Uilleann Pipes

Subject: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 04:44 AM

I was watching Ben play the pipes at Chorlton Folk Club last Thursday, really exciting music.

I have seen lots of drawings of bagpipes and they clearly go back a long way. But, sorry I am sure I am failing to spell Ullean correctly, Ullean, and for that matter, Northumbrian and other pipes are amazing pices of technology.

Am I correct in assuming that, whilst bagpipes in gemeral are very old, ie pre-industrial revolution by hundreds if not thousands of years, Ullean pipes are post industrial revolution? They have so many sophisticated pieces of metal that looks like it needed to be measued and crafted to a high degree of accuracy. They look technologically close to concertinas and accordeons.

So, when and where did they evolve and from what?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 04:59 AM

Taken from this page:

"Native to Ireland and England, uilleann pipes date back about 300 years to the beginning of the 18th century and probably share some common ancestry with Scots lowland pipes and other bellows blown pipes of the region. The design of the pipes as we know them today, with three drones and three regulators, stabilized around the start of the 19th century."

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 05:04 AM

Thanks a lot

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 06:01 AM

That site gives a nice, succinct account, alright. However, while uilleann does indeed mean elbow , the term was only applied to the pipes from the begining of the 20th C., as far as I remember.

Regards

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: smallpiper
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 07:45 AM

Prior to that they where called Union pipes. Make of that what you will.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 10:54 AM

Irish history has a bitter account of the evolution of what we today
call the Uillean Pipes. The earlier Englishlanguage reports are peppered with political preference and downright literary bullying though if you look in Irishgaelic writings there were fewer reports porbably due to the famine and other social factors, but these used
the name Uilleann - lit elbow - as the name for the new pipes.

While the Island remained under London, without break there was always an undercurrent of revolution, and these dissenters from the Crown liberaly used native song and dance to broacast. However unfortunely for them but happily for our ears today, HM Governor banned the Irish Pibmor.

The official reason for the ban was the 'seditious' uses of it etc. The musical community soon found other bagpipes which were not loud and thus could not be heard by the 'Forces of The Crown'-allowing pipers to play but quietly-, and during the late 1700s early 1800's native instrument makers, Coyne and Egan, were perfecting the 'long bore' chanter which eventually became the modern Uillean Pipes.

Arguements against the name Uillean are always based on the incorrect
assumtion that because a couple of English speaking Irish instrument makers adopted the term Unionpipe -union of Chanter and Regulators-, there was no debate since the makers must know what they meant to say.
Well that may be true but some other makers didn't do that and most of the musicians as well as the abused piping community soon took to using and Irishgaelic word Uillean. In short no matter what HM officialdom did the native people said 'screw you' and made the issue
an act of sedition as well. Ie those using the words Union were unionists and those Uilleann, republican.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 11:21 AM

The "elbow pipes" etymology was proposed by the notorious fantasist Grattan Flood, and subsequently became "received wisdom", though there is little evidence to support it. Arguments continue to this day, but historians of the subject tend to favour "union pipes" as the original term. I haven't come across that political explanation before, I think, and I wouldn't know how much weight to attach to it; probably not very much, as it seems itself to be based on rather a lot of assumptions. The matter has been discussed in greater detail in previous threads.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 12:09 PM

'Uillean Pipes' should certainly serve as a more neutral term (and more descriptive), but those who prefer to wear their history like a uniform and wallow in the nuances of terminology can always find a way to turn any designation into a political debate. It saddens me.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Big Mick
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 01:24 PM

Bill, the use of pipes as an act of defiance, and England's attempt to silence the pipers are well known facts. But, like you, I find the debate to be pointless. The fact is that this instrument has come to be identified almost exclusively as an Irish instrument, and the name accepted as proper by the vast majority of the players is "Uilleann Pipe". We are a small, but growing, community as the rest of the world figures out just how versatile this instrument is. It is difficult to learn to play, but the setup/tuning of it is what causes most of the problems. As it becomes more popular, it will also become more standardised and this will help resolve some of the problems. We are starting to see a movement for more standardised teaching of technique, which I think is a good thing in terms of the basic skillset. But at some point, it is up to the piper to go on and develope his/her own technique. That is one of the things that set us apart from our cousins in the Highland piping community. One is judged, in that community, by how rigidly they follow the standards of how a tune is played. Those standards seem to serve that discipline well, but UP'ers prefer the whole idea of never playing the same tune the same way twice. Musical scores are fine in our tradition, as long as you only use them to learn it the first time. After that, play it like you feel it.

