The flute and Irish history

[Nanohedron]

Chiff & Fipple: Come for the answers, stay for the thread drift.

[PB+J]

A couple thoughts...

First off, it's worth visiting what Fintan Vallely's Companion has to say on the matter:

Great stuff.


Finally, it's my personal belief based on everything that I've read that the "peasant" nature of the music we play is often somewhat overstated, and that the middle class and even upper classes have had more influence than the romantic idea of "poor but happy" serfs gaily playing music inside their mud huts would lead us to believe. Not that they didn't have music, of course, just that they're not entirely to credit (blame?) for what we call "traditional Irish music."

Yes this is kind of what I'm trying to get at, the timeline and who is participating and when. I think the idea of an uninterrupted "peasant" tradition is maybe a little too simple. A lot of Irish tunes sound to me like they have origins in the baroque parlor" "tobin's favorite" is my favorite example. O'Neil's childhood schoolmate George O'Brien went to the same dances a Collomane Cross as O'Neill, but he remembered a different set of songs, which he memorilized in bad verse:

"O’Neill had an exact contemporary who also wrote a memoir, a schoolmate whose path diverged in enlightening ways. Patrick O’Brien also attended the National School at Dromore and also emi- grated at seventeen. He also danced to the music of Peter Hagerty, later writing a nostalgic poem about “Dear Old Collomane” and the crossroads dance. “The boys and girls would often go to hear the Piper Bawn . . . To hear old Peter play the pipes—he gave us many a tune.” But while Francis remembered mostly instrumental dance tunes, O’Brien remembered hearing explicitly political songs like “The Rising of the Moon,” with multiple lyrics about the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798, and “The Croppy Boy,” yet another song about the 1798 rising. And while Francis ignored broadsheets and commercial ballads, O’Brien remembered the lyrics to a song called “The Little Shamrock Green,” which circulated as a cheaply printed song sheet with another song called “The Rakish Young Fellow.” The song urged:

Oh Irishmen remember what your father’s did of old.
Oh Irishmen remember talks we often had been told.
How Danish thieves and English curs.
Through every rage and spleen.
Thought to run down old Ireland. And the Irish Shamrock green.

So we can assume the crossroads dances included not just ancient folk melodies rooted in “the Irish soul” but also political ballads and commercial songs."

I don't think that would be surprising, in itself. I'm hoping to get a chance to look at the Murphy collection of sean nos songs sung in the PA coal fields, now in cataloguing at Galway

[Terry McGee]

Chiff & Fipple: Come for the answers, stay for the thread drift.

Yes, I was musing on that too. Hopefully the OP will take some satisfaction from having inadvertently starting the most animated and far-reaching conversation we've had in a while. What was that the Kilfenora chap said about "If it's moving, then it's alive...."?

[GreenWood]

A different perspective for you Bigsciota. In Spain my local town of now several thousand, in 1970 had one car, which served as post-van, bus and similar. Fish were carried by foot a days walk inland to villages, from the coast. Though I arrived in early 80s, it was still not far off that. There was music, though. If you look at all the historical records of "peasant" towns and villages, they had their own music. If you mixed with gitanos, or went on Romeria, or if you went to any feria which every town had, there was music from that town. The same in Portugal. In Portugal often locals would play their music at crossroads to make a few centavos, apparently. Rural Spain and Portugal up to 1950 would be little different in wealth than they had ever been, little different than 17th century Ireland as well. The industrial revolution late 19th century depopulated a lot of the countryside, but it did not bring great wealth to it, instead it created a new urban (also relatively poor) class, and their music.

In Ireland all the records in time mention music. They don't say how much, until more recently, but I can tell you simple rural communities don't just work all day in a field, eat silently because they have nothing to say, sit silently afterwards because they cannot think what to do, then go to bed. What is more, the tunes and styles are known to be many centuries old in Spain and Portugal, some from before medieval even. That is to say they have been played continuously (for lack of transcription) for many many generations.

So I see it more the other way around, that traditional music has appropriated what it likes of influence, but on its own terms. All the major shifts of introduced music see that music adapted to approach or suit the styles already present. There is a reason the Irish don't much play Bach to each other at the pub, or waltzes at a local dance.

How much flute was played in Ireland and since when is a slightly different question though.


To stray even further, dancing history might offer insight,

https://irishbliss.org/irish-dance-history/

(for videos you have to click link)

here the author doesn't hold back on interpretation, and some might find it controversial .

