Kilts and Pipes Co-opted by Irish in America

[RockyR]

Could it not be said that the Spartans were kilted before anyone? And by the by, nobody seems to complain about intermingling when the Dropkick Murphy's are playing.

As a small side note, their bagpiper ("Scruffy" Wallace) was born in the UK of a Scottish father and Canadian mother. He served in the Canadian military in the Calgary Highlanders (sister regiment of the Sutherland highlanders) and plays the Highland Pipes (1953 set of Peter Hendersons). He's proudly Scottish and Canadian and now, American. He never claimed to be Irish.

[macwilkin]

The article that Matt Newsome & I wrote several years ago addresses some aspects of this issue:

http://scottishtartans.org/irish_kilts.htm

In terms of the relationship to police & fire departments adopting the pipes, mention must be made of Irish immigrant and Chicago Police Officer Francis O'Neill, who is quoted in our article -- and his views on the GHB have already been discussed by OC Richard:

http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=1,7,1,1,34

A number of O'Neill's works are available here:

http://billhaneman.ie/history.html

Regards,

T.

[macwilkin]

So should we dress period appropriate for other events also?
Didn't Robert Burns live during the post-Jacobite ban on kilts? So that would mean no kilts on Burns' night correct?

Just wondering if your thought on period dress is consistent or if you just don't like the idea of wearing of a kilt on a non Scot holiday by people without Scot heritage.....

Considering Burns was a Lowlander (although his father did have ties to the Keiths, who were strong Jacobite supporters), then yes, he most likely never did wear the kilt. He did include references to "John Highlandman" and his plaid in a number of his works, though. But yes, Highland attire at Burns Suppers is not for the purists; there are Burns Clubs in Scotland where the only kilt in the room is on the piper (and even then, a fiddler is more "correct" for a gathering honouring a Lowlander) -- the majority of the company are in suits.

Yet when the Scottish diaspora's regional differences began to fade, and simply became Scottish, then the kilt began to be seen as a "Scottish" garment, and not one of the Highlands.

Regards,

T.

[seanachie]

As a small side note, their bagpiper ("Scruffy" Wallace) was born in the UK of a Scottish father and Canadian mother. He served in the Canadian military in the Calgary Highlanders (sister regiment of the Sutherland highlanders) and plays the Highland Pipes (1953 set of Peter Hendersons). He's proudly Scottish and Canadian and now, American. He never claimed to be Irish.

Deleted.

[O'Callaghan]

So actually, then, the use of drones in the middle east is nothing new at all. . .

Groan!

Must admit that raised a chuckle. I don't think we'd be laughing if we were bombed by one.

[O'Callaghan]

As a career firefighter I am well aware that the police and fire depts are fond of them. My dept had a Gaelic brigade. But the logic of the quoted statement is missing. People associate the pipes as Irish because the police and fire depts have pipe bands, and historically have been staffed by Irish. So, how did the police and fire depts come to have pipe bands? The statement need to connect the police and fire depts to the Scots prior to the Irish getting involved. Then the Irish continuing the Scottish tradition, which had become the police and fire dept tradition, and the subsequent assumption by others that the tradition was Irish would make more sense. If not we've got a chicken / egg argument. Not that it really matters.

Now I see your point. I think I already explained that the pipes appeared in Ireland at around the same time as they did in Scotland. So, it's more that the American public associate pipes with the Irish because of all these mostly Irish American bands, and that there aren't necessarily so many Scottish pipe bands in the US. Of course, all the pipers are really American. Copying a Scottish tradition doesn't really come into it until you get to the kilts, which are invariably tartan, so more likely to be copied from the Scots than from solid colour kilts then worn in Ireland by pipers and by a few rebels. That is, they started pipe bands because they were Irish, not because of any Scots connection (they didn't have one), and then really being Americans they somehow ended up in tartan kilts rather than, say, green or saffron.

[O'Callaghan]

<snip>

-the English invasions likewise caused the extinction of the traditional Irish bagpipe and since no examples exist we cannot be sure of its exact nature. When one is aware of the dazzling variety of bagpipe species in France (several hundred species) and in the Balkans etc it is absurd to imagine that the traditional pre-invasion Irish bagpipe was identical to a Scottish pipe of the same period. In fact, we don't know what "a Scottish bagpipe of the same period" was like either! The first clear depiction of a Highland bagpipe only dating to the 18th century. What has survived in Ireland is a number of old marches thought to be originally "Irish warpipe" tunes; these reveal that the ancient Irish mouthblown pipes had musical capabilities like those of Central French pipes and the Scottish Lowland pipes, not the Scottish Great Highland pipe.

