The flute and Irish history

Irish Flute
1

[Split off from the original Olwell flutes thread - Mod]

Francis O’Neill says the flute was extremely common in his childhood in Cork, from 1848-1865, when he left.

“No musical instrument was in such common use among the Irish peasantry as the flute. From the “penny whistle” to the keyed instrument in sections it was always deservedly popular, for unlike the fiddle and the bagpipe it involved no expense beyond the purchase price. Complete in itself, the flute needed but a wetting to be always in tune, and disjointed or whole could be carried about without display or inconvenience. Besides, if not broken by accident or design it would outlive its owner.”

So if the cylindrical Boehm flute was not invented before 1847, the tin whistle into mass production around 1850? If flute playing was as common as O’Neill suggests then it was there must have been simple system flute available to “the peasantry” before 1847

2

I think there are a lot of probable contributors to the cracking of lined sections of flutes. (We tend to think of these as the heads and barrels, but there were some periods when sockets further down the flute were also lined. They also cracked!)

Flutes made from inadequately seasoned timbers. (This was essentially a cottage industry cashing in on a raging fashion. Why would we expect due diligence?)
Slides secured in place by fitting tightly, rather than by raising burrs on the outside to key into the timber. You see both. (I don’t know how much extra clearance this would give, but it might help!)
Flutes made in damp climates, eg 19th century London, and then exported to drier climates, eg India, the US, and Australia. (Most period London-made flutes I’ve come across here in Australia have one or more cracks.)
Timbers that split more readily (cocus vs blackwood?)
The fashion for really slim flutes (looking at you, Mr Clementi)
The rise of central heating and air conditioning.

And the one we are just starting to experience … Climate Change. Dry places getting drier, wet places getting wetter. Some vacillating dramatically. Three years back east-coast Australia suffered drought and catastrophic bushfires. Since then we have been experiencing wide-spread unprecedented flooding. Next year, who knows?

I’d be nervous about lined flutes made in a place considerably wetter than where I live. Or plan to live. Or might end up living. I think it’s fair to engage makers in discussion about these points. Or plan to take over the responsibility of keeping the flute in its comfort zone. Hope is not a plan!

3

[quote=“Terry McGee” post_id=1256137 time=1665269981 user_id=4379]
Climate Change. Dry places getting drier, wet places getting wetter. Some vacillating dramatically. Three years back east-coast Australia suffered drought and catastrophic bushfires. Since then we have been experiencing wide-spread unprecedented flooding. Next year, who knows?
[/quote]
According to the American philosopher, Mr. James Taylor’s predictions, “'I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end. I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend”. So, Terry, you’ve had two, next up are those sunny days followed by extreme loneliness…



Best wishes.



Steve

4

[quote=“Steve Bliven” post_id=1256138 time=1665280184 user_id=3128]
So, Terry, you’ve had two, next up are those sunny days followed by extreme loneliness… [/quote]
Hmmm, I wonder if he got the order wrong? We’re all still minimising social contact to avoid that nasty bug that’s been going around…

5

[quote=PB+J post_id=1256136 time=1665268940 user_id=25337]
Francis O’Neill says the flute was extremely common in his childhood in Cork, from 1848-1865, when he left.



“No musical instrument was in such common use among the Irish peasantry as the flute. From the “penny whistle” to the keyed instrument in sections it was always deservedly popular, for unlike the fiddle and the bagpipe it involved no expense beyond the purchase price. Complete in itself, the flute needed but a wetting to be always in tune, and disjointed or whole could be carried about without display or inconvenience. Besides, if not broken by accident or design it would outlive its owner.”



So if the cylindrical Boehm flute was not invented before 1847, the tin whistle into mass production around 1850? If flute playing was as common as O’Neill suggests then it was there must have been simple system flute available to “the peasantry” before 1847.[/quote]
I’ve always found this quote very frustrating. If only he had gone on to elaborate! The NLI tells us that there were 30 or so makers in Dublin back in the era, but were they making flutes for the peasants or for the Ascendancy? Or did the trickledown effect work better with flutes than with money? More work needed here!



The comment on the “wetting” is invaluable - it confirms that this was a real thing back in O’Neill’s day. I can only remember once seeing the ceremony performed, in the Favourite Pub in London in 1974. Old Tommy Healey had been called up to play and said he’d be up as soon as he’d “wetted his flute”. Needless to say, I rushed over to watch. With the help of a friend, they very carefully poured Guinness from his pint into the far end of the flute, then covered all the holes and swished it around to wet all the inside. Then spilled the excess fluid back into his glass. From which he then took a gulp before going up to play.



