Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

More documents

Recommendations

Info

59 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES [Edinburgh]... Captain Skeene sung a song alluding to the union of the three kingdoms. Mr Fitzmaurice played several tunes on the Union pipes... 165 The term must certainly have been used in this way by Unionists and other interested parties at other times, giving support and circulation to the spurious explanation, and leading with the passage of time to a belief in its validity. ‘Union’ was a bad brand-name in Ireland, and this undoubtedly had an influence on the eventual demise of the term in the twentieth century, and the vehemence with which it was rejected by some. United Chanter, Drones, Regulators, or Concords of Sound A plausible and therefore very widely accepted explanation for ‘union pipes’ has been that these pipes – unlike medieval bagpipes and the contemporary Scottish Highland bagpipes – unite their drones in a single cylindrical unit or ‘common stock’ in which the heads of the drone-pipes lie side by side and are fed with air by the bag through the stock. An expansion of this idea is that the union in question may have been that of the existing chanter and drones with a new keyed closed chanter or ‘regulator’. 166 As said, a single regulator is first mentioned in the late 1780s, in Ireland; over the following decades more would be added. Related to this explanation of the physical union of hardware is the idea that the unusually many pipes of the instrument provide a close sonic union – a balanced chorus. Some support for this explanation is found in a 1772 Dublin verse translation from the Latin of Horace which says that ‘the Bagpipe’s Drone,/ May hum in drowsy Unison’, 167 and in a Scots Gaelic dictionary of 1825 which translates 165 Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh, 8 Dec. 1806. 166 This addition of the regulator is considered by Hall 1842: 412–3 to distinguish the Irish bagpipes in their ‘primitive form’ from the ‘improved or union pipes’. 167 Public Advertiser, London, 24 Apr. 1772.
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 60 ‘the union-pipes’ as píob na comh-sheinm (pipes sounding together). 168 When the Dublin Museum catalogued sets of Irish bellows pipes in the late nineteenth century, it called them ‘Irish Bagpipes’ but explained their other name ‘union pipes’ as being derived from the chanter playing in unison with the drones. 169 These related explanations, based on ideas of physical or sonic bagpipe union, fit in neatly with the date of the introduction of Courtney’s new term, when seen in retrospect. And they had a robustly rational basis to them, much more so than had Courtney’s long-forgotten original explanation. They are the explanations that have been most commonly accepted in recent times. The Workhouse One further meaning for the term has been proffered, but only with tongue in cheek. A bitter joke circulated among the members of the Dublin Pipers’ Club, founded in 1900 when uilleann piping seemed in great danger of disappearing with the few last elderly and povertystricken professional pipers who had survived the post-Famine years: that they were called union pipers because most of them were reduced to the ‘Union’ workhouse or poorhouse. 170 168 Armstrong 1825: 443. 169 NLI Séamus Ó Casaide MS 5452. 170 Plain Piper 1912. From 1838 in Ireland parishes were amalgamated into Poor Law Unions, each of which had to have a workhouse.
Page 1 and 2:
Denis Courtney on stage in Oscar an
Page 3 and 4:
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND
Page 5 and 6:
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10: COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND
Page 59: COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
show all

Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?