<snip>

There are pictures (not photographs, of course!) of the old Irish pipes. They show two drones, and the shape of the bag resembles those of some French pipes I have seen pictures of. That is really the only reason why I say they perhaps ought to have copied the French cornemuse than removed a drone from the Scottish pipes when trying to reconstruct them. Heaven knows even then whether the end result would be anything like the original.

I also take your point from one of your other posts that it is not proven that the pipes came from the middle East. The gaita, with the single bass drone pointing down, does appear to be the oldest form, and that seems to be played not only on the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) but also in Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, Romania and the countries that used to make up Yugoslavia. I have personally seen that kind of pipe played in what I suppose is now Croatia. The North coast of Africa is only a skip and a jump away from any of those parts of Europe, but who knows?

ETA: But I have been led to understand that the scale that the pipes play is not European atall, but Eastern or Middle Eastern. Perhaps, as someone who can actually play, maybe you could enlighten me?

I don't play any kind of pipes, but it is an interesting subject.

[OC Richard]

There are pictures (not photographs, of course!) of the old Irish pipes.

Yes and no... if you mean the woodcut from Derricke's The Image of Ireland (1578), which is the most detailed image, and the one that the 19th century revivalists jumped on when they removed one tenor drone from the GHB to create their neo-Irish Warpipe, there is controversy. For one thing it appears that the artist never stepped foot in Ireland, and it is not known if the artist had ever seen an Irish bagpipe. The bagpipe pictured is a typical Northwest Europe (Low Countries) bagpipe of the period such as appears in the paintings of Breughel, which might have been the sort of bagpipe the artist was familiar with. In other words there is no evidence that it is an Irish bagpipe which appears in these illustrations.

The only other depiction of an Irish Warpipe is an extremely crude sketch from 1595.

Here is the piper from Image of Ireland 1578



Here is one of several Breughel depictions of Low Countries bagpipes. It can easily be seen that the Irish Revivalists, if they truly wanted to follow the evidence of The Image Of Ireland, would have gone with Flemish pipes rather than Scottish pipes: note the huge bag held in front of the player rather than under the arm, the very long chanter, the two long drones of near-equal length (obviously not a Tenor and Bass) held in a common stock:

I also take your point from one of your other posts that it is not proven that the pipes came from the middle East. The gaita, with the single bass drone pointing down, does appear to be the oldest form, and that seems to be played not only on the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) but also in Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, Romania and the countries that used to make up Yugoslavia. I have personally seen that kind of pipe played in what I suppose is now Croatia.

Sorry but you are mixing up several different species of European bagpipes, none of which are played in "the Middle East". The sort of bagpipe played along the coast of North Africa, into Egypt and all the way into western India, is completely different from the various European bagpipes you mention (Spanish Gaita, which by the way does not have a bass drone pointing down, the Bulgarian Gaida which does, the Romanian Cimpoi, the Macedonian and Greek Gaidas, etc). It is the very variety of European bagpipe species which suggests a European origin for bagpipes as a whole, and the very lack of variety in such a wide area (from the North African coast of the Atlantic all the way to India) that strongly suggests that the "Arabic" bagpipe was spread suddenly and recently from a single point of origin.

the scale that the pipes play is not European atall, but Eastern or Middle Eastern.

Sorry but this is utter nonsense, though often repeated.

The Highland pipes play in strict Just Intonation, a scale with a long history in European music, and the basis of which was laid out by Pythagoras thousands of years ago.

Read about it here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_intonation

Now what is true is that musical scales have a basis in the laws of acoustics and are therefore universal. So, the same scale that the GHB uses is also used in our modern pop music, in Baroque music, in Gregorian Chant, in Persian music, in Indian Classical Music, in Asian music, by human beings in general.

Arabic music has a number of sophisticated scales which aren't used in any European music, the Highland bagpipes included.

Here they are! An excellent video because you can hear the scales and see the sheet music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwneBluN08M

Note that the first is an ordinary Major scale, such as the Highland Bagpipes use. (The GHB plays in an E flat Major scale over a B flat drone, or if you like, in B flat Mixolydian, which is the same thing in effect.)

[neloon]

Thanks for your valuable erudition, Richard.
Maybe off-topic, but could you comment on how/why GHB tuning drifted upwards from "A" tuning?
Alan