For the tabour mentioned earlier, whether if a bodhran or drum is pertinent given that pipe (whistle) and tabour was much a seafaring tradition, the fife also, and Spanish ships were common at times...I just say that because fife reached Canary islands that way... and because Roisin Dubh melody is Spanish traditional "scale" to my ear (I had been playing a Spanish folk tune on flute, wondering if it could be played in Irish style... and then learned Roisin and that was it!). Earlier viking and probably Norman influences, pastoral flute playing, right back to earliest music are all possible sources of flute playing in Ireland. She mentions Berber music (which I am already familiar with).

Funnily maybe, I would not try to define Irish music or formalise a description either, nor by influences or anything else, because it speaks for itself.

[bigsciota]

In Ireland all the records in time mention music. They don't say how much, until more recently, but I can tell you simple rural communities don't just work all day in a field, eat silently because they have nothing to say, sit silently afterwards because they cannot think what to do, then go to bed. What is more, the tunes and styles are known to be many centuries old in Spain and Portugal, some from before medieval even. That is to say they have been played continuously (for lack of transcription) for many many generations.

So I see it more the other way around, that traditional music has appropriated what it likes of influence, but on its own terms. All the major shifts of introduced music see that music adapted to approach or suit the styles already present. There is a reason the Irish don't much play Bach to each other at the pub, or waltzes at a local dance.

This is why I specifically said "the music we play." I do not think that peasants somehow didn't have music; music is one of the most consistent things across cultures in the world. What I do think, which is slightly different is that the music we specifically know today as "traditional Irish music" comes from a variety of sources and is both more recent and somewhat more (for lack of a better term) "middle class" than the ubiquitous tourist brochures promoting it would have you believe.

[Terry McGee]

Now, we've been focussing on the flute and whistle in these discussions, but surely the same must apply to the other instruments? If the peasants couldn't afford flutes then surely the same applies to the fiddle and pipes? And whistles and free-reed instruments hadn't been invented by then.

So do we go back to the theory that it wasn't the peasant's music, but that of some lower-middle-class trade subset? But still we're denied the material record - artefacts in museums, historical accounts, etc.

Is it possible that our tunes back at that time were largely oral - either in the form of songs whose words were later lost or bypassed, or mouth music - the only instrument the poor could afford? This might account for the very rapid development of the music post Famine - the tunes were there, just waiting for instruments to be played on?

[an seanduine]

My two farthing´s worth: It seems we´re missing parts of the plot. In the old Gaelic social order, the class of harpers was encouraged and fostered. The Gaelic order of things, the old Brehonic Laws, the agrarian pastoral society, the language, the clans, all that was pretty systematically attacked and dismembered from the time of the Geraldine Wars. There was always music of one form or another through this time. We don´t know much about it, but it was definitely there, both in the ´Big´ houses and the little. There were always musicians, some professional, some itinerant, some ´consecrated´ by the old Brehonic Druids. We see traces of this in the prevalence of the Patronised Blind Harpers, like O´Carolan and O´Hempsey, Blind Rory Dall. There were patronised and ´professional´ pipers as well, if only brought along with the Gallowglass mercenaries and their commanders. And there were soldiers. There were always soldiers. It seems there hasn´t been a turf in all of Ireland that hasn´t been fought over. These soldiers were accompanied by pipes and harps and fifes. There was camp music as well as village music. They brought crwth´s with them, and psaltery´s and various ´reeds´ for down time. When violin´s came in, they spread like wildfire. Even poor violins were better than crwths for merrymaking. Musicians of any sort would be in demand on the village green as well as the ´Big House´. Music has always passed freely from ´above-stairs´ to ´below-stairs´. Beggars, players, vagabonds, and musicians have universal passports.

Bob

[PB+J]

It's clear there was a demographic boom in Ireland starting around 1800. It's made possible in part by the potato, which will grow in marginal soil, and the particular variety grown in Ireland, the "lumper," which was highly nutritious and could support a family on plots as small as an acre. The increase in population took place in a political context where land access was strictly limited and the economy was managed to stifle industrialization. The result was soul-crushing poverty, and people described as "redundant population." People were already leaving before 1847 and you can find policy debates in England about encouraging emigration as the solution to Ireland's poverty. The other solution would have been breaking up the aristocratic estates, which was unthinkable, or fostering industrialization

Robert Torrens, A Letter to Lord John Russell on the Ministerial Measure for Establishing Poor Laws in Ireland , 1838 estimated there were more than 2 million "vagrants" in ireland, meaning spailpín fanach, itinerant laborers, and that over 600, 000 people had been "ejected" from their tenancy

"The case stands simply thus--there is in Ireland a redundant population,which must continue to occasion the most frightful misery, unless maintained in workhouses, or assisted either to migrate to Great Britain , or to emigrate to the colonies"

They "cannot be permitted to migrate to Great Britain ; because, if permitted so to do,they would bring down English wages to the level of Irish starvation"

I'm 100% sure "the peasants" had music, certainly there was song. I'm sure there were itinerant players, pipers and fiddlers--O'Neill says pipes and fiddle were for people who aspired to make a living at it. There surely had to be a small class of people--merchants in towns, estate managers, rent collectors, servants of the local lord, clergy, "gentleman farmers"--like the neighbor who taught O'Neill the flute--who could afford instruments. There were no doubt military bands, designed both to entertain and as a display of power.

