Uilleann Pipes

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 09:28 PM

Odd! The connection works although wrong sentence is linked. However not all have 300 streaming, which I linked. Start with:
www.archaeologychannel.org/hydraulisint.html and check on the video, The Ancient Hydraulis.
Hydraulis

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 09:18 PM

Post-industrial revolution indeed! Les in Chorlton, look at these sites for engineering of a complex musical instrument with keyboard and pipes, developed by an Alexandrine engineer in the 3rd century BC.
Hydraulus

For a video, complete with the sound of the instrument, see:

As far as bagpipes are concerned, craft more than engineering is involved for this simple instrument, also well-documented from Roman times.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Sheila
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 06:29 PM

Fascinating, but would still love a pronunciation, please. YOOLY-an?
ILL-ee-an? WILL-ee-an? Thanks.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:20 PM

Sorry, I'm a former chemist (then physicist) whose specialty now is old British Isles songs and music, but not musical instruments.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:03 PM

Hello, any engineers?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 10:45 AM

Reading Mick's post - fair play ta ya M :) - reminded me of an answer to the claim that the Uillean Pipes were really English because the word 'Chanter' is English - ' if the Guitar evolved from the African Lute, does that make the Guitar an African invention'

Clearly it doesn't.


"One does not need /to blame/"
is yer English history a litte hard to take? the hangins of Irish pipers and all that messy ugly stuff that makes ye so feared and hated to this day in Ireland?

"the illegalization of bagpipes"
the bagpipes were not outlawed, playing them was.

" more insane bs"

What can an intelligent independent observer say or think about such as Nerd? Does this Nerd have an adgenda perhaps? Attacking the Irish or any other easy prey?

"where bagpipes were never outlawed or even discouraged"
How would you know anything about something as irrelevant as two sheep
... ummm er .. in one small corner of England where no records were ever kept and what is more..NOW I am getting excited ...

Phew, actualy Mr Knowall you are wrong - all bagpiping was banned in the Kingdom several times and what is more I know more about it than you, so shuddup what you know nuttin ...

"Making smaller, quieter, bellows-blown
pipes was simply a way to create a parlor instrument".   

Yer also a wee bit daft Jochk!

The idea of a Parlour in an Irish Mudcottage of the period is as credible as indoor plumbing in a Scottish Mudcottage of same the period - say nowt about English cottages.

And if you had the common sense to go read the actual
papers of the Crown, you might also be aware that the ban was a response to public disorder.

"... (removed too funny) "

Your credentials now so tattered that the rest of yer offering is here for public amusement
"True that the Irish would not need to borrow the bellows itself, but the
idea of blowing a bagpipe with a bellows also
does not >seem<"

Oh I dunno - you don't 'seem' to sure of yer facts ... lol

"to have been Irish in origin."

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 09:59 AM

Nerd what would *you* know about it! You don't speak either language and before Uilleanpiping became the property of 'dweedidlums dot inc' most people had never heard let alone seen one; in fact if asked what they were most likely you'd be offered 'Highland Bagpipe'

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 03:20 AM

Well, what can I say? I started this thread and got a fairly definitive answer from the editor in the first post. The rest has been utterly fascinating and I don't think it could have happened anywhere else but the Mudcat.

I was a chemist originally and have a simplistic understanding of knowledge and truth. I am unconvinced by strong assertions about people, culture and history based in very little evidence. I shared on office with a historian who felt the same way. We came to the conclusion that most accademic study works the same way. Evidence is gathered, hypothesies are constructed and tested and so on..... This strategy works well for most things except, unsurprisingly, religion, where people seem to say and think all sorts of things.

But back to the pipes.

One of the areas that has not been drawn upon, please forgive me if I missed this, is design and technology. Uillean pipes like Nothumbrian small pipes, concertinas etc. cannot be made without a fair degree of engeneering skill and accurate, sophisticated materials, design and technology. This makes these instruments post-industrial revolution.