The purpose of “wetting” was to swell the wood at the joints to seal any cracks, and smooth the bore. When I took a closer look at the bore of his flute after his set, I was appalled to see a healthy-looking colony of white mould growing in there.



(Edited to add, when I say “to smooth the bore”, I mean to emulate a smoother bore to assist playing it. Wetting the flute is of course not going to smooth the bore, it’s going to do the opposite - raise the grain. But in this case, the grain was well raised and invaded by mould, so nothing much to lose! Ideally, one would take such a flute, clean, smooth and polish the bore, and oil it well before putting it back into service. But that didn’t seem to be well known at that time!)

6

The comment on the “wetting” is invaluable - it confirms that this was a real thing back in O’Neill’s day.

It was a practice that persisted long after that.

There’s a story about the first radio appearance of the Tulla ceili band during the early fifties. One of their (four) flueplayers ‘wetted’ the flutes before they went on and completfly upset the tuning of the flutes. Apparenhly Willie Clancy, one of the fluteplayers of the band at the ttme was terribly upset (and furious) about it.

I have Martin Rochford on tape speaking about the episode. With some mirth he added: ‘they didn’t get asked back for another ten years’. But the story is wellknown and pops up in several places and isn’t established part of the band’s history.

So if the cylindrical Boehm flute was not invented before 1847, the tin whistle into mass production around 1850? If flute playing was as common as O’Neill suggests then it was there must have been simple system flute available to “the peasantry” before 1847

‘Flute’ is a versatile word in Irish: ‘feadóg’ includes all matter of flute like instruments, the ‘concert flute’, whistle, fife etc. That usage continued until very recently, in fact I remember a friend of around my own age saying something about the nice ‘flute’ I was playing when I had the Sindt whistle out.

Mid 19th century the fife and drum bands were popular and widespread. Modelled on British regimental bands, some would argue, both in style and some of the repertoire. I have seen flutes that were used in the old Kilfenora flute band, F flutes. Have scanned original photos of that band too, from a man whose family had history in the band, two or three generations back.
Other photographic evidence, wren boys for example, shows fifes and piccolos were more commonly in use than the ‘concert flute’.

7

I’m just wondering about the narrative that says “the aristocracy discarded simple system flutes for Boehm, and the peasants picked them up.” O’Neill describes flute playing as being popular and common in a way that suggests they were common before Boehm. As far as I can tell the tin whistle is mass produced starting at almost exactly the same time as Boehm introduces his cylindrical flute, which is within a couple years of O’Neill’s birth.

So it’s certainly possible that flute playing went from rare to extremely common in less than a decade, and O’Neill mistook this sudden rise to popularity as a longer tradition than it was. Or it’s possible as Mr. Gumby suggests that he was conflating flutes and fifes. That is, growing up in the 1850s he saw flutes everywhere, and assumed it had been that way for a long time.

I’m doing research on Ireland in exactly this period right now, mostly looking at Donegal, but and as is well known the accounts of poverty in Ireland are astonishing. De Toqueville, De Beaumont, Frederick Douglass, various British administrators: they are all flabbergasted and gobsmacked by the poverty of Ireland before the Famine. They all had ulterior motives, none should be read uncritically, but mass poverty was clearly a fact, so who were the people O’Neill describes playing “the flute” and where did they get them?

O’Neill, born in 1848, remembers the years after the famine, and by the time he was 3-4 years old roughly half the population present in 1848 was gone to death or emigration. So any description of “tradition,” from him, has to be taken with a grain of salt: he grew up in a radically transformed land. He wrote “In our own case we had the good fortune to be taught the flute by Mr. Timothy Downing, a gentleman farmer of illustrious ancestry living in Tralibane, our townland in West Cork.” But he never says how he came to have a flute.

8

The discarding of wooden flutes that were in turn picked up by traditional players is well documented, by the first part of the 20th century emigrants to the US and England sent back flutes (and good quality concertinas, for that matter) they picked up in junk and antique shops there. I have seen flutes locally that were brought back or sent over by Paddy Killoran from the US, for example.

But it is not the whole story. The flutebands are esponged from history a bit, their repertoire and inspiration (and later association with the Orange order in the North) sat, perhaps, a bit uneasy with some defenders of the native tradition.

