Union Pipes - Irish Traditional Music Archive

COURTNEY’S ‘UNION PIPES’ AND THE TERMINOLOGY OF IRISH BELLOWS-BLOWN BAGPIPES 90
Píobairí Uilleann, 333 the twentieth-century term could be said to have
finally triumphed after more than sixty years of existence.
The Irish shift from ‘union’ to ‘uilleann’ was not however paralleled
by an equivalent contemporary shift of usage in Irish America,
which had not been influenced to the extent that Ireland had by
either the ideology of the Gaelic League or of the emergent Free
State. Although ‘uilleann pipes’ had appeared in print there as early
as 1904, 334 copied from Irish newspaper sources, and was known to
at least some pipers there, older habits continued and oral tradition
was followed rather than print-introduced innovation. The
instrument continued to be commonly known in the United States in
the early twentieth century as ‘Irish’ or ‘union’ pipes. This was the
practice followed by prominent piper associates of Francis O’Neill
such as Bernard Delaney of Offaly and Chicago 335 Patsy Touhey of
Galway and New York, 336 and Tom Ennis of Chicago. 337 However
when Irish pipers began to record in some numbers on commercial
78s from the 1920s, issued on the ethnic series of generalist record
companies or on small Irish-American labels, ‘union pipes’ became
a casualty of the commercial need for a term that would be instantly
understood by record buyers. In almost every case the performers
were described as playing ‘Irish (bag)pipes’ or as playing Irish reels
333
The name was put forward by Seamus Ennis at the first meeting, according to
participants, and agreed by acclaim.
334
Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, New York, 23 July 1904.
335
See The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, 18 June 1909, for example.
336
Mitchell & Small 1986: passim. Jackie Small points out (pers. comm., Apr.
2012) that in his spoken introductions to his cylinder recordings Touhey refers
to the instrument as ‘pipes’ and ‘Irish pipes’.
337
New Victor Records catalogue, July 1917. Confusingly, while this source says
that ‘Union Pipes’ is the correct name for the instrument, it goes on to say that
the term is ‘a corruption of the old Irish name, Uillean Pipes’. This information
presumably came from Tom Ennis. His father Thomas senior spoke only of
‘union pipes’ and ‘The Soft Irish Pipes’ when writing in 1902 (An Gaodhal,
New York (Feb. 1902): 33