Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive
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COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 74<br />
‘New Improved <strong>Irish</strong> <strong>Pipes</strong>’; 254 but by 1812 after he has moved to<br />
Dublin he is advertising ‘Grand <strong>Union</strong> <strong>Pipes</strong>’ for ‘the lovers of that<br />
ancient National Instrument’. 255 The professional Limerick piper<br />
Patrick O’Connor was advertised as playing these ‘Grand <strong>Union</strong><br />
pipes’ by 1816; 256 and the Wexford piper S.T. Colclough was calling<br />
himself ‘Professor of the Grand <strong>Union</strong> <strong>Pipes</strong>’ by about the same<br />
period. 257 Edward Plunket is playing in Dublin on the ‘National<br />
<strong>Union</strong> <strong>Pipes</strong>’ in 1814. 258 In 1823 the professional William Talbot is<br />
playing on the ‘improved <strong>Union</strong> Pipe’, 259 which is likely to be also<br />
Kenna’s instrument. 260 On the other hand Patrick O’Connor’s only<br />
pupil, Griffin of Limerick, describes his instrument in 1819 and<br />
again in 1841 as the ‘Chromatic Organ <strong>Pipes</strong>; being an improvement<br />
on the construction of the ancient <strong>Irish</strong> pipes’. 261 A Dublin <strong>Irish</strong>-<br />
English dictionary of 1817 262 refers to the ‘píobshionnaich, a pipe<br />
blown with bellows’ (which is further developed by a Scottish<br />
dictionary of 1911 as ‘pìob-shionnaich, <strong>Irish</strong> bagpipe’, deriving it<br />
254<br />
Dublin Evening Post, Dublin, 12 Aug. 1802.<br />
255<br />
Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 23 March 1812<br />
(reference courtesy Seán Donnelly). A Scottish piper Arbuckle (see Note 199<br />
above) was using the term earlier, but no connection with Kenna is apparent and<br />
the two may have coined the term independently.<br />
256<br />
Donnelly 1994b: 81.<br />
257<br />
Colclough c 1815: title page.<br />
258<br />
Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, 30 July 1814 (reference courtesy Seán Donnelly).<br />
259<br />
‘Pub. Augt. 1823, at the Artists Depository, 21 Charlotte St., Fitzroy Sq.’<br />
– print, reproduced in An Píobaire vol. 7, no 4 (Sept. 2011): 22.<br />
260<br />
‘There was some years ago, playing in the taverns of Dublin, a blind piper<br />
named Talbot... His own pipes, which he called the “grand pipes”...’ –<br />
William Carleton, Tales and Sketches, Illustrating the Character, Usages,<br />
Traditions, Sports and Pastimes of the <strong>Irish</strong> Peasant, James Duffy, Dublin,<br />
1845, quoted in An Píobaire vol. 7, no 4 (Sept. 2011): 23–4<br />
261<br />
Donnelly 1994b: 94; Manchester Guardian, Manchester, 10 Nov. 1841.<br />
262<br />
O’Reilly 1817: ‘píobshionnaich’ [no pagination]. The term is also found in<br />
O’Reilly’s ‘new edition’ of 1821, and in Armstrong 1825, a Scots Gaelic<br />
dictionary.