Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
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53 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES<br />
of development prior to 1788, and no element of either was adopted<br />
from the other, then or subsequently.<br />
But this meaning of 1788 is nevertheless a correct one, correct not in<br />
organological but in socio-political cultural terms. The union in<br />
question is the notional union of an <strong>Irish</strong> form of bellows pipe,<br />
played by an <strong>Irish</strong> performer, with the Scottish musical ethos<br />
prevailing in contemporary London, the English capital. An<br />
instrument associated with rebellion and war in Scotland and Ireland<br />
is now being used on stage in the capital to perform ethnically tinged<br />
but politically neutral and unthreatening music which is acceptable<br />
to the three kingdoms. It unites the kingdoms in musical taste; it is a<br />
new instrument for a new era of peaceful coexistence, one desired by<br />
Courtney’s patrons. This common show-business tactic of<br />
accommodation to a local audience provides one convincing<br />
explanation for Courtney’s introduction there of a new quasipolitical<br />
term for his musical instrument.<br />
There is support for this view in the little that we know of<br />
Courtney’s repertory as performed publicly in London: it is not at<br />
first <strong>Irish</strong> but largely Scottish (‘Maggie Lawther with variations’ was<br />
his show-stopper throughout his career) 156 or newly composed in a<br />
156<br />
‘Maggae Lawther’, Courtney’s main cited musical piece, had however long<br />
been associated with both Scotland and Ireland, and the idea of ‘union’ may also<br />
be in play here. The song ‘Maggie/Maggy/Magie Lauder/Lawder/Lawther’<br />
(‘Wha wadna be in love wi’ bonnie Maggie Lauder’) is of course Scottish, but<br />
the origins of its melody have been disputed between the two countries (for an<br />
early discussion see O’Neill 1910: 168–71). Its tune was printed many times in<br />
the eighteenth century, and sometimes with variations, but Courtney’s set is not<br />
identified as such in any source. Since John Lee published music from Oscar<br />
and Malvina about the time Courtney was in Dublin, Lee’s publication of<br />
‘Maggie Lawder with Variations’ is reproduced above. It is undated but<br />
published from 70 Dame St, Dublin, where Lee was from c. 1778–1803 (Hogan<br />
1966: 102). Among others, Courtney’s successor O’Farrell published a set with<br />
variations (O Farrell’s National Collection 1804: 42–3).