Just found this, thought you’d be interested.
http://www.xreferplus.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=3316720&secid=.-&hh=1#25949.jpg
John S
Sorry, John. This requires an id and password to get in.
djm
No picture.
Sorry about that folks, bellow is not quit as large an image.
http://www.bridgeman.co.uk/search/view_image.asp?button=add&image_id=25949
John S
The picture’s a bit small, but doesn’t that look like… a narrow-bore D set he’s playing?
You’re soooo bad! 
djm
Actually, looks kind of like a walking stick. I heard they used to ream those out and turn them into chanters, way back when… that’s where the Concert D came from, and they were really loud!!
Hmm. Don’t trust artists with bagpipes. Ever.
Note at the bottom of the description:
Keywords: peasant
oops
indeed, elbogo, it looks like he is playing on a walking stick.
must be a hell of a back D
carel
It’s hard to tell because the available image is so small but one other possibility might be that the pipes this blind feller is playing are pastoral pipes, the daddy of the original union pipes. Originally developed in the 1740s, they were for a brief time popular in both the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland and also Northumberland in addition to Ireland. The chanter doesn’t look long enough–pastoral chanters usually had a long foot joint and were consequently not meant to be played on the knee (therefore it was possible to play them while standing up). Sometimes, however, the foot joint went missing or was intentionally removed. These pipes usually had 1-2 regulators and 3-4 drones. Although the union pipes quickly usurped the pastorals in Ireland after their invention in the 1770s, it took a while for a complete transition to occur. I know of one other painting of a piper done sometime in the 1830s which shows someone clearly playing a pastoral set. I can’t for the life of me remember the artist’s name though. Considering that this dude Clennell bit the big felafel in 1840, it seems fairly plausible that pastoral sets would have still been creeping around at the time that he painted this.
Incidentally, I also remember once seeing a photo of somebody playing a set of modern concert pitch UPs standing up. I think it dated from the 1930s and was one of the McPeakes or something. He had a big strap around his shoulder to support the drones and regs. There was a popping valve on the chanter, but I don’t know how he was closing it. Maybe he was just playing a bunch of funky 1-octave off the knee stuff…
There is no record of pastoral pipes being particularly popular that I know of. They existed, but so what? That doesn’t tell us how many sets or makers were in circulation. There were more UP makers and pipers in Ireland in the first half of the 19th century than the latter, so it is very likely these are supposed to be UPs.
Also, there is no way of knowing how accurate the picture is, or if it was just the “artist’s impression”. There was no onus on the artist to be accurate. The piper and his audience, not his pipes, would have been the more likely subjects of interest at the time.
djm
Well, they had their brief time in the sun from about the 1740s to the 1770s. Quirks in the design were never fully worked out. A shame because they were pitched in D but were fingered much more like a Scottish chanter with the lowest note being middle C. They could’ve been interesting if someone had ever gotten them to consistently work right…Instead they went the way of keyed trumpets, vertical orchestral flutes and logically-keyed bassoons…
Anyway, I just offered it up as one possibility for the reason behind this odd painting. In all likelihood, the artist just didn’t know what he was doing. Calum’s statement is right on the money.
Sometimes when I hear about people making historical reproductions of extinct species of bagpipes “based on illustrations” from some 15th century manuscript or something I have to wonder if they’re actually winding up with some utterly comical instrument based on somebody’s inattentive scribbling…
Lets get a few things clear, the Union/Uillean pipes evolved out of the pastoral pipes that were invented in Scotland around about 1700.
http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/beggars.html
Above is a Hogarth engraving containing one.
For those of you interested Below is another two Hogarth pieces featuring English mouth blown pipes.
http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/entertainment.html
http://www.haleysteele.com/hogarth/plates/southwark.html.
John S
the Bridgeman library can send lager files of the blind piper
The image you have seen on the website is a low resolution file.
they can send you a transparency in the post (on loan free of charge) or a digital file at
50MB (£30 for 3).
Carel
Ooooooh! Controversial!
I wonder would the standing UP piper referred to be Johnny Doran, who at some point in his career hooked his pipes up to a saxophone neckband and played standing with the chanter pressed against his chest, as I understand it.
standing up. I think it dated from the 1930s and was one of the
McPeakes or something.
Page 21 of the NPU online picture gallery.
http://www.pipers.ie/media/gallery_images/NPU23/McPeake-.gif
I remember reading a Johnny Doran story, I think it ws on the Dutch Pipers’ Club web site (?), that related how Doran would carry his set in a box, and when he played at fairs, races, etc. he would put his foot up on the box to play standing.
djm
That photo is Johnny Doran. It has been miscredited to Francis McPeak for years.
Tommy