Sorefingers,

Do you have some objection to the expression "at all?" If so, I've heard nothing =at all= about it until now!

Also, can you not see that your allegedly corrected version of my statement lacks an article? ("as old as Celtic invasion of Ireland") Why continue to embarrass yourself in this manner?


Rapaire,

I appreciate what you've said. I believe I have made my assertions clear on the other thread. I think proof is perhaps too strong a word, because the evidence is rather thin. But I will present some evidence.

In brief, Sorefingers expressed that

1) bagpipes came to Ireland with the original influx of Goidelic-speaking Celts from Galicia in Spain. He refers to this event as "Celtic invasion of Ireland," although there were many Celtic migrations to Ireland both before and after that one. He cited the existence of bagpipes in Galicia as evidence of this.

and

2) that it was Irish people, not Frenchmen or Scots, who originally attached a bellows to a set of pipes to create the ancestor of the uilleann pipes, changing the bore of the chanter and other characteristics, and that this adaptation was a response to harsh penal laws outlawing the playing of bagpipes, which necessitated a quieter bagpipe.

I countered that

1) there is no evidence of any bagpipes in Spain or Ireland as early as those Celtic migrations, or indeed for almost a millennium after them. (you can look in any good history of wind instruments for this information) What we now know as Galicia is populated by the descendants of a completely different group of Celts from the one who came to Ireland so long ago, so the existence of bagpipes among those people is irrelevant. (See, for example, the writings of Barry Cunliffe such as The Celtic World or The people of the Sea). The Galician bagpipe bears such close resemblance to other bagpipes descended from the one-droned medieval bagpipe (such as the Highland Pipes and the Flemish pipes) that it is obviously related to those pipes and developed from the same direct ancestors. (good evidence for this was presented by other contributors to that thread). Although some assert without much evidence that those pipes were spread by the Romans, most now believe that they became widespread after the first Crusade (the evidence for the Roman argument consists of one bronze statuette of a roman soldier with a bagpipe, along with such curiosities as a coin with an image of Nero piping; there is no extant set of Roman bagpipes from any of the regions we are discussing, nor any descriptions of the people there playing bagpipes for another millennium). All this makes Sorefingers' first position unlikely. Also, on this there is no possible firsthand account since this migration happened many centuries ago.

2)Although it is not impossible that Irish people developed the first bellows-blown bagpipes, (or at least developed them independently from previous makers) there is no evidence for it. The supposed influence of the anti-piping laws does not explain why there should be similar quiet, bellows-blown bagpipes in 17th century France, which predated those laws' enactment in Ireland. The Irish and French bellows pipes would have to be completely unrelated, but both contain the remarkable features of quietness, the bellows, and incidentally a common stock for the drones (which never came up on the other thread). It's unlikely for two sets of pipes, developed separately, to incorporate three relatively major morphological changes all at once.

Finally, there is the issue of the Scottish bellows pipes, including the "pastoral pipe," which also appear in the historical record before Irish bellows-blown pipes. These have drone pipes with keys, much like the Irish regulators. Again, it is not impossible that Irish pipes predated Scottish ones, but the evidence in Scotland appears earlier. Since the two instruments are clearly related, most scholars accept that the Irish pipes developed from the Scottish ones (or, more specifically I believe, from an English adaptation of the Scottish ones).

Even on this issue firsthand accounts are hard to imagine. Not only would one have to be in the room when a bellows bagpipe was designed, one would have to know definitively that

1) no other bellows pipes had been in Ireland before that

and that

2) the later development of the Uillean pipes was based on those pipes whose design you witnessed, and not another one which had come from Scotland.

I think it is unlikely that such a confident account exists, or that sorefingers' grandparents were alive ca. 1750 to make such an account. This is why I doubt that the account really is firsthand, as he claims.

Right now, then, the best evidence points to bellows pipes developing first in France, then spreading to England and Scotland, and thence to Ireland. I am aware, and conceded on that thread, that more evidence on any of these questions would change the appropriate conclusions immensely.

As to where one might look for this evidence, that is perhaps the funniest thing about this. There is no virtually no controversy about these issues in the scholarly world. (The main exception to this is the Romans spreading the bagpipes to Britain and other places, which is still repeated by some sources) I have never seen anyone claim what Sorefingers claims in any published work, particularly the bit about the Spanish migrations. So it matters not where you look in the annals of reputable history or ethnomusicology, I doubt if you will find corroboration for his claims.

Still, in the end I have been careful to say that what he claims is NOT IMPOSSIBLE. It's just that there isn't any evidence for it. I have challenged him repeatedly to provide the evidence, which he so far has not done.

Rapaire, you are 100% right about Librarians, without whom nothing would get done. And also about the Sciences and Humanities. I did not mean to imply superiority, just that my own experience, on which I was basing my statements, comes from the humanities. You see, I don't like to make statements for which I have no evidence...