The very first time I got my hands on uilleann pipes was a practice set that was loaned to me by the London pipers club. I was given the set and told to come back the following week for my first lesson. In that week in an effort to play something I learned the tune to a black velvet band.
What was your very first tune?

RORY

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I'm Spartacus .

Sean Bui

After spending close to a month getting used to the workings of the bellows and managing to hold a steady note, my first tune was "Eibhlín a Rúin" as presented on the first "Art of Uilleann Piping" DVD. And of course it took several practice sessions for me to be able to get through it without messing up.

The Bucks of Oranmore (yeah....Riiiight!)

It was Garrett Barry's Jig.
Brian MacNamara had the Beginners' group at my first Tionol in Baltimore- 2000.
20 + Noobs all doing their best to murder a tune (oddly enough, every single one having trouble with this "darn new reed")
I'm sure the poor man was never the same, though he was as elegant, supportive and un-flappable as ever.

The first tune I picked out was the theme from Samhradh, samhradh. Then we were all assigned The Last Rose of Summer. Our first jig was of course the Kesh.
Bob

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Not everything you can count, counts. And not everything that counts, can be counted

The Expert's Mind has few possibilities.
The Beginner's mind has endless possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi

I got my practice set from Matt Kiernan in 1979. I had been playing on the whistle for about a year before that so i already had some tunes.

I met up with a piper called Eamonn Lane who gave me my first tune. It was a jig called the Bank of Turf.

Cheers

John

The first tune I was taught at the London pipers club was the song of the chanter.

RORY

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I'm Spartacus .

Eh, something from the Heather Clarke tutor, because that is what my teacher used.

The first one that I wanted to learn, that I still remember to this day is "Cliffs of Dooneen". I had played it on the whistle for a long time before I got my first pipes.

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Deartháir don phaidir an port.

A little Swedish tune called Sommarvals (Summer waltz) by Ale Möller.
It was easy enough for a beginner with nothing above high D and at the time it was also a melody I knew by heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HISMsFJOMw

https://thesession.org/tunes/2059

I have to play it again, thanks for the reminder Rory

/MarcusR

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There is no such thing as tailwind -- it's either against you or you're simply having great legs!

An Caisdeach Ban - Fair Haired Cassidy - from Tommy Keane's CD, The Wind Amongst the Reeds. His version still excites, capturing for me the essence behind the story.

I was a beginner alright, and far from help. Just a determination to play, and struggling with the ornamentation techniques and a lack of available tuition. I had Tommy's CD, and one other, but this air just grabbed me, and having a slow tempo I thought it would give me something I could play, which it did after a fashion, and led on to better things over time.

Its still a favourite. By good fortune he was my first tutor, at my first visit, to Willie Week. As with others, he had the patience of a saint...

Lilting Banshee. Not a great choice given the challenge of the "B" part to a newbee, but the tune was the first whistle tune I had committed to memory decades before, and despite sage advice I could not be dissuaded.

dave boling

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I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg.
-- Douglas Adams

'Bundinn er bátlaus maðu'.

I think it was the Mountain Road. At least the first recognizable tune. But I am only 4,5 years into my piping so "learn" is maybe too strong a word.

I'm pretty sure mine was All the Way to Galway, which I learned from Jimmy O'Brien Moran's album Take Me Tender

I got my first practice set, there was nobody around who played so I was on my own.

What I did have was The Dance Music Of Willie Clancy book (which had just come out) and some Planxty albums, and I found a tune that was in the book and on one of the albums, The Humours Of Ballyloughlin, so that was what I learned.

It was fantastic because the book described how to do all the cool things I could hear on the album like crans and how to bend C natural.

The tune didn't seem long to me because I came from Highland piping where most tunes have four parts.

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Richard Cook
c1980 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle

It was recent, Summer of 2019: Sean Gavin taught me "ta an coileach ag fogairt an lae" in the back room of Connor O'Neill's in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He put on the Raw Bar Collective's recording and we listened while we ate lunch, then had a beer and learned it on the pipes.