I have come across them only once in Ireland, at a piper's tionol in Templemore in 1997. The man who played them filled the only room where one could play all through the saturday we were there, to the extend he would cut across anyone who attempted a tune. It made for a disappointing day and was the main reason I never went back to that tionol again.

There was a mention of the Northumbrian ones in connection with Séamus Ennis. His daughter got interested in the pipes. That wouldn't do for a girl. Séamus gave her a set of Northumbrian pipes instead.

The film 'The Irishmen', about the men working in England during the fifties and sixties, has the Northumbrian pipes playing 'The Rocks of Bawn' in it's opening sequence.