Do we have any historians of science and technology who could chip in a bit of basic knowledge and understanding to re-assure a simple chemist?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: smallpiper
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 01:52 AM

I read somewhere - sorry can't remember where - probably in a a journal of the Lowland and Border Pipers Society - that the bellows blown pipe was developed as a fashion accessory. Piping being popular amoungst the nobility they (who ever they are) thought it most unseamly that these young people should go so red in the face and look so silly puffing their cheeks out whilst playing these instruments that they devised an alternative method of filling the bag i.e with bellows. I believe this may well have been in the french court rater than any other. And as we know good ideas are taken up by many sensible people.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 01:35 AM

Bill D hasn't been following this thread, but I got to chat with him a bit tonight, and he confirmed the the man, Mark Gilson, with the furry goatskin bagpipe is a real person, not just a specter that appears at sundry festivals (my sole observation). Bill has informed me that once lived in Pennsylvania, but now lives in Florida.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Nerd
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 07:02 PM

Mick makes some sensible points, but there are a few large and necessary corrections: first, the Celts did not begin any migrations from India or Pakistan, and there is no evidence that they ever settled there (unlike modern Turkey, where they did settle). This is a somewhat academic point. Essentially, people speaking proto Indo-European are conjectured to have begun their migrations from India. They included ancestors of the Celts and every other Indo-European group (Romans, Greeks, Germans, etc). But the Celts did not differentiate from these other groups until later.

The first people whom scholars are comfortable calling Celtic, the Hallstatt culture, lived in Germany, France and Austria. From there Celts migrated north, south, east and West, early on into Hungary, Switzerland, etc (the so-called La Tene Culture), then everywhere from Spain to Turkey and Scotland to the Po Valley in Italy.

The idea that Bagpipes were carried with proto Indo-Europeans out of India is possible, but there is no evidence for it, and on balance the evidence is against it. If that were true, we would expect to find bagpipes among widely scattered European peoples much earlier than we actually do. There is actually no evidence of bagpipes among "most early european pan-Celtic peoples," unless you are aware of some that I am not. Pipes, maybe, but bags? No.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Big Mick
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:35 PM

There is a fair good argument to support that the forerunner to the pipes as we know them today originally came out of the area of India and Pakistan where the "Celts" began their migration out across Eastern and Western Europe. Most early European Pan Celtic cultures had some form of them, and they developed in common, yet unique ways, into the myriad of instruments we know as bagpipes today. To sit and waste bandwidth arguing about some of this seems silly to me. The simple fact is that the Irish introduced what we now call bagpipes to Scotland. Another fact is that the Uilleann pipes are today a uniquely Irish instrument in design and style of play. It is interesting that their versatility is being discovered and the style of playing them is evolving. Those that are bothered by this misunderstand a basic tenet of Irish music. It is always evolving. That IS the tradition. I chuckle when a new instrument or style is introduced and purists turn up their noses. A hundred years ago trad Irish music would not have included Irish bouzouki's, guitars, Low D whistles, etc.

The pipes, in all their forms, are native to many European cultures. And where they came from is subject to much conjecture.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:18 PM

And originally introduced by the Romans during their brief attempt to civilize the natives in western Europe, including Galicia, Brittany and the British Isles?

Lots of bun(ff) but no meat.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Nerd
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:16 PM

Sorefingers,

There is no evidence at all that the bagpipe that they have in Galicia is anywhere near as old as the early Gaelic migrations from Spain to Ireland. Now THAT is nonsense. And remember, the Galicians were Brythonic, not Gaelic Celts, so the Celts who allegedly left Spain and settled in Ireland were not Galician at all, but a population who subsequently disappeared from Spain entirely.

Galician bagpipes and those of the rest of Spain are clearly derived from the common west European medieval bagpipe. They were almost certainly part of the Roman and medieval dissemination of the instrument.

Celtic nationalists love to claim the bagpipes as an aboriginal Celtic instrument, but there is no evidence for their use among ancient Celts. Some instruments HAVE survived from early Celtic populations, particularly bone flutes and trumpets, but no bagpipes or even pictorial representations of Bagpipes, until well after the Roman era in western Europe.

One does not need to blame the illegalization of bagpipes for the development of bellows instruments. They exist in countries like France and England where bagpipes were never outlawed or even discouraged. Making smaller, quieter, bellows-blown pipes was simply a way to create a parlor instrument.   True that the Irish would not need to borrow the bellows itself, but the idea of blowing a bagpipe with a bellows also does not seem to have been Irish in origin.

The Uillean pipes is a brilliant Irish adaptation of a common western European instrument, the bellows-blown bagpipe. Those who claim otherwise do so based on Celtic pride rather than evidence.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 05:41 PM

The Piedpiper theory is also wishful thinking.

Over a lifetime of observation I notice that as soon as a visitor to - in pre Chieftains days - Ireland heard a piper, they became hellbent on getting a set. Very soon playing the thing - in their own way OC - there would be all kinds of theories about the origins of the instrument and the rest. IOW I have witnessed this debate before many a time.

