Pibgorn / Welsh Hornpipe

New 1-year-on pibgorn video clip posted on YouTube…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7agtq0Lug3I

Also, there is a Clerorfa concert on Saturday 6th June at 730 in the Corwen Pavilion, Corwen, near Llangollen - all welcome! Featuring… you’ve guessed it…

The Pibgorn is a 6 hole single reed pipe with a horn reedcap and bell. The internal bore is between 4mm and 12mm in diameter.
The ancient Complaynt of Scotland lists the pibgorn…

“The feyrd playit on ane cornepipe”

The Pibgorn is also known as the Pibcorn and Whithorn and is related to The Basque Alboka, The Scottish Stock-and-Horn and the Cornemuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornpipe

Legend says that the Egyptian born Irish Queen Scota (The “Dark Queen”, a Daughter of Ramses the first) brought these pipes from her home in the first century CE to Ireland and her sons then brought them to conquered Lowland “Scotia’s Land”. soon after.

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198506/ireland.s.cleopatra.htm

(Bet I start a fire with that comment!) :imp:

Why? I don’t see anything exceptionable in it - I believe Wikipedia’s organology is sound in this instance, save for one technical error - it’s a 7 hole pipe, having a rear thumb-hole without which it could not have a gamut of a full octave.

If you look at the various websites about Welsh pibgyrn you will see that it has long been accepted that at least one of the surviving instruments in the National Museum of Wales at St.Fagans was most likely brought from N. Africa - perhaps because it reminded a traveller of something similar at home… or perhaps not. Anyway, very few musical instruments are truly original or confined to a particular country, region or culture. However, like the crwth and triple harp, the pibgorn seems to have survived in use longer in Wales than elsewhere in Britain and is documented as such, and to have been associated with Welsh music and culture both by Welsh people and outsiders when little known elsewhere, hence any claim to its peculiar Welshness.

As for the mythology, such tales are always fun and interesting in their own right, but are relatively unlikely to have any historicity!

True, but they’re intriguing at times. The whole Milesian mythology is typical of the medieval urge to connect recombined European national identities to the older prestige cultures of the Mediterranean and West Asia. But then you look at the genetics showing deep population links between the Iberia and Ireland since the Neolithic, and it makes you go hmmmm …

You think, how ridiculous that supposed 3,000-year old events could be retained with any any historicity by medieval clerics with an agenda (the Lebor Gabála Érenn dates to around ~1100 CE). Then you look at the sophisticated cultural engineering that oral societies use to propagate narrative, and it makes you go hmmmm …

On the other hand, why say hmmm when you can play the pibgorn? :slight_smile:

I added the “Mythology” because of recent UK-wide DNA testing to determine genetic origins. The results indicate a strong link to middle eastern genetics in Ireland and Lowland Scotland (“The Dark Ones”).

On Topic: These pipes are rather simple to make with modified Clarinet/Sax reeds or Bamboo drone reeds. The bore/length ratio is 1/40 and the ID ranges from 3.5mm on Whithorns to 12mm for Phrygian pipes. The poorly made tourist “Zummara’s” are around 11mm bore with “drone style” reeds. The divergent “Shepherds Pipes” are my favorite. Each pipe plays 5 notes with 4 tone holes (one chanter low notes and one high notes). They “overlap” in the middle of the scale, like the Italian Zampona’s or the Preatorius “Magdeburg Pipes” for a full 8 note scale.

http://jakobmjensen.dk/musikkurser/historie/etno/res/zummara.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-5amqawD_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPqRN38cXzQ&NR=1

http://musicaviva.com/encyclopedia/display.html?phrase=magdeburg-bagpipe
http://www.bagpipesociety.org.uk/images/Schaper%20-%20praetorius%20magdeburg%20drawing.jpg