Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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67 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES year Bunyie was again appearing on the ‘union pipes’ in another production of the show in Baltimore. 201 He was the first of a number of Scottish players performing on the Highland pipes and the union pipes in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century; they too referred to the latter instrument both as ‘union pipes’ and as ‘Irish union pipes’. 202 In 1812 a Malcolm MacGregor of Glasgow (who had been a prizewinner at the Highland Society of London’s competitions for the Highland bagpipe from 1802) 203 was awarded a premium by the Society for ‘essential improvements made by him on the Great Highland Pipe, and the Union and Northumberland Pipes, on which last instruments he played several tunes in an excellent style’. 204 From 1818 MacGregor was appearing on the London stage playing airs from Oscar and Malvina on ‘union pipes’, as well as ‘Highland pipes’ and flute, in both Scottish and Irish contexts: in a Caledonian Melange in April 1818; 205 an Irish ‘aqua-drama’ O’Donoghue and his White Horse in June 1818; 206 and a Sons of Caledonia fundraising concert in November 1820. 207 In 1815 in Sydney, Australia, a James Stewart, again presumably a Scottish professional player, published a newspaper notice about the attempted theft of his ‘Set of Union Pipes’. 208 In 1820 an unnamed native of Edinburgh was playing ‘National Airs on the Union Pipes’ there in an entirely Scottish evening of entertainment, 209 and in 1821 John McGregor, piper to the Highland Society of London, was 201 Federal Republican, Baltimore, 1 June 1812. 202 See below, and Carolan 2011: 22–5. 203 Manson 1901: 389; Campbell 2011: 23–5. 204 Minutes of the Highland Society of London, quoted by Campbell 2011: 24. 205 The Times, London, 6 Apr. 1818. 206 The Times, London, 17 June 1818. M’Gregor was accompanied on the harp by O’Farrell’s former musical partner Nicholson. 207 The Times, London, 8 Nov. 1820. 208 Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Sydney, 20 May 1815. 209 Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh, 9 Mar. 1820.
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 68 playing Highland pipes and ‘Union pipe’ in Perth. 210 A dancing and music master Mr Mackenzie, again by his name Scottish, had died in Derby by 1835 and the auction of his varied musical instrument collection included his Highland pipes and ‘his celebrated Set of Union Pipes’. 211 Robert Millar (1789–1861), piper to the Aberdeen Highland Society, when referred to in 1836, was also in this multipipes playing tradition which included union pipes. Millar played a set made by Robert Reid of North Shields which was presented to him in 1830, and he compiled a manuscript of over 300 tunes begun by him in Montrose that year for the ‘Union Bag-pipe, &’. 212 As late as 1842, a ‘Mr. Donald, the celebrated player on the Union pipe’ was entertaining the Operative Conservative Society of Ripon with ‘many beautiful Scotch Airs’. 213 Even Scots in the New World, in Detroit, had a taste for the union pipes and are spoken of in the 1870s as having patronised there ‘Mike Gill, a Celebrated Player on the Union Pipes’, who may have been Irish. 214 There is some evidence too that Courtney’s term was occasionally applied to the very different Northumbrian bellows pipes. Robert Eliot Bewick (1788–1849), son of the famous Northumbrian engraver Thomas Bewick and a Northumbrian piper, a pupil of John Peacock’s, was described by an acquaintance as playing the ‘union pipes’ when it is clear from his description that Bewick was playing 210 Cannon 1980: 12; Campbell 2011: 22–3. On an undated item of sheet music ‘A Favorite Waltz and March Composed for the Piano Forte…’ by McGregor and published in London by J. Briggs, he describes himself as a ‘teacher of the union pipes’ (University of Cambridge online library catalogue, 1 May 2012, which dates it as [1815?]). 211 Derby Mercury, Derby, 22 Apr. 1835. 212 Edinburgh Evening Courant, Edinburgh, 4 Feb. 1836, quoted in MacInnes 1986: 21; Cannon 1993: 30–6; Keith Sanger research notes, kindly communicated by him, Apr. 2012. 213 Leeds Intelligencer, Leeds, 21 Mar. 1842. 214 Wanless 1872: 48–51: ‘When Mike play’d up an Irish reel,/ We neither minded maut or meal’.
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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