G'day McGrath,

"... or Australia (unless you stretch a point a very very long way, and claim the didgeridoo as a rather strange variety of bagpipe ..."

Of course, such a stretch is not beyond the Irish ... a recent Mudcat thread discussed an Irish academic's assertion that "didjeridu" is really the Irish phrase (~) dudare dhu - "black piper". So far it seems to have foundered on a citation of the earliest printed references to (~) didjeridu ... all suggesting that the word was onomatopoeiac - a vocalisation of a typical sound from the instrument.

Regards,

Bob Bolton