the chanter reed works in the baritone regulator (and vice versa). We all know everything is not perfectly interchangeable but the baritone reg reed is closest to the chanter reed on a set of pipes.
The answers.com article quoted at the beginning of this thread was regurgitated from the Wikipedia article on uilleann pipes, which I partially re-edited myself - including the slam on Grattan F. Glad to see someone here regarding me as an authority! Much of what I know about pipes is taken from O’Neill, Breathnach, Donnelly, etc. I don’t deny being a bit of a regurgitater myself!
I’d go to Sean Donnelly for the lowdown on any of these kinds of subjects, he’s a guy who will read a whole year of a newspaper looking for accounts of musicians in it. One of my favorite bits of his was another critisicm of Flood, who recounted the new membership of a Pipers’ Guild, I belive in 17th century Dublin. Turns out these are the kind of Pipers that patch up leaky plumbing!
Brian McCandless had another interesting conjecture for the name Union, that it referred to an instrument played all through the Union. Sort of like Cornemuse Ecossaise.
Right. I knew Dale Wisely was somehow involed in re-editing part of that artilce, but I’d forgotten about you. I get a little mixed up now and then. Sorry.
I am pretty sure the quote comes from one of Donnelly’s essays on the Sean Reid Society CDs, where a piper of the early 19th century was quoted as saying he obtained a union of sound between “the” regulator (yes, all one of them, at the time) and the chanter. Donnelly’s articles are a bit long-winded and not necessarily linear. The CDs are available from NPU. Lots of good info in there, if you want to go looking.
djm
Like all great Irish writers… have you never read Joyce?
PD.
Thanks, Pat!
djm
I have waxed long and not so poetic before on this forum about calling sets of pipes by their pitch. Are there any historic references at all about this? I know of none before the last 30 years. Not that I think it a bad innovation that pipes are almost all now refered to by pitch. More than one maker has heard the complaint of a newbie with a tuning meter complaining about his new B flat (or whatever pitch other than D) being 10 cents or so sharp or flat of the meter. A=440 hz. is a modern innovation and some symphonic orchestras are varying from this. Kenna making a 14 1/2" chanter does not make them D pipes. The Taylors and Wm. Rowsome pipes are sharp of modern D in pitch.
I had some pieces of UP that came from a piper who worked for the Hudson Bay Co. in Astoria, that are quite early. The pieces consisted of a plum wood keyless double chanter with bone mounts, a few drone ends of the same materials, a plumwood five keyed baritone regulator which had been broken and repaired, but not very well, and a boxwood five key reg. stamped Coyne which was probably a replacement for the older reg. The chanter played near C#. That chanter is to a mm the same length and hole spacing as my Taylor double chanter which likes to play in modern D pitch, or damn close to it. A fortuitous accident. The rest of the set was set up for Prof. Cummings to go with the double chanter. It has less raucous regs. and I (tounge-in-cheek) submit this as the first set of D pipes.
Ted
Hmmmm…that might put it back as early as the 1670’s. 
I like stories. They’re more accurate. To hell with the TAMS C14 dating method.
O’Neill says that Touhey’s pipes were sharp of concert pitch but other than that mention pipes are either concert or flat (of concert). The lengths, though, are pretty consistent for extrapolating.
Hopefully, the measuring project at the Dublin Museum will shed some light.
Lorenzo,
The pipe parts were in a Jesuit(?) museum in Walla Walla or mid-Wa. They were on display for years. The museum closed and the collection sold off. I bought the bits from an antique shop in Portland a few years back, at the suggestion of the Reitmeister. The shopkeeper forgot the name of the piper but thought it might have been “Mc Kay or something”. Maybe you can trace the museum for me.
Ted
No kidding? There wouldn’t be any Jesuit Museums around here, only Ft. Walla Walla Museum and the Whitman Monument Museum–of which the curator is an old friend of mine. Tons and tons of junk in the basement that no archaeologist has ever sorted through. I mean tons.
Maybe Central WA. My friend might be familiar. Know when the museum closed? May be Spokane. Some good old strong Catholic traditions around there.
Kevin might know about someone, maybe Byron Bodie, who remembers seeing them. I meant so. central Wa. but the museum probably closed in the early 1990’s. Could you ask your curator friend?
EDIT: I am not sure about the Jesuit part either. A few people have mentioned seeing them on display.
Ted
Byron called me up one night and said this homosexual Brian Boru piper (SIC) had found an old set of Irish pipes, stamped something like “Coyde.” I had a helluva time falling asleep that night! I seem to remember Byron saying they were on display at Fort Vancouver for a long time, I forget the exact details.
Definitely Jesuits.
djm
You mean he was a really good writer then?