Since the book was published in 1913, it’s unlikely that any of the then-deceased pipers were recorded [actually I was since PM’d that George McCarthy, who died in a workhouse in 1908, was recorded c. 1903]. To the best of my knowledge the only recordings of piping prior to that date are from three sources. First, a couple of Edison cylinders were made after a competetion around the turn of the century which include a Bernard Delaney recording (was it the 1900 Oireachtas?) - I thinkthe Mici Cumba O’Suilleabhean cylinderwas made at the same time. I’ve heard that a handful of cylinders of George McCarthy, Wm. Hanafin, and Jem Byrne survive from the same period. Secondly, Patsy Touhey made Edison cylinder recordings of himself for sale for one dollar each, from about 1901 through about 1905. The surviving copies of these cylinders make up most of the tracks on The Piping Of Patsy Touhey. The third set of piping recordings, also Edison cylinders, were those made for Chief Francis O’Neill’s personal collection - some of which were used, presumably, for the transcriptions in O’Neill’s Music Of Ireland. Those recordings were presumed lost, but a box of them, including recordings of James Early and Bernard Delaney, turned up not so long ago and hopefully we’ll all be able to listen to them again soon. The Reverend Henebry had a similar collection and think a handful of cylinders have survived from his collection.
A few of the pipers mentioned in the “Pipers of Distinction Living in the 20th Century” chapter lived to make recordings - notably Richard O’Mealy ( O’Mealy’s Hornpipe ,
Harvest Home ,
The Wheels of the World ,
The Blackbird ,
Drops of Brandy ,
The Sligo Lasses ,
Smash the Windows ,
The Donegal Reel ,
The Mountains of Pomeroy , and
The Maids of Mourneshore ), Patsy Touhey ( numerous recordings on Ross’ page ), Dinny ( Repeal of The Union , Bean An Ti Ar Lar and Bernard Delaney as already mentioned. William Andrews recorded a number of 78s which are/were available on a reissue with Liam Walsh (the piper who lost his left index finger but relearned using his remaining fingers and continued to play and record).
By the way,I’ve put most of the piping-interest chapters of Irish Minstrels and Musicians online, for instance click on the “Pipers of Distinction” link above to read that chapter. Ross Anderson has generously put some of the above recordings online so that we can listen to them, click on the links above to download/listen.
The above list may make it seem as though there’s lots of this material but the fact is that all the existing recordings from the pipers O’Neill mentions would probably fit onto two audio CDs. If you leave out Touhey then you’d have fewer than a dozen pipe tracks that predate the O’Neill book.
And on page 345 there is a photo of some pipers after the piping competition in 1912.Seamus Ennis is seated at the front with a set of pipes that look very much like the Coyne set restored by Geoff Wooff and now looked after byNollaig McCarty.Are they that set and did Seamus own them?
RORY
Not the same set - the NPU Coyne set was bequeathed by Tom Busby of the USA. Also, that’s “James” Ennis, i.e. Seamus’ father - Seamus Jr. was born 7 years later. The set you are looking at does have the bass/contrabass extension on it - possibly it’s the set (a Brogan set? - check Neili Mulligan’s website) that james played before obtaining the C# Coyne from a pawnshop in bits, or possibly the C# Coyne originally had a contrabass extension which was later removed.
Bill
[edited to mention McCarthy, Byrne, and Hanafin cylinders]
