Irish Kilt?

[O'Callaghan]

Mike, your post is good and has valid points. In my previous post I was merely pointing out what is accepted and being taught in our country today. The research has been conducted on both sides of the Irish Sea. There are many viewpoints about both Scotland & Ireland expressed on this forum that are not accepted in their homelands, and I don't see that changing very easily.

O'Callaghan, you are not so much disagreeing with me on just about everything as disagreeing with what is accepted and taught in Scotland and Ireland, as per my reply to Mike. If you disagree that much, why not write a paper and send it to the universities of Dublin and Strathclyde.
I can't help but notice that your only reference, although you don't name it, appears to be the 11th century Lebor Gabála Érenn which contains the 5 tribes history. Again, this is the stuff of myth and legend, a jumble by several different authors and not accepted as true nowadays. For anyone interested in the traditional history of Ireland, the story of the book and a good summary of it’s contents can be found here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebor_G...1la_%C3%89renn

I get really bored with the whole bagpipe biz. Yes, the bagpipe probably did begin in the Middle East, but there are many, many different kinds of bagpipes. The Great Highland Bagpipe as we know it went through a continuous process of development finally reaching a recognisable shape and identity round about 1810 after developments by Hugh Robertson of Edinburgh and Adam Barclay in the 1740’s. Two drone pipes were common around in Scotland for a few hundred years before that, both double tenor and bass/tenor configurations, as well as various types of smallpipes, border pipes, etc. No one in Scotland claims that the bagpipe was ever invented in Scotland, far from it, but important developments in both the instrument and the music that is played on it happened here.

My own research into the use of the bagpipe in Ireland is expansive and goes back more than 30 years. It is certainly enough to fill a book and has been enough to make a one hour BBC documentary aired in the 1990’s. There are a number of solid references to bagpipes in use in Ireland in history, just as there are for the majority of other European countries. Bagpipes have never been exclusive to Scotland or Ireland, any country may lay claim. One of the most solid, and perhaps well known, references to Irish bagpipes is from Holinshed’s Chronicles, written in 1577, describing an incident in May 1544: “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".

Unfortunately this info gets cut and pasted from internet site to internet site without any further thought of research. There are three much more detailed contemporary references to this event, which refers to the muster of Irish soldiers in the service of the English King, Henry the 8th,in London. Not only do we know which Irish Earls the pipers served, we know the exact names of who the pipers were, where they were from and where they ended up. We also know from a contemporary and very clear engraving of one of these regiments being led by it's Earl and it's piper, what kind of bagpipe was being used, and it didn't look anything like the Highland Bagpipe, in fact it has no drones, which is why I feel I can say there were several different types of bagpipe in use in Ireland, as per anywhere else in Europe at that time. The large mouthblown bagpipe fell out of fashion in Ireland, as it did everywhere else in Europe except the Highlands of Scotland.

As part of the “Gaelic revival” in Ireland, the issue of bagpipes to Irish regiments began in 1903, instigated by Lord Castletown of the Gaelic League. The pipes were made by the David Glen company of Edinburgh and instruction was given by the P/M of the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. Early civilian Irish bands followed in the same decade, with tuition from Scottish instructors and playing Glen pipes. Scotsman Alex Meikle was one of many Scots who did a great deal of teaching in the Dublin area, for example, and some of his pupils went on to form the Fintan Lalor Pipe Band, among others. The Glen company did well out of the revival, well enough to open a branch in Dublin and a branch in Belfast.
In 1906 the year that the wonderfully named Hercules Pakenham was appointed the Commanding Officer of the London Irish Rifles, and decided he wanted a pipe band along the lines of the London Scottish Regiment. He then enrolled Albert Starck, (of German stock) as tutor and bagpipe supplier, to the raw rank and file.
In 1916 the Irish Guards C.O. wanted a pipe band similar to the Scots Guards, and lessons were given by members of the London Irish, under Starck, (who also supplied the instuments).
The Irish Pipers club was started by the Gaelic league in 1909, under the tuition of the Highlander Donald MacKay. His most famous pupil was the son of wealthy London socialites, Louis Noble. Ironically Louis became the face of Irish piping for many. Read more on Louis here: http://www.cuffenet.com/bpipe/noble.html
The Gaelic League made the decision to make the instrument different from the Scottish one simply by removing one tenor drone. Noble objected to this and played a set of Scottish Lawries with two drones, bass and 2 tenors. These had previously belonged to his tutor, Donald MacKay. Noble then crossed the Irish Sea to found the Tralee Pipe band, but then went on to become the teacher of the Dublin Tramway Pipe Band before being recruited by Michael Collins early in 1914 and coming back to London to train the No. 1 Co. of the London Irish Volunteers in St Pancras Road, (in drilling and instruction, not piping). Louis Noble taught in Mackay’s style and trained many pipers in Ireland, before becoming the Instructor of Pipe Bands in the Irish National Army in 1924. Noble moved to the United States in 1947 and helped found the Celtic Pipe Band of Rochester and continued playing and teaching in the USA where he was a massive influence on American-Irish pipe bands. He continued to teach in MacKay's style.

So, “The Scots merely added a third drone”; It goes quite a bit deeper than that, to say the very least, and I’ve only just summarised the influence of Highland piping on the Irish and American-Irish scene here.
O'Callaghan, I don’t know your point is unless it’s solely to wind people up for your own amusement, in which case I’m probably wasting my time here.

If you think I'm winding up people for my own amusement, I must say I take that as a personal insult.

You haven't even proposed any alternative theory to the Irish myths and legends, much less tried to actually justify such a theory. Or perhaps you think the first Gaelic speaker crawled fully formed out of a hole in Mulngavie? Not very likely is it? (Quite apart from the fact that it is in the lowlands).

I am not necessarily saying that the population came en masse from Ireland, but it seems reasonable that the language and many aspects of the culture indeed did. Need I remind you that highlanders used to be referred to in Scotland as Erse (Irish)?

I am not a historian, and won't be writing a paper anytime soon, but you have failed to present a case that would convince me, and now you accuse me of trying to wind people up. I'd better not continue this discussion, as it cannot end well.