Here’s a research project for Boston area pipers and / or historians. The American Antiquarian Society has a database of early American newspapers, which includes the following item:
“New Music on the Irish Union Pipes
The celebrated REYNOLDS will perform this evening, March 5, at the Columbian Museum, Tremont-street, upon the Union Pipes, which are said to be superior to any other Instrumental Music whatever.”
Boston Gazette, March 5, 1812.
Anyone aware of an earlier reference to the pipes being played in America? Any history of pipers mention the celebrated Reynolds?
By Union do they mean half set or 3/4 set? From what I understand the Uilleann Pipes that we no today. Didn’t become recognisably obviouse until about 1850’s (give our take a decade). I read that infomration in a book somewhere in Ireland. Can’t remember the title though.
Did the article supply a photo of what the pipes looked like. If it did please do. Some of the pipers that have been playing the instrument for a long time might know who made it.
These are digitally archived text from the newspaper, looks like the classified ads section, so no illustration, unfortunately.
The NewsBank database includes some Philadelphia area papers from the same era, but no mention of Irish pipes there. Found another reference from the Boston Gazette, March 19, 1812:
“Irish Union Pipes.
The Celebrated Reynolds, will perform This Evening, at the Columbian Museum, Tremont-street, when he will exert his best abilities on the Irish Union Pipes.
Admittance 25 Cents.”
This was a hefty sum at the time, certainly not a performance aimed at the average citizen!
The term “Uilleann Pipes” was more or less invented around 1890ish and first printed by Grattan Flood. He insisted that Uilleann was the proper name for the instrument even though EVERYONE called it Union pipes up until then. A whack job. The Gaelic League at the time thought “Union” pipes didn’t sound Irish enough. Grattan Flood wrote a few books on the history and development of Irish music and the instruments involved but he more or less made it all up and almost none of what he wrote is accurate.
late victorian spin doctoring.
Tommy
I’d never thought of that. Everything I’ve ever seen from the late 18th and early to mid 19th. Always used the term “Union” Everything from written material to illustration and photo captions.
The term union was applied to Irish Pipes when they had a regulator.the term 1/2 set 3/4 set etc is a patent nonsense.The early sets had one regulator (which is all ye need anyway)If ye said to the maker at the time “oi wots all this ,only a 1/2 set or is it a 3/4 set??gor blimey mate!!I ain’t avin that…where’s me full set” he would think ye mad or English
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
How long you been in the States, Tommy? You startin’ to talk like one of us. I get the picture: Say what? My bad.
A writer at one of the first Feis Ceoils described one of the pipers as having a “single set” of pipes (bag, bellows, and chanter, the “practice set”), while the rest had “double sets” - the usual three regulator full set. These are terms from pipe organ building - “regulating” is also an organ maker’s term, meaning to even out the volume and tone over a rank of pipes, so that notes throughout its compass aren’t abnormally loud. Whether this inspired whoever termed them regulators is still unknown, though, even with researchers like Denis Brooks and Sean Donnelly looking into it. Kenna the elder was said to have built a pipe organ in Mullingar, among his other accomplishments.
Barry O’Neill posted on the uilleann pipes mailing list a couple of references to pipers in America dating from the late 18th century, I think. Another theory about “Union” pipes is that they were so termed because they were played throughout the Union - even before the Act, people spoke of a Union before making it official - which would put paid to any notions of their orgins in a specific nation. The pastoral pipes were played all through the Isles.
All this “D,” “C,” “B,” talk is a product of the 1970’s, too. Before then no one spoke of C pipes, they said a tone below concert pitch, or 16 1/2" chanter etc.
How long you been in the States, Tommy? You startin’ to talk like one of us.
A year and a half now and theres one thing I haven’t figured out yet.
If something is awe-some, does that mean its full of awe? But does that make it awe-full??
Anyway, pipes.
Barry O’Neill posted on the uilleann pipes mailing list a couple of references to pipers in America dating from the late 18th century
,
There was a performance of “Oscar and Malvina” on the 14 December 1795 in Richmond, Virginia. This show always had a piper in the cast so that would be an early performance with Union pipes in the Colonies.
But Oscar and Malvina was performed in Boston in 1792 and presuming there was a piper with them it would be the earliest mention of a piper in An tOileain Ur.