Mick

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 01:35 PM

In one of Shakespeare's plays, there is a reference to 'woolen' pipes. Some have taken this to mean uillean, but this is dubious. This was in a previous thread- perhaps someone remembers the reference and the thread.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 02:02 PM

Indeed Mr Douglas you may speak from literary sources, I OTOH from
my grandfathers generation having FIRST hand accounts which I have
absolutely no doubt about, why Sir would they have lies so to their
own family? BTW My grandfolk made and played these instruments as well
as the Flute and little Feadog.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 02:22 PM

Big Mick comments on a growing standardization for the elbow pipes.
The military standardized the playing of the highland pipes in a way that stole the life and soul from the music. It got everyone playing to a standard that greatly discouraged individual innovation , and the Gaelic lilt was lost to an English sense of timing.
Don't let that happen to the Irish music!
By the way, there are great players of the highland pipes such as Barry Shears who are dedicated to playing in the old Gaelic style.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Big Mick
Date: 30 Aug 03 - 02:35 PM

Sandy, I agree with you with regard to the timing of the music. The standardization that I am referring to has to do with basic technique only. As the popularity of the instrument grows, the "mystical" aspects of setting them up, tuning them for a gig, and the basic use of rolls, cuts, crans, and other ornaments and graces need to be formalized in order that it isn't so damn hard to find the information and get tuition. Remember that, until fairly recently, this was an instrument designed for solo playing. It's tuning was only relative to itself. Now that it is being played in ensembles, the need to standardise certain aspects of its construction and playing. HOWEVER, that does not mean I am in favor of standardization of the correct way to play any style of the music. One of the things that created our greatest UP'ers (such as Clancy, Rowsomme, and on and on)was the habit of playing on their own and interpreting as they felt. I agree completely with you that I would not want to see any standardization of "the right way to play a tune".

You mentioned the old "Gaelic" style of playing the warpipes. Can you direct me to any resources on this? I am purchasing a Great Highland practice chanter, and eventually want to add a set of Irish Warpipes to my collection. I am very interested in learning this instrument in the Gaelic style.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Sep 03 - 11:16 PM

The "woolen" pipes appear in the Merchant of Venice. No one knows what they were.
Seamus Ennis, in a tape put out by green Linnet in 1977, says that he plays on pipes made 150 years ago by Coyne in Dublin.

I guess that the argument about Union pipes will continue. The Oxford English Dictionary passes, saying "The etymological relationship between the two terms [uillean and union] is uncertain." They go on to say that uillean is now predominant.
The earliest publication in English of the term uillean seems to be in Grove's Dictionary of Music, 1906. Anyone with verifiable earlier examples?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Sep 03 - 11:22 PM

So far as I know, it has never been suggested by anybody who understands how language works that "union", as applied to the bellows-blown Irish bagpipes, has any connection whatever to any political "union". That is Fakelore, not history, however much the myth may be believed by the credulous. If "sorefingers" has evidence to support his comments on the uilleann pipes, then he should certainly contact some of the Irish musical historians specialising in such matters, who would, I am sure, be glad to learn something that their best efforts have not, so far, revealed to them.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 01 Sep 03 - 11:52 PM

The Union/Uilleann story that I'd always heard was that Union was simply an English mispronunciation of the written "Uilleann".
Apparently some Brit read the word "Uilleann", pronounced it "Yooly-an", and it was picked up and passes on as "Union."
As good a theory as any, I suppose.

Seamus

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 01:29 AM

Well, no, it isn't; not unless there is some kind of evidence for that assumption; which, so far, we don't have. People will believe what they want to, though, particularly when, as in this case, an apparently false etymology has been repeated so often since its original publication about a century ago that it has become "received wisdom". (See, principally, Wm. Grattan Flood, A History of Irish Music, 1905). Fantasy is so often more agreeable than fact, particularly where folk music (in almost any country) is concerned; and especially where there are also political considerations involved.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: MartinRyan
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 03:37 AM

Malcolm

Did Flood write the Grove (1906) entry? Or was he the source?

While I am no expert on 19C. dictionaries of Irish, I have in the past had a look - and could find nothing to support the "uilleann" theory. I know that the experts in the pipers organisation concur with the belief that Flood created it. That, of curse, doesn't prevent them from calling their organisation Na Píobairí Uilleann AND, in English The Pipers Club !

Like "craic" this is an example of a word/term coming relatively late into Irish and become so assimilated that people believe it was always there!

