TO most people "bagpipes" is a term synonymous with Scotland. Yet it is extremely unlikely that they originated there, existing as they do everywhere from the Middle East northwards.
The bagpipe was played in Syria 3,000 years ago, adopted by the Romans as an instrument of war and either introduced to these islands by them, or previously by Celtic infiltration after 500 BC. By the Middle Ages it was widely popular all over Europe.
It has been lyricised in literature from Chaucer to Victor Hugo, and implanted in the visual imagination since the 16th century by painters like Pieter Breughel, Jasper van der Lanen and David Teniers. In England it was an instrument of court from the 14th to the 16th centuries (Henry VIII had five sets).
It provided music for festivals and weddings. In early 15th century Scotland, James I was a renowned player.
War Pipes
The pipe's first mention in Ireland is its presence at the 11th century Aonach Carman, then it is with the Irish at war at Crecy in 1346, appearing next in a 15th century wood carving from Woodstock Castle, Co Kilkenny. The versatility in emotional appeal of Irish bagpipes was praised by Galileo's father in 1581, a power which was later to rally both forces at the Boyne and Aughrim, and to oversee the defeat of the British at Fontenoy in 1745.
Prohibitory statutes pushed the instrument into decline in Ireland (pipers were hanged) that and social demands encouraging the development of uilleann pipes, a quieter, indoor instrument. The bellows on these, on the French musette, Northumbrian pipes and on Scottish Lowland and "small" pipes, are documented as having been first conceived in Ferrara in 1521; appearing in France by 1577 and being well established on Irish pipes by 1770.
Uilleann piping had its heyday at the beginning of the last century, but was undermined towards its end by the introduction of melodeon and concertina. Revival at the end of the 1800s brought a respite and the amalgamation of regional styles, but decline again followed until turned spectacularly around by the work of Breandan Breathnach and others with the formation of Na Piobairi Uilleann in 1968.
Armagh Festival
Bringing all this together with other piping traditions for the last three years has been the William Kennedy Piping Festival run at Drumsill, Co Armagh, by the local pipers' club. Last year they featured the grandmammy of all the instruments - the mouth blown triple pipe, known as launeddas in its present homeland, Sardinia, but of biblical provenance and recorded in this country on the 10th century Cross of the Holy Scriptures at Clonmacnois.
Playing last year, too, were the Scottish bagpipers Fred Morrison and Gordon Duncan, with the Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell from the Tyne valley village of Wark.
The festival held this year's mixed cultures and music systems even more. Along with the Scots "small" piper Allan MacDonald and his brother Angus on Highlands, the Welsh pipes made their first appearance in more than a hundred years. These have been reconstructed from written descriptions and a dash of Breton - and Galician fired fancy, with a repertoire drawn from extant song and fiddle music. The Bulgarian gaida was at Armagh too, played by the Greek borders man Kiril Ketev, who was born in the Smolen heartland of his country's piping culture.
Bulgarian music is catchy when performed by a typical folk ensemble of gadulka (fiddle), kaval (flute), tambura (bazouki) and tupan (bass drum). But on pipes alone it is unremittingly challenging, for it makes wide use of asymmetric rhythm - rather like playing a double jig and slip jig simultaneously.
The pipe scaler is also different to that of more westernised instruments, and so its presence at Drumsill brought the mind to bear not only on the acute differences in music construction within Europe but also the survival in everyday life of more archaic instruments. This of course is particularly intriguing to pipers themselves, and so experimentation over the weekend saw our own outstanding, bellows powered Paddy Keenan attempting the Bulgarian chanter - with the Welshman Jonathan Williams providing the wind. Williams in his turn could make little sense of the gaida either, and neither the uilleann pipes nor Welsh variant were any use to Ketev.
Exasperation
Indeed similar exasperation must have been the engine that powered development of the uilleann pipes down through the years. One of the instrument's innovators was the man whom this festival celebrated, William Kennedy, of Tandragee, Co Armagh, born in 1768. Just as challenging as is the remarkable Aberdeenshire percussionist Evelyn Glennie with her technical deafness, pipe maker Kennedy was blind from the age of four. He was first apprenticed as a musician to the Armagh piper and fiddler John Moorehead in 1781, then began repairing pipes at 15 through meeting the celebrated piper Downey in the Scarva, Co Down, home of the harpist Mrs Reilly.
At the turn of the century he had made 30 sets. Later he improved on the regulators and developed chanter keys to enable the playing of sharps and flats. A cabinet maker and watchmaker, too, he made all his own tools and is most fittingly remembered by the survival in playing order of a few of his uilleann pipes, one of them brought to life at the 1996 festival - after a silence of perhaps a hundred years.
Another blind piper, William Talbot, born in 1781, is credited with the addition of the two final regulators to the uilleann pipes, and the Drogheda born Taylor brothers made modifications which gave us today's instrument. Maybe surprisingly it is the name that is the most recent invention, for 19th century writers refer to it as "Irish" or "union" pipes "uilleann" appears to be a creation of the 1890s, Gaelic League Hibernicisation.
Now with Davy Spillane featured as a computer based composer in the current edition of Apple Computer's Apple Report, maybe other things are about to be unleashed as the pipes shape up for entry to their fourth century.