OBU's comments about the Travellers - to me at least - is just nonsense. It ain't true OBU, somebody is telling you lies.

The asserted Scottish origin for the instrument itself sounds to me like a get-even strategy for the old joke that used go the rounds about how the Irish gave the Highlanders the Pibmor, - saying 'you can make music on that ' ... ho ho ho(which I don't think is funny)

However it is simply NOT true that the native pipes were thrown away and replaced by a Scottish import! It did not happen. What did happen is far simpler and easier to comprehend; playing the loud Pipes being a crime the Piper/makers set about narrowing the bore - if you know anything about this I hardly need explain .. if not go ask somebody that does - and fiddling about with designs to make the instrument quieter. IOW They DID NOT plan to build the elbow pipes. It was a response to new laws.

The bellows; the real story here - what may have compelled the researching pipemaker perhaps more than anything else to use a bellows, is the ammount of air necessary to power the lower pitched instrument. Now that forced some kind of accomodation, but saying the Irish pipemaker copied a Scottish bellows is simply nonsense; why would he? there were bellows hanging on the 'hob' of every cottage in the country!

Nonanglohistory.

The bagpipe is found in Galicia and it was from there that the Gaelic people began their migration to the Island of Ireland BEFORE there ever was a Scotland. Arriving in Ireland these people already had the bagpipes. When after thousands of years the Gaels invaded the Highland of Scotland they brought with them these same bagpipes; despite English propaganda for hundreds of years denying the facts, the Bagpipe that is played today in Scotland - joke or no joke- came from
Ireland.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 12:52 PM

Back off the track. Farmer and Henley's dictionary 'Slang and it Analogues' has Cant among the analogues, with many definitions given, with dates first found.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 07:23 AM

Goatskin bag with fur? Mark Gilson has been seen (and heard) again|

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Pied Piper
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 06:27 AM

The Mashak is not a fictional instrument here is CD(Music from the Shrines of Ajmer & Mundra) with a recording of it.

PP

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: LadyJean
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 12:00 AM

There was a fellow at the S.C.A's annual Pensic War, playing a goatskin (with the fur still on!) bagpipe with one drone. I didn't like it as much as Wolgemut's pipes, or the fine Highland piper at the Mountain Confederation's bagpiping contest. (If that man's name wasn't MacCrimmon, it should have been!) But it was interesting. His had a blowpipe and chanter. I didn't get a chance to ask about country of origin.
Re. Shelta, I grew up in Squirrel Hill, a Jewish neighborhood. A lot of the older people spoke Yiddish. In a way it was a "secret language", sometimes spoken to conceal things from gentiles, or from children who didn't speak the language. But there are dictionaries. There's a very rich Yiddish literary tradition. French was a "secret language" among wealthy Victorians, used to conceal things from children and servants. "Secret language" is in the ear of the beholder.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 07:18 PM

And here is a quote from a site I found about "Samode...in the royal Indian state of Rajasthan":

"During the day, a camel ride through the Samode village and the surrounding countryside is a good idea. Riding this gentle animal with its rocking gait is the best way to relax on a sunny morning. A real visit to Samode cannot be considered complete without a musical evening of folk dances and songs. Rajasthani bards and musicians with their colourful dresses and unusual musical instruments provide one of the best evenings one can have in India. The instruments include one-stringed fiddles, country violins, bagpipes made out of goatskin, castanets, Jew's harps, and even a one stringed instrument made out of a dried gourd. The villagers sing with plaintive abandon under the faint light of the crystal stars. A musical evening can be arranged at a short notice at the Samode Palace."

Sounds pretty good to me...When the lottery comes good, I'll be round there alright.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 06:41 PM

As for Skespear's "woollen pipes", I've got a feeling that more probably refers to the fabric covering the bag. And it's been suggested also that it might just be a typo for "wooden".

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 06:26 PM

Quite right, back to the pipes on this thread.

"The bagpipe from India is known as a mushug"

A rapid Google hasn't been able to find the term, and all "Indian bagpipes" came up with were Scottish style instruments made there, Stewart tartan and all. And yet Ganesha was definitely holding elbow pipes of soem type in that photo. There must be some reason for that. (Of course the Hindu temple in London is in Neasden, hard by Cricklewood which is very Irish, so maybe there's some cross-cultural fertilisation going around.

Apropos of nothing I've got a nice little wooden statue of Ganesha - I bought it in a Catholic Christmas bazaar in Harlow. Very ecumenical. (St Ganesha, patron saint of elephants...and maybe of uilleann pipers.)

