Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
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COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 12<br />
the mouths of <strong>Irish</strong> servants; few of the many <strong>Irish</strong> actors in London<br />
specialised in <strong>Irish</strong> song. As the British music historian Sir John<br />
Hawkins said in about 1785: ‘I know of no <strong>Irish</strong> airs so much<br />
celebrated in England as the Scotch have been’. 24 This situation<br />
began to change in London in the 1780s: the Dublin dramatist John<br />
O’Keefe introduced harp tunes by the famous <strong>Irish</strong> harper-composer<br />
Turlough Carolan (1670–1738) and other <strong>Irish</strong> melodies in his<br />
musical plays there from 1783; 25 Dubliner Joseph Cooper Walker’s<br />
Historical Memoirs of the <strong>Irish</strong> Bards, the first book on <strong>Irish</strong> music,<br />
was published and seriously reviewed in London in 1786, 26 and The<br />
Hibernian Muse, the first British-published collection of <strong>Irish</strong> music,<br />
appeared there in 1790. 27 The performances of Courtney, who was<br />
widely recognised as an <strong>Irish</strong> piper, doubtless helped contribute to<br />
this change of climate. But in reference to the <strong>Irish</strong> bagpipe<br />
specifically, James Dungan, an <strong>Irish</strong> patron of traditional music, said<br />
in the 1780s: ‘I consider my native country half a century behind<br />
Scotland in encouraging and rewarding their best performers on the<br />
bagpipe’. 28 Although Denis Courtney was part of a modernising<br />
trend in contemporary <strong>Irish</strong> life – entrepreneurial, outward-looking,<br />
24<br />
Letter to Joseph Cooper Walker quoted in Walker 1786: 66. Hawkins<br />
excepted only ‘The Black Joke’, correctly regarding this as being an <strong>Irish</strong> tune<br />
of modern composition.<br />
25<br />
Fiske 1986: 459–61.<br />
26<br />
In European Magazine and London Review vol. 19 (1786): 369–72 and<br />
Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal vol. LXXVII (July–Dec. 1787): 425–39,<br />
for instance.<br />
27<br />
‘<strong>Music</strong> lately published, and sold by Messrs. Thompson... The Caledonian<br />
Muse; a Collection of scarce and favourite Scots Tunes... The Hibernian Muse; a<br />
Collection of <strong>Irish</strong> Airs...’, The World, London, 23 Oct. 1790. The volume<br />
carries no publication date and has been assigned to c. 1786 in some library<br />
catalogues.<br />
28<br />
Quoted by Arthur O’Neill in O’Sullivan 1958: II, 163. James Dungan, an <strong>Irish</strong><br />
merchant in Denmark inspired by the Highland Society of London, funded three<br />
competitive harp festivals in Granard, Co Longford, in the 1780s (see Donnelly<br />
1993: 27–9).