Promoting the Bagpipe Revival since 1986
The Bagpipe Society
George Burchill & Piping in Greece
This edition is from our archives, so it is presented as scanned pages rather than text.
The Deeper Mysteries.
At the recent-making workshop held in Milton Keynes in October 1986, I noticed that all the makers secured the 2 shaped blades of cane together with red thread of different gauges, prior to gluing them onto the staple. Is this absolutely necessary - or any less green thread? Stanley Wolff, Shadwell
You are clearly a highly evolved being, since the capacity for such sensitive discernment of the HIGHER SECRETS of reed-making is bestowed upon few. Your experience shows how things reveal themselves to us only when we are ready and fit to receive them, doesn’t it? You exquisitely developed intuition has shown you naturally that which THE MAKERS rarely reveal unasked, in fact, namely that the higher vibrations of the coloured thread affect the molecular structure of the cane at a deeper level than is apparent to those, shall we say, woven of coarser cloth. The colour RED was used by THE MAKERS, because it carries the lowest rate of vibration in the hierarchy and is less likely to represent a danger to the uninitiated. The aspirant must purify the dense matter of his being before he can bear the intensity of the vibrations of the higher Colours. It has also been shown to you that the thickness of the thread that binds must be matched to that which is bound. That you have already perceived the hue of the next colour in the hierarchy is truly uplifting; have patience, the CALL TO THE GREEN will come when you are ready for it. In the meantime you must be sure to continue to develop your Strength and Awareness. In the knowledge that great gifts carry with them great responsibility, the responsibility which will be required of you at the final step of TAKING ORANGE when you will be worthy to be privy to the company of the ineffable Swah Deva Himself, first among the Company of the Elders (so-called, as I am sure you know, not because of their great age, but because of their reverence for the Elder plant), in comparison with whom we are all but a broken reed and beyond whom we cannot on this plane aspire, until we go to the GREAT REED-MAKER in the sky. (Note: this last sentence is of a length of which even Bernard Levin would be proud).
THIS INSPIRING COMMUNICATION WINS THIS MONTH’S PRIZE FOR THE BEST LETTER. The Prize, consisting of the Ashes produced by the spontaneous combustion of Seven Reeds used and blessed by SWAH DEVA himself will as usual be sent to the Home for Indigent Gentleppers.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BAGPIPE - A DICTIONARY DEFINITION
BAGPIPE, a musical instrument of the wind kind, chiefly used in country places, especially in the north: it consists of three principal parts; the first a leathern bag, which blows up like a foot-ball, by means of a port-vent, or little tube, fitted to it, and stopped by a valve: the other part consists of three pipes or flutes, the first called the great pipe, or drone; and the second, the little one; which pass the wind out only at the bottom: the third has a reed, and is played by compressing the bag under the arm when full, and pouting or stopping the holes, which are eight, with the fingers. The little pipe is ordinarily a foot long; that played on, thirteen inches; and the portent six.
From “A new and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, extracted from the best authors, by a Society of Gentlemen, London, 1754.
I am grateful to Dr Maurice Byrne, editor of the Galpin Society Journal, for referring me to this dictionary.
JOHN GOODGORE
JACK MY HEDGEHOG
A farmer whose wife had been childless for many years wished eventually for a “child of any kind at all, even though it were a hedgehog!” His wife soon gave birth to a child who was a boy from the waist down but a hedgehog from the waist up. The boy lay on a pile of straw behind the stove doing nothing except eating and sleeping until he was grown, when he unexpectedly asked his father to bring him a hogpie from the market, having received this gift, he went to the smith to have the hoops took about, and, much to the relief of his long-suffering parents, rode away on it to the forest to look after his father’s pigs and asses. There he flew up to the top of a tall tree and sat there year after year, playing on his pipes.
One day a king lost his way in the forest, and hearing the beautiful music of the pipes, sent his servant to see if the player could tell him who he was.
Jack My Hedgehog promised to oblige on the condition that the king would give him whatever first met him on his return home. The king did so, but failed to carry out his promise, since it was his daughter that ran out to him.