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Áine
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 06:11 PM

A big 'hey ya'll' to Lor and McGrath . . .

Seems this thread has definitely drifted from the potentially very interesting topic of uillean pipes; so, ya'll get back to it, OK?

Does anyone know of other good resources that discuss the history of the pipes (all kinds)? For my part, it seems that the idea for the pipes can be found in many ancient cultures, just as the idea of the flute and/or whistle can be found).

All the best, Áine (descendant of both Pipers and Travellers, and damn proud of it)

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 04:42 PM

True enough, McGrath, however in the US, Travellers do not use the term Pavee. Cheers Larry

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 04:29 PM

Mind, both "Tinker" and "Traveller" are open to the same objection - they refer to something that anybody might well do in certain times and places, and use that as a label for an ethnic minority that includes people who don't do either of those things.

Mending tin cans and kettles is a trade that anyone might need to learn (though it's not one for which there's a great demand at present in Western countriesa anyway). And the same goes for a travelling way of life, as evidenced by the "New Age Travellers" phenomenon.

And when people want to insult members of an out-group, they'll use any word that comes to hand. Doesn't take long and "Traveller" takes on the same power to hurt as "Tinker". In fact in many places that has happened already.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 03:59 PM

Well... I apreciate you changing the term to Traveller. Tell ya what, in order that this is not thread creap... I will start another thread. On the topic, if it were not for the fact that Travellers share their culture, a lot of us would not be Uilleann pipers...
Cheers Lorcan "Larry" Otway

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 03:20 PM

More wandering thread-
With regard to shelta, a lot of the "secret language" idea comes from the title of a book that actually has a brief dictionary-grammar and explanation of the language. Sometimes the title can be applied by the publisher for sales purposes.
In any case, R. A. Stewart Macalister, 1937, "The Secret Languages of Ireland," Cambridge University Press, perhaps had a lot to do with that popular conception. It was the primary reference for some time.

On the other hand, many Travelers seem unwilling to discuss their Cant. See Shelta

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 11:48 AM

My appologies, that should have been Traveller.

Where I didn't look before, Gmelch, p. 23: The use of Shelta as
the language of the road also strengthened their [Travellers]
identity. As used by travellers today it is a true "cant" or form
of disguised communication, whose purpose is to conceal the
meaning from outsiders.

Note that the Traveller horse seller (blocker) in that bid setup I
described above must be a master of applied psychology.
Having haggled to some price, they go through another cycle.
'blocker' finds some new perfection in the horse and talks it up,
watching non-Traveler's facial expression and any of his body
language for clues to his thinking. 'blocker', judging when he
might get another pound higher bid, uses Shelta to signal
Traveler dummy-bidder to up the bid by a pound. Non-Traveler sees
dummy bidder knows his horseflesh so its a good deal, and worth
it to up the bid a few more shillings to get such a magnificent
animal, while 'blocker' is studying the horse for new
perfections, and so repeat the cycle.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 11:39 AM

Well, if you continue to use the T word, I have nothing to say to you.
Larry

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Sep 03 - 01:48 AM

Gmelch, cited above refers to Shelta as a secret language, but doesn't say how secret. She notes that there are Tinkers with very extensive knowledge in judging condition of horses. A tinker seller is a 'blocker', and she explains what they do and who in the trading scheme is called what in slang or Shelta terms.

She doesn't explain one mode that I once read about. The Tinker seller would get another Tinker as bidder to compete with a potential non-tinker buyer. The seller would size up the non-tinker buyer as they went through the process, and use Shelta to signal the 'buyer' Tinker when to raise or hold on a bid, and usually work the price up considerably.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 11:20 PM

Tinkers use it to communicate between themselves when they don't want non-Tinkers to understand. They don't want non-Tinkers to get have a dictionary of their private language....

Dear Guest... Not the case. Pavees are very happy to share information about their language, as are Romani people. However, there is so little interest in the scholarly community it is almost impossible to fund such projects. There are dictionaries of Romaness, and glosseries of Shelta. And knock off using the T word, it is a vestage of a past of discrimination of which, settled folks should not be very proud ... Larry

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 11:12 PM

The Encyclopaedia Britannica takes the figurine of the Roman soldier bagpipe player as evidence of the utriculus (or bag) bagpipe in England in Roman times.
Roman bagpipes were of the utriculus (tibia utricularis or pipe with bag) type. One image shows paired chanters and a drone. The reservoir is not known before the Roman examples. The Romans (and their Greek contemporaries in Egypt) were musically sophistocated, having invented the hydraulus, the direct ancestor of the pipe organ. Suetonius (ca. 69-140 AD) described the Roman instrument. The instrument with bag also is shown on Roman coins. Anything before then is speculative- pipes but no bag.