This is the Kilfenora fluteband. They went with the fashion of the day, transformed into a brass band and later became the famous Ceili band that is still going. The North Clare repertoire still has traces of the tunes they played, which are said to have been learned from a regimental band stationed in Ennistimon. The Killourhies and Russells had a lot of those.

That sort of bands existed around the country. Denis Murphy’s father was in one of them, for example.

9

Good stuff, PB&J and Mr Gumby. What’s clear here is that we don’t have the full story, and that we should have. This is our history!

The Kilfenora fluteband image is fascinating. But given the poverty, you wonder how it would have been equipped. Sponsorship from the local aristocratic landowners perhaps, or what?

And when and how did they evolve from the flute band to the ceili band? How did they fund new instruments? How did their style develop? We should know all this stuff.

10

The history and evolution of the Kilfenora are well documented. They went from flute band to brass band and as musical tastes changed, became a ceili band. I scanned photos from the same family collection of all these phases and some other local bands family members were involved in.

I believe the local church/priest sponsored the purchase of instruments. There, are again, plenty of examples of that. Paddy Murphy got his first 26 button Wheatstone concertina when his local priest kitted out the Fiach Roe band.

Corofin fluteplayer Brian O’Loughlin has one of the instruments from the old flute band, which belonged to a neighbour. I have seen him play it and have pic of him playing it (Eamonn Cotter gave it an overhaul).

11

There are very early references to feadan without it being clear whether flute or whistle, the vikings had flutes, the rennaisance flute is “Bohemian” (?) in the following :

"Moreover, we read that the Irish were wont to sing to the accompaniment of the cruit or the buinne, which renders it most probable that this latter was a delicate instrument of the flute genus. In a poem by William de Machault, a writer of the fourteenth century, there is a reference to our Irish buinne as “La flaute bretaigne,” which, in English, was given the name of “Recorder,” or “Flute a Bec.”

On closer inspection, Flood’s flaute bretaigne is a misquote or misunderstanding, for Machaut’s original phrase was la flahute brehaigne (Bohemian flute) which probably represents a transverse flute rather than an internal duct flute such as a recorder (Powell, 2002: 23)."

https://www.recorderhomepage.net/instruments/a-memento-the-medieval-recorder/etymology-literary-references/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_de_Machaut

"The history of the Renaissance flute begins in Germany. By the 12th- century the flute had become a popular German aristocratic instrument used to perform with the minnesinger fiddle. In the 14th century its popularity expanded west of the Rhine river into France. "

https://www.uh.edu/~tkoozin/projects/gamez/program.html

So Machaut knew of it from that possibly, which is to say that if Ireland was not brimming with rennaisance flutes at one point (or similar earlier autoctonous flutes) , at least its design is likely to have been known from early on in the country.



Given that there are under a hundred (thirty or so?) original rennaisance flutes in existance worldwide, mostly of later dates and fortunate to be preserved by collection or similar, it is little wonder there are no existing wooden “peasant” Irish flutes to be found. There is hardly anything of wood left from before 18th century that isn’t structural (furniture, picture frames, beams etc.) that I can think of… an old tatty simple system flute just won’t be kept unless part of an orchestra or similar. Even whole boats, Peggy of Castletown is about the oldest that wasn’t recovered from the seafloor and she is from @ 1800.


I don’t know though, maybe after a session, when they get home players take out their antique rennaisance flutes and play a few quiet tunes before bedtime.

Anyway, the above is slightly earlier to the period being discussed, but if there was an early tradition of flute and whistle playing (I think there obviously was), it would explain O’Neill’s comments that the instruments were common more as a continuation than that of “whistle supply”.

12

[quote=PB+J post_id=1256142 time=1665308382 user_id=25337]
O’Neill, born in 1848, remembers the years after the famine, and by the time he was 3-4 years old roughly half the population present in 1848 was gone to death or emigration. [/quote] Did that half have flutes (fifes, fiddles etc) and what happened to them? How many emigrated with them and how many had to sell them (into the other half) with their tools to fund a passage?



Selling “essential livelihood assets” is what happens on the road to starvation (e.g. see https://fews.net/IPC) so for most the instruments would go before that. Or maybe the other half could spare a little for a busker.

