Great Irish Warpipes
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For list of All-Ireland War pipe champions see here: War pipe champions
The Great Irish Warpipes, (Irish: píob mhór; literally "great bagpipes"), played at least for over 1500 years. The first references to the bagpipes in Ireland are found in the 5th century Brehon Laws, although this may refer to the triplepipe reed instrument found from Iron age Ireland and Britain. Mention is made in a dinnseahchas (or topographical poem), “Aonach Carman”, the fair of Carman, a composition of the 11th century found in the Book of Leinster. The earliest representations of pipe-playing are to be seen on the High Crosses some 1500 years ago, and illustrations are further recorded in the 16th century. The first use of the Gaelic term in Ireland is recorded in a poem by Sean O’Neachtain (c. 1650-1728), in which the pipes are referred to as "píb mhór."
Although today the Uilleann pipes are the instrument typically identified as "Irish pipes," the warpipes have a long and significant history in Ireland as well as in Scotland, though the Scottish tradition has overshadowed the Irish one in the past 180 years or so.
The bagpipe was a popular instrument in Medieval Europe but, in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, it seems to have arrived — or, at any rate, to have become the “warpipe” — no earlier than sometime in the 15th or early 16th century. In the literature available on the subject, a great antiquity is often attributed to the bagpipe in Ireland, but it is difficult to substantiate this. A “piper” mentioned in an early source may not necessarily be a bagpiper. One claim is that the Brehon laws, codified in the 7th century, mention pipers (pipaireadha), but the relevant quote does not appear in the earliest material on the law and is from a later addition, like a gloss or commentary incorporated by a scribe to the text.
A number of erroneous attributions are to be found in W.H. Grattan Flood’s Story of the Bagpipe[1]; he claims for example that the Statute of Kilkenny banned pipers in 1367, but the act mentions only “Heidanes” — some kind of minstrels like flute players. No record of any battle of the time in which there were Irish of Scottish soldiers gives us any reference to bagpipes.
A quote from an Irish Gaelic version of “Fierabas” may be our first reference to Warpipes: The quote “sinnter adharca agus piba agaibh do tinol bur sluaigh” translates as “let horns and pipes be played by you to gather your host.” The manuscript may date to the 15th century and the writer may have had bagpipes in mind. Clear references to the Irish Piob Mhor begin to appear at about the same time as they do in Scotland. Our first relate to Henry VIII's siege of Boulogne. A muster roll of the “Kerne to be transported into Englaunde to serve the kinge” contains entries of various pipers attached to these forces, such as “The Baron of Delvene’s Kerne — Brene McGuntyre pyper”.
Most helpful is an entry in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) for May 1544. It states that, “In the same moneth also passed through the citie of London in warlike manner, to the number of seaven hundred Irishmen, having for their weapons darts and handguns with bagpipes before them: and in St. James Park besides Westminster they mustered before the king.” In comparison, the first historic account of a battle in which the Scots used the Piob Mhor is to be found in the French officer Beague’s eyewitness account of the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, 1547. But if an English ballad is to be believed, the pipes may have also been played at Flodden in 1513.
