The Introduction of Irish Whistle Tuning Slides?

[Pawel]

Dear forum members, as a new member my question may be one of those that everybody here already knows the answer to and so never mentions, one which I have not searched the correct terms for, one that has no answer, or, perhaps, one that has yet to be asked. I have been attempting to discover when tuning slides were first introduced and used with Irish Whistles. Web searches return lots of results that reference tuning or tunable whistles but nothing regarding their history or first use. Many topics here discuss the relative merits of tunable vs not tunable but without reference to when the latter capability came into use.

My assumption has been that the development of the Irish Whistle would have progressed through various stages over centuries with changing materials, design and outside influence.

As a rough outline whistles would probably have been fashioned as D.I.Y. efforts from locally available materials, presumably wood, progressed to combined materials, wood with brass fittings for example, and then on to inexpensive wholly manufactured materials such as tin or brass sheet and from there, with the increasing availability of cheap metal sheet materials, to mass production. There may have been many other transitional or anomalous steps predicated on place, availability, maker, individual inspiration or financial ability.

Through the early decades of the 19’th century brass instruments, for which tuning slides were a common element, experienced a period of intense development following the construction of the first brass rolling mills in Saltford, UK, in about 1790. Earlier metal sheet goods made from iron, tin, copper and brass seem to have been produced by battery, a hammering process, that was time and labour intensive with inconsistent dimensions and quality, therefore costly for general use. Brass bands and instruments became more common in the second and third decades of the 19’th century as material of reliable and consistent quality became available at cheaper prices but I have found no direct evidence for their influence on the whistle.

At this point my best guess is that tuning slides for whistles did not come into regular use until the last quarter of the 19’th century.

Can someone here provide more details?

[Mr.Gumby]

You are making a lot of assumptions there. I don't think there were any metal whistles before the mid 19th century. I have yet to see any tuning slides in older whistles : the first tuneable whistles were the Generations when they adopted the plastic heads in the early 1950s. Proper slides weren't seen before the final quarter of the last century.
Very few old metal whistles have anything to associate them with Ireland. The ones available here were usually British made, available in Ireland in hardware shops etc. Whistles in celluloid, metal and occasionally wood were available on the continent but didn't cross the channel. They were, on the main, cheap and mass produced. Without slides.

[Terry McGee]

Yes, I was going to ask, Pawel, if by "tuning slides" you meant only telescoping metal slides such as on the flute, or if you were including other forms of tuning, such as being able to move the plastic head on metal tube whistles. Which seems to have been a 1960's thing. Sigh, I remember it well. So happy we could buy whistles, but a bit frustrated that we had to conjure the heads off them to be able to tune them to our friends.

But way back at the start of the 19th century, we also had the English Flageolet, which fingered like a whistle, and did feature a pair of telescoping brass tubes for tuning. But rather "up-market" from the common whistle! I looked around for an image of one showing the slide, but it seems most people close the slide up before taking an image. Modesty? This link will take you to an image that illustrates the beast, though it didn't seem to want to be transplanted to here:

https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/imag ... c3ab37.jpg

From top down, the body, the head with male (thinner) slide sticking out to the left, and the windcap, with the beak for blowing into sticking out to the right. The female slide is hidden inside the fat end of the body, the bulge there strengthening the wood around the tube.

It's a good question, incidentally. We take our poor old whistles a bit for granted - I'd love to see a site where we could plug in what we know, what we wonder about and what we come across, to try to build up a better picture of its history and development.

[Mr.Gumby]

I think over time, there weren't many whistles that were 'upmarket ' enough to warrant the extra work/cost of a tuning slide. The only whistle I'd consider more upmarket is one that came up for sale perhaps ten years ago. It came in a wooden box, was originally sold in Harrod's during the 1930s and was made of wood. Can't remember is it had a slide but it had a 'posh' air about it.

[pancelticpiper]

It is a good question.

Which, it seems to me, points to the fact that you can't have tuning slides on Irish whistles until things designed and built and sold as "Irish whistles" existed.

