Consensus among union/uilleann pipe historians has shifted to accepting the Pastoral pipes as the predecessor/ancestor of the Union pipes. The latter was known as the "Union" or "Irish" bagpipes in printed works from around 1800. Since there were native Irish speakers writing about music in the 19th century, the absence of any plausible spelling of "uilleann" in reference to these pipes argues rather strongly against uilleann having been an alternate name in any wide circulation. Flood had his reasons for making up the name, and many people got the notion that the moniker "Union" pipes somehow referred to the notorious Act of Union - wrong, the term Union Pipes appears in print in the 1790's at least, well before the 1800 Act.

The Pastorals, the likely predecessor, were referred to as the "New Bagpipe" in contemporary publications. This suggests that they were innovative, even before the addition of regulators. There has never appeared any evidence for a bagpipe which was the "predecessor" for the Pastoral/New bagpipes to any meaningful extent (i.e. which is substantially similar). In any case they were NOT a "Folk" instrument when introduced, as they were quite expensive and marketed to wealthy gentlemen. (I know, I can hear the screams of protest, but this is the evidence tells.) Pastorals have a "foot joint" that attaches to the end of a chanter, rather like the bell of some orchestral instruments, and they are played "off the knee". Pastorals give one note below the tonic as their lowest tone, but are basically diatonic with a few notes in the upper octave.

It can be very difficult to tell an early Union set from a Pastoral set which has lost its "foot joint"; this both strengthens the case for one being an evolutionary adaptation of the other, and confounds the business of establishing when the Union pipes first appeared. The regulator was a feature of some Pastoral sets which seem to date from about 1770 or 1780, so the regulator does not appear to have been something that originated in the "Irish" form.

Earliest examples are actually often rather sharper than has been suggested here - 1770's would have had the pitch at about modern Eflat, but true enough by the first quarter of the 1800s C# would have been common, followed, or perhaps contemporary with sets pitched about modern B.

By about 1840 sets with 3 regulators had appeared, pitched in about modern B, and these may have been the sets referred to at the time as the "Grand Union Pipes".

In the late 19th century the Taylor brothers, originally from Drogheda but later of Philadelphia, do seem to have developed the first known "wide-bore" sets pitched near modern D, possibly in an attempt to fill the louder music halls of America. The idea caught on and similar wide-bore sets were made in the early 20th c. in Ireland.

Bill