From this point on, various references to the Irish warpipes make it clear that the Irish tradition was comparable to the Scottish one. In a 1581 volume, Vincentio Galili, the father of the astronomer Galileo, wrote that the bagpipe “…is much used by the Irish: to its sound this unconquered fierce and warlike people march their armies and encourage each other to deeds of valor. With it they also accompany the dead to the grave making such sorrowful sounds as to invite, nay, compel the bystander to weep.” In the same year, John Derricke published the poem “The Image of Ireland,” in which the pipes are already used to convey signals in battle:
Now goe the foes to wracke/ The Kerne apace doe sweate/ And baggepype then instead of Trompe/ Doe lull the back retreate
One famous description of the pipes from Richard Stanihurst’s De Rebus Hibernicis (1586), reads as follows in English translation:
- “The Irish also use instead of a trumpet a wooden pipe constructed with the most ingenious skill to which a leather bag is attached with very closely plated leather bands. From the side of the skin issues a pipe through which as if through a tube the piper blows with swollen neck and distended cheeks, as it is filled with air the skin swells: when it swells he presses it down again with his arm. At this pressure two other wooden pipes, a shorter and a longer, emit a loud and piercing sound. There is also a fourth pipe, pierced with several holes which by opening and closing the holes with nimble fingers the piper manages to elicit from the upper pipes a loud or low sound as he thinks fit. The stem and stern of the whole affair is that the wind should have no outlet through any part of the bag except the mouths of the pipes. For if anyone (as is the practice of merrymakers when they want to give annoyance to these pipers) make even a pinhole in the skin the instrument is done for because the bag collapses. This sort of instrument is held among the Irish to be a whetstone for martial courage: for just as other soldiers are stirred by the sound of trumpets, so they are hotly stimulated to battle by the noise of this affair.”
(Stanihurst clearly did not understand the proper functions of a chanter and drones.)
As in Scotland there were personal pipers, such as the “Bryen Reoghe, piper to Thomas of the Myll”, whom one Piers Butler (Fitzedmond) claimed in 1589 to have slain some years before.
The pipes seem to have figured prominently in the war with William of Orange. When the exiled King James II arrived in Cork City in March 1689, he was greeted with “bagpipes and dancing, throwing their mantles under his horse’s feet”. On his way to the castle in Dublin, “the pipers of the several companies played the Tune of The King enjoys his own again”.
On the other hand, there are late 17th century reports of peacetime use of the pipes, for example to play for hurling teams. For 18th century references, however, it is often difficult to tell whether the pipes referred to in a particular case are Piob Mhor or another instrument, notably the Uillean Pipes or their predecessor the Pastoral Pipes. The last occasion at which the old Irish Piob Mhor is known to have sounded in battle is at Fontenoy (11 May 1745).
A number of Irish units are known to have had pipers for at least the next half-century; in 1778, there was a Piper Barney Thompson in Lord Rawdon’s Volunteers of Ireland in New York. Thompson, who reportedly came from Hillsborough, Co. Down, was supposedly the pipe major of a full band. While no other pipers are explicitly mentioned on the extant muster roll, the fact that he is listed as a piper, while other musicians are listed as fifers, indicates at least that he played the bagpipes and not a fife. In 1793, according to a 7 September Dublin newspaper:
- “Major Doyle announces his intention to introduce into his newly-formed Regiment (later the Royal Irish Fusiliers) the peculiar music of Ireland, the pipes, an introduction that appeals to the Irishman very strongly, and marks that warm affection for everything connected with his native soil which has always characterised his conduct.”
Then for 2 November: “A War Pipers band in Major Doyle’s regiment was formed.” This band seems to have lasted for a few years, but is not believed to have survived into the Peninsular War, although a few other Irish units reportedly had pipers in 1793 and the years thereafter. In contrast to the national feeling toward the pipes in Major Doyle's regiment, for several decades into the 19th century, the few references that we can find to Piob Mhor in Ireland identify them with Scotland. On 4 April 1843, an advertisement in the Examiner, a Kerry paper, asked for “a man who can play the Scotch pipes” for the Scartaglin Temprance Society (none but a teetotaler need apply!). Similarly, Maurice Coyne was listed in a Dublin directory as a “maker of Union (Uillean) and Scotch pipes.” The former instrument seems to have been far more popular in a pacified Ireland.
In the second half of the 19th century, however, the general revival of Irish nationalism and Gaelic culture seems to have coincided with a return of the popularity of the warpipes. The art picked up again until the pipes achieved considerable popularity in both military and civilian use.
Today, pipe bands of the same kind as the known Highland form are a standard feature of British regiments with Irish honors and the Irish Armed Forces, and there are many local bands throughout both the Republic and Ulster. The Irish warpipes as played today are one and the same with the Scottish Highland bagpipe.