The analogy, seems to me, is the flute. When I got into Irish music in the 1970s all the Irish fluters I knew of (not many, me being in the USA) played antique flutes, mostly made from c1830 to c1880, few if any made in Ireland, and none intended for Irish traditional music.

At that time all the whistleplayers I knew of played Generation whistles, not made in Ireland and not originally designed or built for traditional Irish music. As mentioned, Generations were made from a single length of brass tubing with integral mouthpiece (and thus non-tunable) until the injection moulding of Styrene plastic became widespread in the 1950s and Generation began making the now-familiar plastic tops. The tops were glued on at the factory so these whistles were also non-tunable as they came.

Over here in the US the first "Irish whistle" I saw, still not made in Ireland but designed and built specifically for Irish traditional music, was by Bernard Overton. A local player had travelled in Ireland in the late 1970s and acquired what must have been one of the earliest Overton Low D whistles.

Those Overtons sometimes had tuning slides, so perhaps it could be said that "Irish whistles" per se had tuning slides from the get-go, if indeed Overtons were the first purpose-built "Irish whistles".

[Terry McGee]

I think over time, there weren't many whistles that were 'upmarket ' enough to warrant the extra work/cost of a tuning slide. The only whistle I'd consider more upmarket is one that came up for sale perhaps ten years ago. It came in a wooden box, was originally sold in Harrod's during the 1930s and was made of wood. Can't remember is it had a slide but it had a 'posh' air about it.

Oooh, intriguing, Mr Gumby. I have seen references to Harrod's Penny Whistles but I don't know it that's what we're talking about here. But it illustrates my point. Stuff comes, and then goes, and we have a vague memory of it, but if we can't get it down, our history is deficient.

[Moof]

It is a good question.

Which, it seems to me, points to the fact that you can't have tuning slides on Irish whistles until things designed and built and sold as "Irish whistles" existed.

Yes, good point. Maybe Pawel simply meant tin whistles, but instruments being made for a specific style of music must be vastly more unusual than people picking up existing instruments and developing music around their capabilities.

Maybe tunable whistles only came about when people started demanding them? My memories only go back as far as the late 60s and relatives or family friends talking about music, and there were good whistles, so-so whistles, and bad whistles. "Bad" probably often meant out of tune, but they were cheap and plentiful and presumably you could just look for a good one.

But if you're paying proper money for a better whistle, you're going to be a lot more picky.

[Mr.Gumby]

At this point it is probably pedantic to object to calling whistles 'Irish' whistles, but really, there's nothing specifically Irish about them. Very few historic whistles have any connection to Ireland. I know of one late 19th century make that referred to Ireland in its branding but even that was made in London. I don't believe whistles were produced commercially on any scale in Ireland before Pat Sky started making the Feadán in the 1970s, which went on to become the "Clare' after he sold the gear. Feodóg was hot on its heels but both were modelled after the example set by Generation and you have to wonder what makes any of these specifically 'Irish ', except for the music often played on them. Ofcourse every man and his dog have since hopped on the bandwagon.

[Terry McGee]

I still puzzle over who (other than the Irish and the Irish Diaspora, and the South African Kwela players) bought tin whistles in the quantities they were made in for the period they have been made for? What sort of music were played on them? In what keys?

Anyone here grow up in or near a house that had a tin whistle in it before you took up an interest? Any idea who payed it, and what they played?

Do I remember that when you bought a whistle, you got a little pamphlet with it, with a few hints and a tune or two? Do the tunes give us any clues? Hmmm, suddenly remembered the Clarkes I bought had 4 tunes - Go to sleep my little baby (Welsh lullaby); It's raining, it's pouring; There was one in the bed and the little one said; and Old Macdonald, those three being English. So was the market kids' tunes?

[Nanohedron]

So was the market kids' tunes?

Sounds very plausible. A whistle's something you could buy for your youngster and it wouldn't break the bank, even if it ended up collecting dust.