A second king got lost in the forest and brought Jack to show him the way home. Jack exacted the same promise from him, which he felt obliged honour, even though he and his daughter were understandably upset at the thought.
Unaware of the decisions of the two kings, Jack took his herd of pigs and asses home to his father, but the cock crowed and rode off to the first king’s castle, where the king had given orders that Jack was to be shot on sight. But Jack avoided the soldiers by flying over the walls into the palace. He confronted the king and his daughter and threatened both of them with death if he did not have his wish. Terrified, the king consented to the marriage. Jack and the princess left the town in the usual way, but after a few miles he stopped. Tears of all her life crowded her all over with his bristles and sent the poor girl home in disgrace.
Page 35
The Pastoral Pipes
Very little appears to have been written about the pastoral pipes. We do know that a year after Culloden a tutor appeared published in London by Geoghegan. Some suggest that this was a Scottish version of the Irish pipes but I think that in fact it is the other way around. It is possible that after the first Jacobite uprising in 1715 someone realised the effect that warpipes had on the enemy or it may have been that a pipemaker who required something more refined started work on this new set.
Geoghegan shows in his tutor fingering for ornaments already familiar to the Scottish piper, birls and grips and the like. He also gives the range of this instrument two octaves from ‘d’ in D major (A4 15) bearing out his statement that: “It is able to perform the same number of notes with the flute or hautboy”. This instrument also had a detachable foot joint usually half the length of the chanter again with two tone holes in Scottish style. One of the difficulties with the historical analysis of the instrument is the fact that many early makers did not put a name to their instrument.
A drawing by Hogarth in 1728 “The Beggars Opera Burlesqued” shows a piper standing whilst playing the pipes. He does not appear to be playing them by blowing into the bag so I presume the bellows are hidden. The bag is tucked in underneath an arm and the drones and one regulator issue from a common stock. This could well be the pastoral pipe which Geoghegan wrote his tutor for. It would be pointless to write a tutor for an unpopular instrument so they must have been common for some time previous to the tutor. According to Rod Cannon (Galpin Society Journal 1989) Hogarth must have seen one somewhere shortly before making the drawing. The instrument is also described by Gehot in his treatese on “The Theory and Practice of Music” (1784) as the pastoral or new pipes. Cocks (1954) attributes the pastoral pipes to a Scottish adaptation of the union (or Irish or Uilleann) pipes in his entry for Groves under bagpipes but I think most people would now refute this.
Few people were known as makers as few signed their work. This was possibly because if the new pipes did not gain popularity they could not be denegrated for making them! According to a popular belief Reid from Tyneside, a maker of Northumbrian and later Uilleann pipes, was a maker of pastoral pipes. He is supposed to have done a fair amount of research. There is extant in Scotland a set of these pastoral pipes without a makers name dated by an authority on pipes as about 1710. This has a detachable foot-joint and plays e^b with the foot-joint taken off and the chanter placed upon the knee. Possibly Reid and others altered the drones to d’d and D. By about 1730 they were appearing with three drones. The foot joint is supposed to provide the chanter with a length of air which when the bag is squeezed harder aids the chanter to jump up to the next register. A maker of Northumbrian half-long pipes had a bell joint which came off and when he tried using modern Irish piping fingering, found he could get nearly two octaves with the chanter placed
Chanter 19
upon the knee. Some pastoral pipes are said to be more in tune when played Irish-style. The foot joints on extant pastoral pipes seems to be half the length of the chanter without foot joint. An interesting observation to note is the morphology of the last two inches of many Irish pipe chanters. They have a noticeable bulge and a brass ferrule on the bottom.
This could well be the tenon of a new pastoral pipes preserved in the external features of the pipe known now as the Irish pipe, Uilleann pipe, organ pipe or union pipe. I prefer to call it the Irish or Uilleann pipes.
![An Irish warpiper with bagpipes]
An Irish warpiper
20 Chanter
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