Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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53 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES of development prior to 1788, and no element of either was adopted from the other, then or subsequently. But this meaning of 1788 is nevertheless a correct one, correct not in organological but in socio-political cultural terms. The union in question is the notional union of an Irish form of bellows pipe, played by an Irish performer, with the Scottish musical ethos prevailing in contemporary London, the English capital. An instrument associated with rebellion and war in Scotland and Ireland is now being used on stage in the capital to perform ethnically tinged but politically neutral and unthreatening music which is acceptable to the three kingdoms. It unites the kingdoms in musical taste; it is a new instrument for a new era of peaceful coexistence, one desired by Courtney’s patrons. This common show-business tactic of accommodation to a local audience provides one convincing explanation for Courtney’s introduction there of a new quasipolitical term for his musical instrument. There is support for this view in the little that we know of Courtney’s repertory as performed publicly in London: it is not at first Irish but largely Scottish (‘Maggie Lawther with variations’ was his show-stopper throughout his career) 156 or newly composed in a 156 ‘Maggae Lawther’, Courtney’s main cited musical piece, had however long been associated with both Scotland and Ireland, and the idea of ‘union’ may also be in play here. The song ‘Maggie/Maggy/Magie Lauder/Lawder/Lawther’ (‘Wha wadna be in love wi’ bonnie Maggie Lauder’) is of course Scottish, but the origins of its melody have been disputed between the two countries (for an early discussion see O’Neill 1910: 168–71). Its tune was printed many times in the eighteenth century, and sometimes with variations, but Courtney’s set is not identified as such in any source. Since John Lee published music from Oscar and Malvina about the time Courtney was in Dublin, Lee’s publication of ‘Maggie Lawder with Variations’ is reproduced above. It is undated but published from 70 Dame St, Dublin, where Lee was from c. 1778–1803 (Hogan 1966: 102). Among others, Courtney’s successor O’Farrell published a set with variations (O Farrell’s National Collection 1804: 42–3).
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 54 Scottish idiom for the Ossianic hit show Oscar and Malvina (for which he dresses in Scottish costume). On the other hand, when he goes to perform in Dublin in 1793 he certainly plays the expected music from his Covent Garden hit but (billed as ‘Mr. Courtney’ and often as playing ‘bagpipes’ rather than ‘union pipes’) he also for the first time, as has been seen, advertises specific Irish melodies. Only towards the end of his London career does he begin to call his instrument ‘Irish pipes’ and begin to introduce Irish melodies on stage there. The only known illustration of Courtney and his pipes (for which click here) gives little help in understanding the explanation of The Times for ‘union pipes’. Shown in an engraving of a 1790s sketch by Isaac Cruikshank, he is playing pipes on stage in Oscar and Malvina. Sitting, with one leg crossed over the other, he is certainly playing bellows pipes (an elbow-strap is visible and there is no blowpipe in evidence). But it seems an oddly undeveloped and toy-like form of the instrument when compared with, say, the surviving contemporary two-octave Irish instruments made by Egan of Dublin and Kenna of Westmeath. 157 These were instruments of a type which already existed in the second half of the 1770s when Courtney, born in 1760, must have been learning the pipes. But the central elements of the pipes shown in the Courtney illustration stand in contrast with them. The chanter is short, with a noticeably conical exterior, and ends in a bell rather than being externally cylindrical and ending in a stoppable end-tenon. It is being played off the knee and could only therefore have produced music legato; it could not have varied melodies with staccato passages or staccato effects as the contemporary Irish instruments already could. Only two drones are apparent, in about a 3:2 length ratio, whereas Irish instruments 157 Both are known to have been making Irish pipes in the 1760s, see Donnelly 1983: 7–11, Donnelly 2002: 2.14, 1–44.
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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