13

Whistles…

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/t/Tin_whistle.htm

Says this tin whistle appears 14th or 15th century

https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/collection-search-results/whistle/27015


Words Penny whistle used from 1500, tin whistle 1825

https://www.yourirish.com/culture/music/tin-whistle?amp

But wider sales (Clarke and similar) were not catered for in advertising till 1870, according to

http://www.whistlemuseum.com/2017/12/30/professional-whistle-manufacturers-in-england-during-the-19th-century-timeline-a-strauss/

which suggests sales were limited until then. Clarke initially travelled to markets to sell his whistles, for example, in the 1840s.

I think local craftsmen in Ireland were probably making early tin whistles, i.e. that they were not nescessarily manufactured in England.

Just to put a different light on it, as I don’t really know how that all went.

14

[quote=david_h post_id=1256149 time=1665330735 user_id=8456]
[quote=PB+J post_id=1256142 time=1665308382 user_id=25337]
O’Neill, born in 1848, remembers the years after the famine, and by the time he was 3-4 years old roughly half the population present in 1848 was gone to death or emigration. [/quote] Did that half have flutes (fifes, fiddles etc) and what happened to them? How many emigrated with them and how many had to sell them (into the other half) with their tools to fund a passage?



Selling “essential livelihood assets” is what happens on the road to starvation (e.g. see https://fews.net/IPC) so for most the instruments would go before that. Or maybe the other half could spare a little for a busker.
[/quote]

I wish I knew. One argument is that those who emigrated often had more means–it cost money to emigrate. Some were assisted by landlords seeking to clear out “redundant population.” I actually don’t have a solid sense of this. The accounts of poverty in Ireland before the famine are really astounding. But then there are lots of accounts of famine emigres arriving in the US with nothing, in rags. The O’Neill’s were relatively affluent and he had a flute with him when he left, although he had to sell it: he described it as “cherished.” But it’s clear that by the time he got to Hawaii in 1867, simple system flutes were common there. I don’t have an evidence for it but I wonder if sailors were a source of flutes? O’Neill runs into a Hawaiian sailor who owned "a fine flute: O’Neill was able to sell his flute in Sunderland, while living in a sailor’s boardinghouse, suggesting there was demand in that world



O’Neill’s memories of Ireland were I think rendered rose-colored by nostalgia. He’s remarkable silent about the famine and depopulation, for example

15

O’Neill’s memories of Ireland were I think rendered rose-colored by nostalgia. He’s remarkable silent about the famine and depopulation, for example

Breathnach described O’Neill’s work as a bit ‘syrupy for home consumption’ for that reason, if I recall correctly.

16

[quote=PB+J post_id=1256142 time=1665308382 user_id=25337]




O’Neill, born in 1848, remembers the years after the famine, and by the time he was 3-4 years old roughly half the population present in 1848 was gone to death or emigration. So any description of “tradition,” from him, has to be taken with a grain of salt: he grew up in a radically transformed land.
[/quote]

At the deep end, with all respect and not to downplay.



<LINK_TEXT text=“https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062 … 979_1_1425”>https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1979_num_1979_1_1425</LINK_TEXT>



Has a detailed look at demographic change in Ireland and its possible reasons, concentrating mainly on 19th century. It is worth reading for various details it offers.



The population graph looks like this



<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.grantonline.com/grant-family … 00-200.jpg”>http://www.grantonline.com/grant-family-genealogy/Records/population/population-ireland-1100-200.jpg</LINK_TEXT>





So population in 1865 was similar to around 1820, which itself was also higher than any time previously. So where exactly tradition was interrupted or transformed, if it was, is hard to say, probably in various ways at various times, but tradition is just that maybe - that which survives through it all ?

17

No offense taken and thank you. I’ve read O Grada’s work in depth–it’s cited a lot in my book on O’Neill. There’s a great deal of uncertainty in death figures regarding the famine. It’s very very bad, but it’s also hard to sort out famine deaths from deaths due to disease and absence due to emigration, especially since records–census, birth and marriage an baptism deaths, are quite poor in many counties

18

[quote=Mr.Gumby post_id=1256145 time=1665317115 user_id=14893]
The history and evolution of the Kilfenora are well documented. They went from flute band to brass band and as musical tastes changed, became a ceili band. I scanned photos from the same family collection of all these phases and some other local bands family members were involved in.



I believe the local church/priest sponsored the purchase of instruments. There, are again, plenty of examples of that. Paddy Murphy got his first 26 button Wheatstone concertina when his local priest kitted out the Fiach Roe band.



