Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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47 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES at a disorderly annual outdoor festival at Greenwich Hill. The place abounded in ... Recruiting Parties... Of these the most conspicuous were Captain Leeson and his party, with Courtnay the Piper in a Highland dress, as drunk as any of his fraternity, and viewed with professional envy. They were attended by some gentlemen of the fist... Their efforts were so skilfully directed... that many a bold Pat—rician was induced to exchange his bludgeon for a bayonet; and decorate that shoulder with a musket, hitherto degraded by a hod. 142 The next notices of Courtney are of his death at the age of thirty-four on 2 September 1794 – ‘Lately, in the Middlesex hospital, Mr. Courtenay, the celebrated player on the bag-pipes’ 143 – and of his spectacular funeral three days later. The funeral was ‘in the true Irish style... preceded by two pipers’ according to one Scottish report. 144 The fullest account of it suggests that he was at least as well known in the Irish slum area of St Giles as in the fashionable West End and confirms that, while he was unique as a piper on the London stage in his time, he was only one of a fraternity of Irish bellows pipers in London: 142 The Oracle and Public Advertiser, London, 24 Apr. 1794. Leeson’s luck eventually deserted him. Turning to brandy, he shunned fashionable society and ‘sought the most obscure places in the purlieus of St. Giles’s, where he used pass whole nights in the company of his countrymen of the lowest, but industrious class, charmed with their songs and native humour... once the soul of whim and gaiety, [he] sunk into a state of stupor and insensibility... Having contracted a number of debts, he was constantly pursued by the terriers of the law...’ (Egan 1820: 143). Courtney’s end may not have been dissimilar. 143 St James’s Chronicle or The British Evening Post, London, 4–6 Sept. 1794. The date of his death and his age are recorded in the burial register of Old St Pancras Church, London, which is now in the London Metropolitan Archives. 144 Scots Magazine, Edinburgh, Sept. 1794: 588.
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 48 Courtenay’s Funeral. This celebrated performer died of a dropsy, which he was supposed to have contracted by hard drinking. The body was yesterday interred in the church-yard of St. Pancras. The procession that attended the body was exceedingly numerous, and extended from the Hampshire Hog, in Broad-street, St. Giles’s, a considerable way into Tottenham-court-road. The number of those in mourning could not be less than eighty or ninety couples, who were preceded by two Irish Pipers, one of whom played on the Union Pipes used formerly with such wonderful effect by the deceased. The body was waked at the Hampshire Hog, and all the expences of the funeral and it, were defrayed by Captain Leeson. The motive that induced Capt. Leeson to order the wake to be held there, was his great success in recruiting by means of the deceased, who had some time since enlisted in his corps, and had, by that Gentleman, been appointed a Serjeant. Courtenay was a wet soul, and every thing about the body, to its interment, was entirely correspondent. During the continuance of the wake, the greatest profusion of liquors was distributed. At the church-yard the same liberality in the distribution to every one who chose to drink, was observed; and the company happily parted without any fighting. 145 Through his musicianship and general celebrity therefore Denis Courtney had won over the public, from the lowest to the highest social levels, to his ‘union pipes’ – a term unique to him during his lifetime – and had firmly established their name in contemporary musical consciousness by the time of his early death. He was not immediately forgotten. In London in 1795 Oscar and Malvina renewed its attraction on Thursday evening... with encreased effect. A new Performer, much resembling poor Courtney, both in figure and execution, enlivened the opening of 145 The Sun, London, 6 Sept. 1794. This obituary notice is unusually long by contemporary standards; it was much copied by other publications.
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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