YOU GUYS ARE STILL ON ABOUT THIS!!!! F's sake lads! Well, I'll add another little tidbit... as long as we are still talking rather than playing! Uilleann is really a rather new way of refering to the pipes, which are not an ancient instrument. There was not, at first, a Gaelic word for bellows pumped pipes. The origional way to refer to them was the Union pipes, and there are two theories about this. 1. A result of the act of Union, which outlawed the playing of warpipes. 2. There is belief that the Union pipes predate the act of Union and the union refers to the joining of the pipes with regulators, the keyed drones which make them unique from the other bellows pipes, like musettes or Northumbrian pipes.
My theory is that Union replaced the older term, the S and M pipes, called so by reason of them being strapped on with all sorts of odd looking leather impliments, and the fact that they combine some serrious bondage with odd exhertions.
Larry