One website discussion suggests that the bagpipe came to England with Celts before the Romans, but this is just wishful (hopeful? wistful?) thinking on the part of some Scot or Irishman. No evidence whatsoever.

The Oxford History of Music discusses bagpipes(?) shown on a Hittite slab, ca. 1000 BC. (haven't seen the image, but doubt that there was a bag). I can't find any evidence that the Persians had real bagpipes, although mention is made in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The bagpipe from India is known as a mushug- no idea of construction.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 10:18 PM

shakespear is rubbish, you cant even tell waht they are on about.john

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Me
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 09:12 PM

Farmer and Henly, 'Slang and Its Analogues' give 'bloke' from 1883, but as slang, not Cant/Shelta. A Tinker using Cant/Shelta would probably use 'cove'. E.g., title of old song 'The cove what sings'.
J. S. Farmer has a whole book of cant songs, and I think it title was 'Musa Pedestra' (but I only glanced at it once). There were several small songbook collections of such in the 18th century. Look at an Irish imitation, probably in DT, "The Night before Larry was stretched". [If not there, a traditional version is listed in 'The Traditional Ballad Index'.] The 'Larry' one (c 1784) used the tune of, and probably imitated a rare song of c 1730, "The Bowman Prigg's Farewell" {I have only a few verses., and have been frustrated in attempts to get a complete text. Promised by Glasgow Univ. Lib., but never delivered.) A 'Bowman' was a pick-purse, and Mr. Prigg was caught, and was facing execution.]

Subject: RE: Uilleann Pipes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 09:12 PM

The fact that the Romans knew a form of bagpipe doesn't mean that they introduced them to Britain; it isn't impossible, but there's no evidence of pipes being played here anything like that early (they begin to be mentioned in England, and rather later in Scotland, in the wake of the first crusade, which also gave us the kettle drum). Is there any evidence of bagpipes blown with bellows before the development of the Musette at the French court? I've never heard of Roman bellows pipes; the very sketchy records surviving suggest that they had a simple mouth-blown variety, not unlike the more primitive ones still found in Northern Africa and the Near East, and probably recently imported from there.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:06 PM

Difficult to go back beyond the Greeks and Romans, who had bagpipes worked with a small bellows. In the foundations of the praetorian camp at Richborough was found a small bronze of a Roman soldier playing bagpipes; more of the type now used in the Highlands rather than the Northumbrian or union type. The ancient Persians had bagpipes.
The Romans probably introduced the instrument to the British Isles.

1851, Mayhew, in "London Labour," is the earliest to mention bloke: "If we met an old bloke, we propped him."
Possibly from Gipsy and Hindu boke- a man, fellow. Introduced by returning soldiers?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:40 PM

Tinkers use it to communicate between themselves when they don't want non-Tinkers to understand. They don't want non-Tinkers to get have a dictionary of their private language.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:03 PM

"Bloke" is I suppose the most common Shelta word in daily use in this part of the world (and Australia).

Whatever the origin of the term, calling them "elbow pipes" (in whatever language) seems the most sensible way of describing the family of instruments which use a bellows operated by the elbow. The Irish version, or rather the Irish versions, are only some of the varieties in current existance. (Though I suspect quite a lot of these are revivals amd reconstructions rather than survivals.)

I came across a modern photo of some craftsmen working on a Hindu temple, and they were carving a big statue of the God Ganesha, who has an Elephant head. Intriguingly, he was portrayed in the statue as playing some kind of elbow pipes - which actually looked extremely like an Irish set. I know that the Scottish military bagpipe tradition was carried on in the armies of Pakistan and India after the British left - but it'd be interesting to know the situation regarding any other bagpipe traditions in the sub-continent.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:54 PM

Hi Guest Me... for a book with a few words of Shelta, and an all round good book about Pavees (Irish Travellers) Puck of the Dromes is good, can't remember who wrote it. Manya louie, shem - Larry

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 03:04 PM

Hogarth's 1728 illustration was a burlesque of a scene from the Beggar's Opera. Whether the pastoral pipes actually were used during a performance is not answered definitively by the illustration. All that can be gathered from the scene is that these pipes were known to Hogarth.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 02:46 PM

Pied Piper: where does the information come from that pastoral bagpipes were used in a production of the Beggar's Opera? I've read a lot about this play and it's history, and I've never come across a reference to these pipes. Where did you you get that from?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Me
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:42 AM

'Tinkers and Travelers', by Sharon Gmelch, 1975, gives Shelta and Gamon as the curent names of Cant in Ireland, and it has little in it from Gaelic. Alas she gives us no examples of it.