Corofin fluteplayer Brian O’Loughlin has one of the instruments from the old flute band, which belonged to a neighbour. I have seen him play it and have pic of him playing it (Eamonn Cotter gave it an overhaul).
[/quote]
Now one imagines that the local Catholic priest would not have been keen to sponsor instruments for the earlier marching band form, or even the brass band form, but might have had a lively interest in sponsoring the emerging ceili-band. So do we imagine that the earlier forms might have been sponsored by local English landowners? If each property funded instruments (and sashes?) for their peasants, a lively degree of competition between landholders might have been leveraged to come up with the goods?

19

While there will be people who know who bought the instruments, I am not going to speculate any further.

Here’s the next phase of the Kilfenora band:




Here’s a zoomed in portion of the image I posted earlier, to get a better view of the type of flutes the band played (run of the mill band flutes):

I imagine some of these would have been played outside the band, for dances etc.

And here is one of those flutes, all done up and still playing well, just before covid landed:

I’ll leave it at that and let the thread meander on.

20

[quote=PB+J post_id=1256156 time=1665352983 user_id=25337]
No offense taken and thank you. I’ve read O Grada’s work in depth–it’s cited a lot in my book on O’Neill. There’s a great deal of uncertainty in death figures regarding the famine. It’s very very bad, but it’s also hard to sort out famine deaths from deaths due to disease and absence due to emigration, especially since records–census, birth and marriage an baptism deaths, are quite poor in many counties
[/quote]

My only real experiences on mood changes in society aren’t very conclusive, but they are also surprising. So for example in Spain in the late 80’s was buoyant and natural, real and spontaneous. Then the 90’s was tenser and faster moving. Then 2000 and Euro was almost a clash, a different gear and smoothed confused. Then GFC and it was sort of rarified, a bit manic and tense, then a slow empty depressed . That then went on to more organised, presentation, official.



These are minor changes compared to a famine, or to colonisation, or to industrial revolution though, and yet the cultural reality shifted drastically at each, including performing arts. Ironically, the liveliest authentic was when relatively poor out of those, when everything was much simpler also.



Historically, there are long events like dancing mania, which are unexplained but thought brought on by social stress, possibly the plague.



O’Neill’s nostalgia, would that be from changes during the famine, or from leaving Ireland, or even simply a product of his enthusiasm for traditional music and of wanting to transmit the best of his experience ? For example, I remember flamenco in Seville in the early 90’s and that street scene much dissappeared, and I feel a nostalgia for that. However when I visit the same neighbourhood now, I don’t feel nostalgia, I feel reassured but also dissapointed…maybe it will all be back sometime ? Nostalgia can also be considered part of traditional music, as far as I know has always been a theme.



The following doesn’t need any introduction

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3JrG95HhL2k

and here it is progress/“progress” that is displacing the older, more difficult but fuller life. However it is nostalgia that also carries the music and tradition through that.



I suppose we should not confuse nostalgic commentary from historic fact, but at the same time it would not be fair to deny what was meant, because surely O’Neill knew what he was trying to share with his portrayal and I don’t think it was invention (and not saying you do either)



That the flute was most popular of instruments, seems likely (apart from whistle maybe, and I count fifes as flutes also).



That discarded conical flutes were picked up by locals. Though there is a fair amount of commentary (and proof) to this effect later, I don’t see it as locals just being handed aristocratic flutes, say in the 1850’s, and all deciding to learn how to play from that. I think they would have been taken up by existing players of flutes (and maybe whistles). A simple example of why I think that, is that now where there is no flute tradition in a local society, people just don’t buy flutes even though they are readily available.



For sure new instruments would have brought a new life or different presentation to the music, but that would not have been out of nowhere, more likely a direction that also added to popularity of flute. People living in Ireland would have much more of a feel for how things were than myself, but outside perspectives are good for certain details as well.



For the famine, they are important but at the same time I think you just get to a point where to use numbers ends up being something of an injustice. I have read accounts of other famines, it isn’t bedside reading. I always get the impression of there being a kind of “learned helplessness” at play, things don’t work as they are supposed to (or have been adjusted/disrupted too much) and no-one knows what to do, even though from outside or in hindsight answers seem obvious. We forget how people react to that kind of circumstance, how reason and thinking decline rapidly with lack of orientation, with lack of energy. Most of us don’t know, wouldn’t know how to handle that, have no experience of that. I was previously going to link a first hand account essay by a violinist who was amongst first drafted in WW1, before being wounded and moving to America, he explained how his character and mindset changes, and amongst his (well educated) companions also, under duress (including lack of supplies). There isn’t much I could say about it all, really.