The Wheels of the World: 300 Years of Irish Uilleann Pipers

[oliver]

Having had some experience of the industry, I can say with near-certainty that this is the voice of publishers trying to hype their product, not John McSherry big-noting himself. Humility is not in the publishers' dictionary.

Seriously... if you're a piper why would you not get the book?! It smacks of a certain snobbery, if I may say, for people to be condemning a book they haven't read for bias, when who among them has a) played like McSherry, or b) written a 650-page history of uilleann piping?

By the way, who's the publisher ? Can't see any name on the website. Anyway, the idea of the book comes from John McSherry, and he certainly has his own word to say, for apparently the project initially depends on him. But this is not what matters the most.

Quoting from the promotional website :
"The book evolved from renowned piper John McSherry asking author and acquaintance Colin Harper if he fancied helping create a small book based around transcriptions of his (John’s) compositions and interpretation of traditional tunes, with perhaps some biographical material.
Being an historian at heart, Colin’s instinct was to expand the prose content in order to cover something of the uilleann pipes’ history..."

That is the thing which seems a bit far-fetched to me, how to mix both concepts ? A difficult task I think. This is why I said from the start that it could be interesting and that I'd like to have a look at it.

[Mr.Gumby]

By the way, who's the publisher ?

Jawbone press

[oliver]

Thanks !

[johnnyalpha]

Speaking of publishers, for a moment I had Colin Harper confused with Harper Collins...

[johnnyalpha]

"The book evolved from renowned piper John McSherry asking author and acquaintance Colin Harper if he fancied helping create a small book based around transcriptions of his (John’s) compositions and interpretation of traditional tunes, with perhaps some biographical material.
Being an historian at heart, Colin’s instinct was to expand the prose content in order to cover something of the uilleann pipes’ history..."

That is the thing which seems a bit far-fetched to me, how to mix both concepts ? A difficult task I think. This is why I said from the start that it could be interesting and that I'd like to have a look at it.

I think it's one thing to say the book evolved from a particular concept, and quite another to say the book has two fundamental concepts. But in any case, I would expect the histories/biographies to aid in the interpretation of McSherry's arrangements, just as you would get more out of any artist's work by knowing more of their influences.

[billh]

'Uilleann' is a 20th century construct, and the union pipes are at most 250 years old.

[Piobairi Uilleann Inis Fa]

Except "real history" books are never "unbiased." Not a single one. There is no such thing as "objective" history

This is quite a rough statement, although I can understand it anyway.

and no matter how objective anyone tries to be, they will never escape who they are and their worldview and particular methodology in their analysis.

This is precisely the point. Historians TRY to be objective, even though they may or might not succeed as you say, nonetheless real historians try !

As for history being considered a "modern science," it's just not.

This is not what historians told me at university, but here there might be some cultural difference.

I will give you one strong example of biased history writing: "The Irish Famine". A famine is an act of God. The history writers clearly took a few from the English position and blamed the starvation on God, while tons of sheep, barley, wheat, etc was shipped off to England. That one still is written by historians and the media alike with significant taint. Also, the only difference between the historians writing about patriots and terrorists is which side wins and which side the writer is on.

[Marky691]

'Uilleann' is a 20th century construct, and the union pipes are at most 250 years old.

Uilleann means elbow in Irish. Unless Irish people only developed elbows in the 20th century then I would imagine the term has been around a lot longer than that!! Many pipers wouldn't have had a word of English back in the day, so the term Union pipes would mean nothing to them, (as it is 'as bearla') leading one to surmise that the term Uillin/uilleann has been used to describe Irish pipes for as long as they existed. The uilleann pipes started to develop at the start of the 18th century from the pastoral pipes, so as an instrument, I think 300 years is completely accurate.

[geoff wooff]

The word Uilleann was used in literature as a name for the Pipes back in the 18th Century. As with Wikipedia, and other information factors, a published use is often regarded as important for dating something.

I cannot recall the exact book title but my memory says the author's name was Walker and the book was a travel guide ( travelog) of a trip to Ireland and published about 1780.

I'm sure someone here will know of this publication, perhaps a copy exists in the NPU library, and can confirm or correct me.

Some people are now wanting to differentiate between the Concert Pitch ( and generally wide bore) Pipes and the 19th Century (Flat ) Sets by the use of the name ' Union' for the older style and ' Uilleann' for the 20th century versions.

Personally I don't care what anyone calls them.

[Mr.Gumby]

Nicholas Carolan's paper on the terminology of the pipes

Irish antiquarians of the 1780s used a variety of terms. About 1784
the unreliable antiquarian speculator general Charles Vallancey
observed to the twenty-four-year-old Joseph Cooper Walker, who
was then researching in Dublin the first book on Irish music, that the
Irish had pipes of two kinds, ‘one filled by the mouth, the other by the bellows at the elbow or Uilean’,
the latter word a form of the Irish word for elbow. In referring to the old Irish word
‘Cuislanagh, Pipers’, Vallancey says
‘I think Bagpipers; because they at this day call a piper by that name,
and he names the bellows, bollog na Cuisli, the bellows of the Cuisli, or
Veins of the Arm, at the first joint, and on the outside is Ullan or the
elbow – so that I take Ullan Pipes and Cuisli pipes to be the same...’.

Vallancey’s coinage of ‘Ullan Pipes’ was motivated by a wish to
make a connection with the ‘woollen pipes’ of Shakespeare in
The Merchant of Venice. When Walker came to print in 1786 he repeated
Vallancey’s observations and passed on his supposition:
‘Vallency [sic] concludes that Ullan Pipes and Cuisle Pipes are one and
the same’.

In time, as will be seen, this first term, which has no ancestry before
Vallancey but was coined by him, would give rise to the term
‘uilleann pipes’.

Personally I don't care what anyone calls them.

'The pipes' seems to suffice quite nicely, as far as I am concerned.

[geoff wooff]

[quote="Mr.Gumby"
'The pipes' seems to suffice quite nicely, as far as I am concerned.[/quote]

Within in the realm of ITM yes.

[Mr.Gumby]

Within in the realm of ITM yes.

Outside that, add 'Irish'

Joseph Cooper Walker's Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards can be found here, by the way

[geoff wooff]

Within in the realm of ITM yes.

Outside that, add 'Irish'

Joseph Cooper Walker's Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards can be found here, by the way

Thankyou my ever watchfull Librarian... may your pipes stay shinny and tunefull !

[Finikey O'Reeley]

Received my copy today and, while I haven't read all 600 pages, it looks like a treasure.

[An Draighean]

Received my copy today and, while I haven't read all 600 pages, it looks like a treasure.

Mine came in today's post also, autographed by the authors which I thought was a nice extra touch. I'm impressed so far; nicely laid out and printed. Looking forward to reading the whole thing.