Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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69 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES the Northumbrian pipes. 215 A Mr Walker of Newcastle was reported in 1866 as having played there at a function of the Newcastle and Northumberland Yeomanry Cavalry ‘a variety of selections on the Northumberland union pipes’. 216 At least some Scottish and English makers of the Highland pipes and Northumbrian pipes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century also turned to making what secondary sources call ‘union pipes’. Although it is usually known when these pipe-makers flourished, it does not seem possible to be certain when they individually added these bellows pipes to their manufacturing repertory, or indeed whether they themselves (as distinct from bagpipe studies and museum catalogues of a later date) called their instruments ‘union pipes’. At least some of their instruments so labelled are of the Geoghegan ‘pastoral pipes’ type of 1743. 217 Hugh Robertson of Edinburgh (c. 1733–1822) seems to be the earliest of these pipemakers, possibly producing bellows pipes in the 1780s. 218 There is also James Sharp of Aberdeen (fl. 1828–63), 219 John Dunn (1764–1820) of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 220 Robert Reid (1784–1837) and James Reid (1813–74) of North Shields, 221 and a miscellany of others. 222 A J. Scorgie from Scotland was making ‘Scotch military, 215 William Scott Bell, Autobiography (1860), quoted by Bain 1982: 17 and Uglow 2006: 398–9 (reference courtesy Seán Donnelly). 216 Newcastle Courant, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 26 Oct. 1866. 217 Cheape 2008: 96–100; McLeod 2002: 2.05/ 1–2; McCandless 1998: 19. 218 Cheape 2008: 17, 111, 118 refers to a ‘Union Pipe by Hugh Robertson of Edinburgh of the 1780s’, and to hallmarked bellows-blown bagpipes by Robertson from 1793–4 and 1808–9. For further information on Robertson see Sanger 2010: 44–6, who thinks that Robertson was making ‘Irish pipes’ about 1793. Proud & Butler 1983: 16 refer to a John Gibson of Jedburgh, died Sept. 1795, who ‘made and played Irish pipes’. 219 Campbell 2011: 29–30. 220 Proud and Butler 1983: 14–5. 221 Proud and Butler 1983: 29–30.
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 70 flat and Irish union pipes’ in New York in 1817, 223 and Donald MacDonald, a ‘pipe maker’ and publisher of Highland pipe music, advertised in Edinburgh about 1822 that he was teaching ‘Highland, Northumberland & Irish bagpipes’; he may also have been manufacturing them. 224 Irish professional players of the ‘union pipes’ began appearing in some numbers in the United States in the early nineteenth century, long after performers on the ‘Irish pipes’ had been recorded as appearing there in the eighteenth century. The first known is a ‘Mr. Curran, a celebrated performer, lately from Ireland’, who was playing ‘national airs’ on ‘union pipes’ in New York in February 1808. 225 He was followed by, among others, a Mr Edward Reynolds, ‘late from Dublin’ who was performing on the ‘Irish union pipes’ in Boston in March 1812; 226 and a Charles P.F. O’Hara, a multiinstrumentalist who had ‘resided many years in the west of Ireland’, and who published The Gentleman’s Musical Repository; being a selection from the ancient and modern music of Erin, and several original pieces by the compiler; adapted to the violin, flute, flageolet, hautboy and union pipes in New York in January 1813. 227 Among these pipers, the instrument was most commonly called the ‘Irish union pipes’; 228 they were, seemingly, signalling an ethnic connection to their audiences in a way that had not often happened in 222 Cheape 2008: 118 refers to undated ‘part-sets and chanters for the Union Pipe’ by makers Nicholas Kerr of Edinburgh, and ‘Dunn, Bannon, Massie, Scott and Weldon’ which were acquired by the National Museum of Scotland from an Edinburgh source. For Kerr (d. 1773 – Sanger, research notes) of Edinburgh & Massie of Aberdeen see Campbell 2011: 4 & 30. For other possible makers, see Walstrom 2002: 2.15/ 1–4. 223 Carolan 2011: 2, 22–5. 224 Cannon 1980: 12, 118–20. 225 Evening Post, New York, 11 Feb. 1808. 226 Columbian Centinel, Boston, 22 Feb. 1812. 227 Columbian, New York, 2 Jan. 1813. 228 See Carolan 2011: 22–5.
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