The songs in this book were collected by others (Carroll and Mackenzie) and they're all English ones. At page 138 you will find "Marie from Gippursland", a very bawdy song that seems to have appeared in the 1730s with a Scots Gaelic title which translates to "Morag/Marion the daughter of the beggar" (She's Moreen/ in early Irish) More recent texts give her name as Mallie, Marie, etc. Jim Carroll has collected a more recent version which hasn't been published yet. To see the earliest known text (a traditional one from Northumberland) click on Morag/ Moreen in the in Scarce Songs 2 file at www.erols.com/olsonw

Our founder here Dick G, seemed to like it, unless his comment was really facetious.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Pied Piper
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:21 AM

Here's an engraving by Hogarth of the Pastoral Pipes in operation.
Beggars Opera

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: smallpiper
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:15 AM

spot on pp

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Me
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:08 AM

Shakespeare left nothing of his plays, poems, or songs in his own hand. Plays and songs in them were taken down by copyists during performances, and they made a lot of errors. Not all can be corrected.

'Hey the doxie over the dale'. That 'dale' is nonsense. Shakespeare/Shakspere is using Cant, Peddler's French or whatever you want to call it, (Irish Gypsys, now called Travelers, still use a form of it) and women were doxies, dells, morts, autem morts, etc depending on age, virginity, and married status.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Pied Piper
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:06 AM

The modern Irish Pipes (uillean, woollen, hilan, union) evolved from an instrument called the Pastoral or New Bagpipe invented sometime around 1700 in the lowlands of Scotland. It was intended to have a larger range than other contemporary Pipes, and be chromatic allowing the Baroqueing up of trad tunes. This Bagpipe was used in the Beggars Opera.
Pastoral Pipes
I think it highly unlikely that bellows for Pipes reached Ireland by 1600 especially when the evidence consists of 1 quote with no other corroboration.
The Pipes reached their present form in 19th century America were they changed key from Bb/C to D in order to play in Vaudeville.

All the best PP

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Me again
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 07:50 AM

Foolstoupe is right on. Note how many spellings of 'Ullean' we have in this thread. A 17th (or 18th) century Englishman would use English phonetics to spell Gaelic words, so we'd get something like 'Ilian', and wonder if that was a slightly fouled up name of a Greek island.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: greg stephens
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 06:50 AM

It is easy to lump Uillean together with craic and saisiun and bodhran as the most obvious excesses of the "Celtic industry" version of history. But I certainly find the Shakespearean "woollen pipes" very intriguing. I have pondered this vexed question for decades, and I havent come up with any other acceptable theory for what Shakespeare meant. On the other side of the argument, though, you would sort of expect the odd example of somebody's diary saying "bought a nice set of uileean pipes today" in 1650 or whatever, if the term had really been in use since 1600. My head tells me the "modern bogus invention" is prtobably right, but I have a sneaky affection for the idea that Shakespeare might just have picked up the term in London, and been right.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Me
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 04:58 AM

Malcolm Douglas is, as usual, right on. Breandan Breathnach took the name 'Union' to come from union of the regulator to the pipes (about 1730?). He noted Grattan-Flood's nonsense about 'Ullean' but couldn't wipe out the 'Ullean' myth at his late date, and was himself head of a big Ullean Pipers group.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 11:29 PM

Q said "In one of Shakespeare's plays, there is a reference to 'woolen' pipes"

Taking into account the path that the written (many and various) versions (and "corrected versions") of his plays have taken thru history to get to us with the enormous amount of misprintings, misreadings when setting up printers type, change of spellings, phoenetic spellings, spellings were variable, even by a person spelling his own name at times, the fact that "English Spelling" was not a "Standardised" thing until the 18-19th C...

W i.e. "double u" could easily have been an attempt to write "UU" instead of "W" thus the "Wah" sound possibly should have been read as nearer "eeooo"...

thus "uuoolen" - which to my cloth ears sounds remarkably close... what with several hundred years and all.....

:-)

Robin