Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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85 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES ... let us hear no more of the detestable name “Union” pipes; the proper designation, which has been rightly adopted by the Tailteann Games Committee, is “Uilleann” pipes, i.e. played by the elbow’. 312 The newspapers duly reported on the ‘Uileann Pipes competition’ and the seven ‘Uileann Pipes’ entrants. 313 More neutrally, the long-running Father Matthew Feis in Dublin, also a competitive cultural festival, referred to the instrument in its competitions of the following year as the ‘Irish pipes’. 314 It hardly mattered. In the aftermath of the Civil War of 1922–23 all nationally minded cultural activities had suffered a drastic loss of support and in 1925 the Irish bellows pipes were again in danger of disappearing: Pipes and Harp Dying?... for two or three years back there has been a distinct falling off in enthusiasm for things Gaelic... A sadly noticeable feature of the Feis in recent years is the absence of the Uillean pipes’. 315 But of course the pipes didn’t die out, although it was a near-run thing for a time, and the terminological contest continued. An influential player was Radio Éireann or 2RN, the new national public-service radio station. Two Dublin bellows pipers, James Ennis (Séamus Mac Aonghusa) and William N. ‘Billy’ Andrews, played on its first night of broadcasting on 1 January 1926, and were listed as playing the ‘Irish pipes’. 316 But thereafter, through the 1920s 312 Letter from W.H. Grattan Flood in The Irish Independent, Dublin, 23 May 1924. 313 Irish Independent, Dublin, 5 Aug. 1924. 314 Irish Times, Dublin, 22 Apr. 1925. 315 Irish Independent, Dublin, 7 Sept. 1925. 316 Irish Independent, Dublin, 1 Jan. 1926.
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 86 and the early 1930s, the term almost invariably employed in newspaper programme listings was ‘uilleann pipes’ and not ‘union pipes’. The more recent term was used during those years of Máire McCarthy, Leo Rowsome, Risteárd Ó Briain, Séamus Mac Aonghusa (James Ennis), Liam Breathnach (Liam Walsh), R.L. O’Mealy, Philip Martin and Sean O’Leary in publicity for their occasional 10- or 15-minute radio recitals. The term was doubtless promoted by Seamus Clandillon of Galway, the first director of the station and an Irish-language enthusiast, 317 and it was firmly established in a radio context by the time he retired in 1934. In 1928, the year of his death, Grattan Flood was still actively engaged in his campaign to have his term accepted: ‘Uilleann pipes [are] incorrectly called the “union” pipes’. 318 This was his last known word on the matter, although his opinions would live on influentially in print. But among Irish bellows pipers usage still continued to vary. When they began to record commercial 78s for the Irish market, in London from the 1910s, ‘(Irish) union pipe’ was the term commonly used on their record labels by such nationally known players as William N. Andrews of Dublin and later Leo Rowsome of Dublin and Liam Walsh of Waterford. 319 In the course of the 1920s this was replaced first on labels by ‘Irish (bag)pipes’, and joined in the second half of the decade by ‘(Irish) uilleann pipes’. From his frequent newspaper 317 He is reported as having used the term himself in 1931 when being interviewed by a journalist for an article on ‘The Passing of the Irish Piper’ (Irish Independent, 13 Feb. 1931). 318 W.H. Grattan Flood, Cork Examiner, Cork, 14 July 1928, quoted in An Píobaire vol. 2, no 2 (Sept. 1978): 4. 319 The very earliest Irish bellows players to record commercially were Coventryborn Thomas Garoghan in Britain (who used the term ‘Irish bagpipes’ on Berliner discs of c. 1898) and Limerick-born James C. McAuliffe in the United States (who used ‘bagpipe’ on Edison cylinders of 1899).
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Denis Courtney on stage in Oscar an
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Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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