[an seanduine]

I think when you look to the employment of all manner of musical instruments (and noisemakers) in England you would do well to look at the Busking and Clogging traditions. On the street corner, you would go with what you had, to harvest a farthing or two. Robert Clarke is thought to have got his start in 1843.

Bob

[Mr.Gumby]

You know, the past is a foreign country.. and all that. People had to make their own entertainment in pre television days, any old song, popular tune and what have you are likely to have been played on whistles or whatever instrument that was cheap and easy to play.
Children's songs are an introduction when learning any instrument because that are the simple tunes everybody knows, it doesn't mean they are the intended repertoire, they are a start.

[Moof]

My N=1 experience is that in England at least, whistles weren't necessarily for playing kids' tunes, they were kids' toys. Nearly all my friends seemed to have them in the 60s/early 70s; I got mine in my Christmas stocking. My classmates mostly weren't from Irish families, their parents didn't play instruments, and there was no thought of tuition. We all learned recorder at school, so we could get bits of tunes out of them if and when we felt like it.

Eventually most kids grew out of them, along with dolls and cap pistols. When I started secondary school I heard we could get after-school music tuition free of charge if we had our own instruments, so I turned up the first week with my whistle. The tutor snirped his nose up, informed me in no uncertain terms it wasn't an instrument, and sent me away. I can still remember the shame of that first encounter with privilege; at my primary school, no one came from a family able to pay for "proper" instruments, but at least half a dozen of my secondary school classmates went to orchestra night carrying fiddles, clarinets, cellos and horns. People who couldn't afford them couldn't have lessons, so I didn't.

It was a narrow escape, as I'm sure the tunes some of my family played on their not-instruments would have been considered not-music by my school. I'm equally sure some of the unfortunate parents who had to endure the end-of-term concerts where their offspring scraped their way through funereal orchestral pieces would have given me a grateful ovation if I'd stood up and knocked out the Tarbolton on a whistle.

[pancelticpiper]

When you read the short bios of Irish musicians of the past they often say things like

"at the tender age of 6 he started on the lowly whistle, but after showing promise he graduated onto the ________ "

which the __________ might be anything: pipes, box, fiddle, flute.

There's an excellent Dublin-born whistle player here who, when required to state what instrument he's playing, introduces it as "the lowly whistle".

Even today, at an outdoor music festival, one sees children walking around tooting on the whistles their parents just bought them.

[fintano]

I have read a few places in books from the early 19th century (couldn't find the references now) statements like "what young boy has not made himself a whistle from willow?" Usually in a discussion about the origin of the Flageolet.

So I found this interesting video
How To Make A Traditional Willow Whistle/ Flute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSrXDZdwihU

Note that he's making an overtone flute. Apparently these are popular in Northern Europe, but I don't think they were ever used in the British Isles.

But if you look at what he's making, you can see that you could easily add some fingerholes and have something like what we now think of as a whistle. And it would have a way to adjust the length of the tube to boot.

You might say that it would be difficult to make fingerholes that play in tune, but that's not the point. This is a toy for children, and its main purpose is to annoy the parents, not to play a proper tune. Any old fingerholes will do.

I'll mention also the tradition of the African-American cane fife. I remember seeing a video of making them. Perhaps it was in that Alan Lomax series that was on PBS a few decades ago. But when it came to putting in the fingerholes, he didn't measure or anything. As I remember, he just burned them with a hot poker.

Keep in mind that the way the cane fife is played is one fife and one or more snare drums. There's no requirement that two fifes are in tune with each other, or even play a standard scale. I think the origins go back to somewhere in Africa, but I don't know much about it.

It wasn't until sheet tin became available that tinkers could craft a whistle along the lines of a Clarke, and that design is not tunable. But it was not a disposable item like a willow whistle, so some anonymous craftsman must have worked out hole sizes and position so you could play a tune on it--and it could be sold for more money. There were already flutes and Flageolets around, which would give a starting point for a design.