Regards
p.s. It's a pity to see the bag's bladder becoming a political football....

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: MartinRyan
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 03:42 AM

It was, of course, Q who mentioned Grove.

Regards

p.s. See how easy it is to confuse sources?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: fogie
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 04:04 AM

It would be interesting to have comments on the relative virtues of the various keys of the chanters in use. I presume that the Bb and D predominate, but being a Bb instrument player myself, I'd like to know if UPs prefer to play Bb solo, as opposed to in consorts.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: smallpiper
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 05:19 AM

I really don't think that it matters that much Uillean was mis pronounced or misapropriated in to or out of union (or the other way around) the accepted name is now Uillian.

Big Mick and Sandy MeLean there is a hot movement in scotland (which is being really frowned upon by the piping establishment) to restore (or as I prefer to call it Demilitarise) the music. They are learning from pipers and the piping tradition as was carried accross the pond before the standardisation of the music and playing and are bringing it back into mainstream music. Admittedly it is being done by predominantly smallpipers and border pipers but it has champions in the Highland piping circles as well.

Try Hamish Moore for more information.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 08:55 AM

Well, the way I heard it is that Packy Og O'Scuid invented the Uilleann Pipes on July 8th, 1625 at 8 pm, when his wife Peggy belted him in the head with the bellows from the fire. A lightbulb went off in his head, remarkable so many years before Tomas Edison's cook invented the light bulb as a joke, and as I was saying Packy suddunly realized that he could drink and play at the same time if instead of getting belted in the head with bellows, he could belt bellows around his waist and play the pipes. Shortly there after (fourty years to be exact) he finnally made a playable reed, and well, then having nothing else challenging before him, he stole a bunch of chanters from pipers of varrious sizes (the key one played in in the 17th cent, was determined by the size of the piper not the pipes, which were fitted to the piper) slapped some keys on them and invented regulaters, called regulators because now pipers of any size could play one set of pipes, now in the key of Gee Wiz. After a particulary heavy rain, the pipes swelled up to D (short for damn but these effin pipes is wet, Peg) and well, Paddy Keenan was sure to follow. So, then came the diddle dahs and the fiddley gees and Seamus Ennis, and all, not to mention Michael Comba O'Sullivan and Tomas Edison's pixie dust machine.
Eventualy Seth Galligher invented the playable set of pipes, so that playing was not based on the wittleing skill of the player but on solid German rules of craft, mass production on a tiny scale and you should try his flutes as well, but keep his chanters away from Tim Britton and I will say no more about that, except that a good pakistani dinner can be had in Jackson hights for much less than the price of a set of Uilleann pipes, washed down with a dram of whiskey and well, the rest is silence.
I hope this helps, what was the question again?
Larry

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 08:56 AM

PS Did ya see my new song, After the victory, Mick?

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Big Mick
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 10:14 AM

Larry, I lost much of my email. Can you direct me to where I can see it?

Mick

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 10:40 AM

Ohhhh about five days back on Mudcat, maybe seven, New SOng, After the Victory... here, I will bring it up with an ol' refresh. CHeers Larry.

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 02:13 PM

http://www.tyronepipers.com/subversion_in_scottish_music.htm

Big Mick,
   You will find some good information at this site.
Also, if you search for "Barry Shears" on Google it should turn up some leads.
   Sandy

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 02:30 PM

Sorry for posting above as guest...... lost that damn cookie again. :-}

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 05:03 PM

I posted mention of uillean in Grove, 1906, but, not having that book of that date available, I don't know who wrote the reference.

Oxford English Dictionary:
Union pipes- "A form of bagpipes in which the wind-bag is inflated by bellows worked by the elbow." OED. From piob uilleann, piob = pipe plus genitive singular of uille (= elbow).
The word uillean was admitted to the OED in the 1987 Supplement.

Now lets not have any argument with the authority! (He, he, he!)

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: David Ingerson
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 08:34 PM

There's been a lot of interesting info and arguments in this thread.

I seem to remember drawings of pipers playing with foot-driven bellows on the floor. Would that make them cois pipes?

David

Subject: RE: Ullean Pipes
From: InOBU
Date: 02 Sep 03 - 10:11 PM

Yes indeed, Daithi, that would be elbowless Ed Edwards of Ennis... who was also known for a number of other antics on the floor. He invented the hot foot in 1266, and wrote the pipe tune Kittys Rambles to the child's sauspan. - Larry

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

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: 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 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: 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
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: smallpiper
Date: 03 Sep 03 - 08:15 AM

spot on pp

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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