Great Irish Warpipes: Ireland musical instrument

The Great Irish Warpipes are a musical instrument that in modern is identical and historically was similar to the Great Highland Bagpipe instrument. Warpipes is an English name. The first use of the Gaelic name in Ireland is noted in a poem written by Seán Ó Neachtain in which the bagpipe instruments are called píb mhór.

source of picture: macmaolain.com

In Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, the musical instrument seems to have been a musical instrument of war no earlier than sometime in the 15^th century and the earlier part of the 16^th century. An Irish Gaelic kind of ‘Fierabas’ could consist of the first reference to Warpipes. The manuscript has been traced back to the 15^th century and the author may have had bagpipes in mind. Clear reference to the Irish píb mhór started showing up at about the same time as they do in the Scottish nation.

One way or the other, by the 19^th century, the musical instrument died out, or at least was discarded. Probably the píob mhór, while played by some individuals, came to be seen as primarily Scottish, the bellow-blown union or uilleann pipes being new versions of Irish pipes.

However, in the 2^nd half of the same century, the wide revival of Irish nationalism and Gaelic culture seems to have accorded with a return of the instrument’s popularity. The art picked up again until the pipe gained considerable popularity in both civilian and military use. Presently, pipe bands of the same type as the popular Highland form are a standard characteristic of British regiment with Irish honors and the Armed forces of Ireland, and there are several local bands throughout both the republic and the northern part of Ireland. The Irish version of the musical instrument that is performed today is one and the same with the Scottish Highland bagpipe.

Attempt in the past to produce a unique musical instrument for Irish pipers have not proven prevalent in the long run. In the starting part of the 20^th century, it was very common to play the musical instrument only one tenor drone. Many attempts were made to improve the musical instrument; the most successful was the London pipe producer, Starck’s Brian Boru bagpipe, with a keyed chanter that could perform full range of traditional music as well as the baritone drone, regularly held with the tenor and bass in a normal stock. Such versions of the musical instrument are manufactured by few producers today and are performed by only a minority of players. Starck’s pipes for the players of Ireland, whether 2 or 3 drones were also tuned in a unique, slightly antique-looking pattern, having button-sized mouth rather than the normal projecting mount, cup-shaped drone with somewhat projecting ring caps and rows of narrow bead rather than combing and beading. A style more or less like this was made by many producers, though is also not common today. In the 1950s and the early part of the 1960s, some Irish players of the musical instrument in British Army, notably the Irish Guards, performed pipes that more or less followed this style, but seemingly with typical ring caps and combing and beading.