Attempts in the past to make a distinct instrument for Irish pipers have not proven popular in the long run. In the first half of the 20th century, it was very common to play pipes with only one tenor drone; the reason for this will be discussed later. Several attempts were made to improve the pipes; the most successful was the London pipemaker Starck’s “Brian Boru” bagpipe, with a keyed chanter that could play a full range of traditional music and a baritone drone, often held with the tenor and bass in a common stock. Such pipes are produced by few makers today and are played by only a minority of pipers. Starck’s pipes for Irish players, whether two- or three-droned, were also typically turned in a distinct, somewhat antique-looking style, with button-sized mounts instead of the normal projecting mounts, cup-shaped drone tops with slightly projecting ringcaps, and rows of narrow beads instead of combing and beading. A pattern more or less like this was made by several makers, but is also rare today. In the 1950s and early 1960s, some Irish pipers in the British Army, notably the Irish Guards, played pipes that followed this pattern, but the turning was on the whole more massive, with wider beading. It would be most informative to know who the maker of these pipes was.
A number of authors have suggested that the old Irish Piob Mhor was a somewhat distinct instrument from the Scottish Highland bagpipe, but the evidence on which they have based their claims is weak. There are several reasons to believe that the old Irish and and Scottish pipes were more or less the same instrument. For one thing, Scottish and Irish culture were not isolated, and artistic trends could be copied and shared. At one early Highland piping competition, an “Irish pibrach” was played, and there has been speculation that some of this “typically Scottish” piping music (piobaireachd, the “classical music of the Highland bagpipe”) has come from Ireland. If it is true that the MacCrimmons of Skye once had some Irish students at their piping school, these would have presumably played piobaireachd on Scottish-type chanters. The main dilemma lies in determining such technical points as the number of drones and the tuning of the old Irish pipes. Unfortunately there is little information about the early instruments. The following rough or inaccurate illustrations are known to survive:
1. A 1788 engraving by John Braisy of a drawing made of a contemporary painting of the siege of Boulogne, 1544 (the original, formerly at Dowdry Castle, Sussex, was destroyed when the castle burned down in 1793). This picture shows the small detail of a piper leading kerne after a cattle raid, but is not helpful in showing any significant details of the instrument.
2. A wood carving formerly at Woodstock Castle, Co. Kilkenny, dating to the 15th or 16th century showing a piper with a shorter and a longer drone and a chanter. The proportions of the instrument are quite questionable, the drones being surprisingly short and the chanter enormous. The picture is on the whole simplistic.
3. A c. 16th-century painting in the margin of a missal of the Abbey of Rosgall, co. Kildare, and now in the Bodleian Library, showing a piper playing an instrument with two drones and a chanter in the usual positions. The drones are of unequal length and all pipes have flaring Medieval-style bell ends. Otherwise, however, the picture is quite rough and disproportionate.
4. A possibly 16th-century manuscript of “Dinnseanchus”, an Irish topographical history, contains an initial letter in the form of a pig playing the pipes. The instrument has two drones, one clearly a bass and one shorter. The chanter and drones seem to slightly bell out at the end. The illustration looks relatively “normal” in configuration, but is still sketchy enough that no further details can be deduced from it.
5. A painting from around 1575 by Lucas DeHeere. Now in the library of the University of Ghent, it bears the caption “Irish Folk as they were attired in the reign of the late King Henry”, and shows a group of people which includes a boy in a saffron shirt or tunic, armor top, and playing a bagpipe. There are again two drones, apparently in a common stock, and a large chanter, all of which end with flaring bell ends. The bag is very bulbous, and its position is odd; it appears to be held under the piper’s right arm, but the drones go over the piper’s left shoulder. Although this is our best-done illustration, the instrument does not seem to depict an Irish Warpipe, but rather a German/Low Countries “Dudelsack”, such as would have been more familiar to the painter.