Tommy
Brian McCandless notes Joseph Cooper Walker, author of Musical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786) as the first to introduce the term “uilleann” instead of “union” for these pipes.
I can’t find the reference at the moment, but I read somewhere that the term “union” was explained by a 19th century piper as referring to playing the reg “in union” with the chanter. Probably in one of those Séan Reid CDs somewhere.
Okay, I know this has most likely been done ad nauseum but, what’s the earliest know example of a bagpipe chanter that could actually be refered to as a union/uilleann pipe chanter? Secondly; what pipes were being played in Ireland prior to uilleann pipes? Did they [union pipes] develope from Scottish highland pipes or French pipes? Perhaps renaissance oboes? It’s very confusing to the newbies among us and there are way too many “definitve sources” that differ wildly in opinion. Please help.
Marc
Breathnach says that in the first couple decades of the 18th century is when the first emergence of an Uilleann type pipe is distinguished. He doesn’t really go into detail unfortunately, but If I’m interpreting his writing correctly, he says it was an outgrowth of mounthblown pipes. He also refers to a piper named O’Farrell who wrote the first known tutor for the pipes ca 1800. This same piper is depicted in performing in Oscar and Malvena. Breathnach also quotes a poem from 1796 where “Union Pipes” is used.
Marc, there’s a little booklet by Seán Donnelly available from NPU called The Early History of Piping in Ireland. Its mostly conjecture and bits and scraps of information gleaned from pictures, carvings and tapestries. There’s more current articles in the Seán Reid Society Journals (available on CD from NPU), but even these are largely conjecture and extrapolation.
There are many past threads on various aspects and obscure quotes and fragments on this forum. Do a search on pastoral pipes, as many believe these were the precursor to the UPs.
The articles on the Seán Reid Society CDs will show you that much “history” on UPs is being extrapolated on things as small as the show announcement that VanFleet started this thread with. No-one at the time UPs were being developed in the 18th and 19th centuries documented anything about the UPs, they just suddenly “appeared” in newspaper adverts for shows or for their manufacture and sale. There’s too many fragments to quote here on this thread. Best to get some of the above documentation and see what people are quoting, then make your own mind up.
I don’t think you could ask for a more assidious conjecturer or extrapolator than Sean. The guy’s a great researcher, and I’d trust his say on these matters above anyone else.
No one ever doubted the Union pipes evolved from the Pastoral pipes, that’s pretty obvious. The Pastoral pipes have the lowered leading tone of the piob mhor, which I believe isin’t found on other European pipes; so was it initially an attempt to have a quieter, domestic version of the big pipes? Or did someone start with something like the reel pipes, or the small pipes; or did they borrow technology from French pipes, which is one of Brooks’s theories? Very hard to tell at this late date!
Walker was the man who referred in correspondence to Shakespeare’s line in the Merchant of Venice about “woolen pipes,” and wondering “quare if this not be the uilleann pipes,” or the like, thus starting the now discredited theory that they were around in the 16th century. Breathnach, Donnelly, and Brooks all discredit him more severely than they do Flood, even.
Agreed. My point simply is that the people who actually developed UPs did not document the work, so that there is no point of reference current to that time. All researchers today can do is pick up tidbits like show announcements in the newspapers of the day and try to put the fragments together to form some sort of picture of what “may” have happened.
Like all academic arguments of this type, it gets down to who can outshout the others, since there are so few real facts. I take this as license to believe what makes most sense to me as the audience.
just bumping this topic, in response to Pat Sky’s post asking for some fresh research.
The Internet and more recently the trend to digitize and archive library special collections will make some of this work easier. I now have access to all sorts of 18th century publications from my desk!
I don’t have an earlier reference for Union Pipes, but I do have an early Canadian reference to union pipes.
In 1835, Irish residents celebrated their St. Patrick’s day dinner. This was an all-male event, and was reputed to be quite the drink fest. The records show that there were 21 toasts, and that between each toast, the participants were treated to music by the local Highland Pipe band and by “Mr. MacNally on his Irish Union Pipes”.
I’d be interested in hearing anything about a piper called MacNally who lived and/or piped in North America in the mid-1830s.
I got this from the book Irish for a Day, Schmit, 1991, Carraig Press.
