Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

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87 COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES concert reports and radio listings, and from record labels, Leo Rowsome seems to have made the change-over in this latter period. In letters published in The Evening Herald of Dublin in May 1930, he and Seamus Mac Aonghusa were in agreement in using the new term, referring respectively to ‘Irish pipes’ and ‘uilleann pipes’, while Rowsome came back to refer to the ‘Irish (or uilleann) pipes’ which had also the title of the ‘Irish Organ’. 320 William N. Andrews was billed as late as 1935 as playing the ‘union pipes’ on the radio, but this happened in Belfast, on BBC Northern Ireland, where the political neutrality of Courtney’s term was evidently still useful. In his Dublin advertising of the same time Andrews had succumbed to ‘Irish uillean pipes’. 321 Kildare piper Sean Dempsey, recording commercially for the Regal Zonophone label in London and Dublin in 1936 and 1937, muddied the waters still further. In 1936 and 1937 respectively he is playing the ‘Irish union pipes’ and the ‘Irish pipes’ in London, according to his record labels, 322 while in 1937 he is also recording in Dublin on ‘Irish uilleann pipes’. 323 In 1936 however a significant die was cast in the entire matter with the publication of the first Irish bellows pipes tutors to appear since those of the early nineteenth century: Tadhg Crowley’s How to Play the Uillean Pipes, published in Cork by Crowley himself, and Leo Rowsome’s Tutor for the Uileann Pipes, published in Dublin by the Dublin College of Music. In a move reminiscent of those of O’Farrell, Fitzmaurice and Murphy over a hundred years earlier in relation to ‘union pipes’, Flood’s new term was finally established in printed music-book form and by authors who were themselves pipers. Since he was a prize-winning performer, teacher, recording artist, broadcaster, pipe-maker and repairer, and inheritor of a family 320 Evening Herald, Dublin, 15, 20 & 21 May 1930. 321 Campbell 2011: 185. 322 Regal Zonophone IZ 603, Regal Zonophone IZ 656. 323 Regal Zonophone IZ 705.
COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 88 piping tradition, the example of Leo Rowsome must have been highly influential, and by the mid-1920s, as said, he was commonly using some form of the term ‘uilleann pipes’. Decisive in the terminological struggle was the informal foundation in 1936 by Rowsome and associates in Dublin of ‘Cumann na bPíobairí Uilleann’ or the ‘Uilleann Pipers’ Club’, a social musical club in Thomas Street which acted as a focus for the traditional musicians of the city and beyond. 324 This was formally established in 1940, 325 during the years of the Second World War, and continued into the 1970s, chaired by Rowsome until his death in 1970. By the 1940s, the term ‘union pipes’ was obsolete, and feiseanna and oireachtaisí were awarding certificates for participation in competitions for an phíob uilleann. 326 The older term was still known and used in speech and print of course (as it still sometimes is today), but instead of being a vigorous living term, it now had an antiquarian flavour. It now had to be explained as being the same as the uilleann pipes, and it is referred to as a term formerly in use. Séamus Ó Casaide, the last champion of the Dublin Pipers’ Club’s understanding of the term, died in 1943. A whole generation of Irish bellows pipers and followers of the instrument had grown up with ‘uilleann pipes’ as a term of choice, and a decisive shift in usage had taken place. A consequence was that the recent term would now be used ahistorically to refer to all Irish bellows pipes, including those belonging to the period before ‘uilleann pipes’ was coined. When invitations were sent by Cumann na bPíobairí Uilleann to a fleadh or festival in Athlone in May 1951 – an invitation that would lead later in the year to the setting up in Dublin of a national (and 324 Rowsome 1968: 58. 325 NPU Seán Reid Collection, items SRF2D1-2. 326 See for instance a 1940 Feis Átha Cliath certificate for participation in the competition for ‘An Phíb-Uilleann’ (NPU Seán Reid Collection, item SRF2D1).
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