6. A cartoonish engraving in the aforementioned Image of Ireland (1581), showing kerne marching to the sound of the pipes; the piper’s instrument is depicted in exactly the same manner as in DeHeere’s painting. Probably neither illustration was done from life, but they might have had a common source. The pipes are strikingly similar to the Dudelsack in a 1514 drawing of a bagpiper by Durer. Another engraving in Image of Ireland shows a detail of a piper lying dead with his pipes beside him.
7. A drawing of the Battle of Ballyshannon (1595 or thereabouts) thought to have been made by an English soldier present at the battle, is on the whole crude but somewhat more helpful. It shows at least one piper and an extra bagpipe bigger than he behind him. Both pipes are drawn with some of the usual features (a bass drone and a probably tenor drone, a chanter, and flaring ends on every pipe, especially the bass drone), but oddly, the blowpipe projects from a neck in the bag, and the tenor drone hangs on the side. This may or may not have been a mistake.
8. There is also a drawing by George Cruickshank entitled “Carousal and Plunder at the Palace of the Bishop of Ferns” in a book about the history of the Irish Troubles of 1798, in which a piper plays a set with three drones roughly sketched. A blurry color image of the same is known to the author. As Cruickshank was drawing many years after the fact, it is questionable as to whether he was correct in illustrating a Piob Mhor player, and in such a fashion, in the context of this picture.
Despite the fact that the majority of the above sources show two-droned pipes, the modification in the 20th century of Highland pipes by Irish pipers who omitted one tenor seems to be a mistake in terms of making the pipes “more Irish”. At the time those descriptions were made, the Scottish pipes would probably have been the same; at any rate, there seems to be no evidence that there was a third drone until well into the 17th century. A pig piper similar to the one in Dinnseanchus with two drones exists in a 16th-century Scottish psalter, and apparently shows the same basic instrument. Like the missal picture, this too is roughly executed; what should be a tenor drone projects from what seems to be a bass, and the chanter again seems disproportionately long.
Next to no museum specimens of the pre-Gaelic revival Irish Piob Mhor are known. A now lost instrument was once in the Musee de Cluny, Paris. It was said to have been played by a piper of the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy in 1745. Although the museum seems to have discarded this set, a picture of it may exist in a 1902 catalog, as well as a sketch made by Alexander Macaulay at the museum in 1936. The pipes seem to have had a green bagcover, two tenor drones like some 18th-century Highland bagpipes, and a common, possibly fork-shaped stock for the drones like that in the 1714 Scottish painting of the Piper to the Laird of Grant (Francis Collinson suggests in "The Bagpipe" (1975) that the drones were bent near the stock; this would be quite strange). In his November 1968 Piping Times article, "The Battle of Cremona", Macaulay compared the Fontenoy pipes, particularly as regards the apparently sizeable, large-holed chanter, to the supposedly contemporary (Culloden-era, c. 1745) Highland pipes at Blair Castle. It would be wonderful to have an accessible copy of at least a picture of this valuable instrument.
There is also a chanter made perhaps between 1812 and 1837 by T. Kenna of Dublin, a well-known Uillean pipe maker, in the National Museums of Scotland. It is quite standard in design; it may well have been conceived as a "Scotch" bagpipe (like Coyne's pipes above), and may have been copied from a Scottish pattern. Nonetheless, it is the only extant pre-Gaelic revival example of an Irish-made Píob Mhór known to the author. It should be understood that the pipes were once more variable than today; things like the number of drones were not standardized until comparatively recently. If the Fontenoy pipes had two tenor drones, another set coming from another region could have borne a different arrangement. The big or bass drone (dos m(h)ór) is mentioned in at least two Irish sources, the poem “Cia an traghna so san ghort” and the 1709 version of a puritanical tract, “Parliament na m Ban.” Circa 1690, the poet Daibhidh O’Bruadair refers to “pib tri mbhenn.” This has been translated as “three-droned bagpipe”, but historian Seann Donnelly thinks something like “bagpipe with three pipes” (chanter and two drones?) would be a more correct translation.
