Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

17 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES
In 1766 a blind professional musician Mr James Mullin had come
from London to Derby to perform ‘Several Extraordinary Pieces of
Music on the Irish Bagpipes, German flute and Violin’. 37 The Scot
James Tytler, editor in Edinburgh of the second edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, played on the ‘Irish pipes’ according to
his friend the poet Robert Burns, 38 and Tytler would have been
speaking from personal experience when he also applies this term to
the instrument in 1778, and describes it in the Encyclopaedia as the
‘softest, and in some respects the most melodious of any’ bagpipes. 39
From about 1765 to the end of the century London and other musical
instrument sellers are regularly advertising two kinds of bagpipes –
‘Bagpipes, Scotch or Irish’ – for sale, 40 and some claim to be making
them. 41 By 1779, less than a decade before Courtney appears in
the contemporary Irish pipes he refers to were more ‘variegated’ or varied than
these, they would have had a range comparable to that of Geoghegan’s ‘new or
pastoral’ instrument, and probably, like it, have had a capability for producing
various semitones by crossfingering. They may even have been Geoghegan’s
instrument; he was Irish, and it is an open question whether his pipes were seen
as Irish in Scotland in 1760. By ‘other Musick’ MacDonald doubtless meant the
kind of popular classical music he had just been writing about, by such
composers as Corelli, Festing and Handel.
37
Derby Mercury, Derby, 19 Sept. 1766.
38
R.H. Cromeck, Reliques of Robert Burns, quoted in Stewart 2009: 79.
39
[Tytler] 1778: 954.
40
See Halfpenny 1964: 100–101 for a 1765 Robert Bremner advertisement;
Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Bath, 17 Aug. 1769, for a Thomas
Underwood advertisement; Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, London, 13
June 1770, for a Henry Thorowgood advertisement; and A Catalogue of Vocal
and Instrumental Music... John Welcker [c. 1775]; etc.
41
John Welcker [c. 1775] for example: ‘John Welcker... Manufactures and Sells
the following Instruments... Bagpipes Scotch or Irish... Bagpipe [reeds]...’ (in
catalogue of Note 40). Welcker lists so many instruments of his manufacture
that it might be suspected that he is factoring them for other manufacturers, but
he also gives a separate list of instruments that he only imports (including
‘Welch Harps’ and ‘Irish Harps’).