The key event is the famine, which "resolves" the problem of "redundant population" by, frankly, killing lots of people and also by greatly accelerating emigration. The popular non-military brass bands, as far as I can tell, for the most don't start up till the 1850s. The famine, combined with mass production lowering costs, I suspect makes it possible to have a "peasantry" with enough resources to acquire instruments.

[an seanduine]

To flesh out what PB+J said a little: Subsequent to the Rebellion of 1798, the British Army started establishing fixed Barracks and strong points throughout the hinterlands to exercise control. These regimental size groups would´ve by necessity had regimental bandsmen who doubled as their medical corps.
Reading Buntings journals of his travels collecting music around this era give vivid portrayals of life outside the large cities. The middle class Bunting encountered was viewed as partly responsible for the 1798 Rebellion and was pretty much under attack and dwindling into the famine years.

Bob

[Terry McGee]

"It's made possible in part by the potato, which will grow in marginal soil..."

Marginal soil, they'll grow in anything! I've recently been spreading "euchichip mulch" - a mulch made from chipped Eucalypt (gum tree) branches - over the bare paths in my vege garden. This stuff is renowned and valued as a weed suppressant. But I must have dropped a tiny potato on the path at some time, because suddenly, after recent rains, here's a delightfully healthy little potato plant in the middle of my neatly mulched pathway. Well you can't stay there! Having a vacancy at the end of one of my potato beds, I carefully lifted it out of the mulch and transplanted it, knee-deep in compost, where it has responded vigorously. I can't imagine it will yield much - the spud under it was about the size of a fingernail - but I was moved by its will for life.

Indeed, Fluteplayers, regard my tiny potato as a metaphor. You get one chance at life, so grab it with both hands (or tendril, or whatever potatoes have). If you're not getting to play enough flute, do something about it now!

Sigh, what is it about the Irish? I have 4KG of seed potatoes in this year, which should yield a frightening number of praties (I wanted the variety, and the "certified" seed potatoes only come in 1KG packs). So, visualise me, later in the season, down busking on the waterfront, begging the passers-by to take home a bag of praties with them....

If it weren't for the bio-security issues, I could offer a bag of spuds with every flute. Imagine the headlines: "Irish flute maker shuts down LAX International Airport"!

Musical relevance to all this? Easy:
The Bag of Spuds: https://thesession.org/tunes/579
The Little Bag of Spuds: https://thesession.org/tunes/391
The Gander in the Pratie Hole: https://thesession.org/tunes/401
The Praties are dug and the Frost is all over: https://thesession.org/tunes/948

And that's without starting on the Tatties....

[Nanohedron]

Thread metadrift? Very Chiffsome.

[Jayhawk]

Thread metadrift? Very Chiffsome.

It's like a blast from the past! So thoroughly enjoyable and definitely very chiffy.

Eric

[bigsciota]

Now, we've been focussing on the flute and whistle in these discussions, but surely the same must apply to the other instruments? If the peasants couldn't afford flutes then surely the same applies to the fiddle and pipes? And whistles and free-reed instruments hadn't been invented by then.

So do we go back to the theory that it wasn't the peasant's music, but that of some lower-middle-class trade subset? But still we're denied the material record - artefacts in museums, historical accounts, etc.

Is it possible that our tunes back at that time were largely oral - either in the form of songs whose words were later lost or bypassed, or mouth music - the only instrument the poor could afford? This might account for the very rapid development of the music post Famine - the tunes were there, just waiting for instruments to be played on?

There are plenty of examples of homemade instruments, including fiddles, so I wouldn't count out instruments so easily. A particularly fine version can be seen and heard in this video, made by a member of the famous Dunne family:

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0104/7 ... re-fiddle/

But in the first half of the 19th century, which I believe is the thrust of what much of this thread is talking about, I'm not sure it's particularly helpful to think in terms of today's concepts of traditional Irish music. The musical landscape was very, very different, and the genre we know as "trad" didn't really exist as a concrete, unified idea. Rather, there was music, some of it likely familiar to us but a lot of it not. Strands of this music are woven into the music we play today, but not every strand made it, nor is everything we play today related to that music.

It's also very important, as Mr. Gumby touched on above, to define what time exactly we're talking about when we talked about the social class of people playing it. Trad music has shifted up and down in class throughout the years, often quite significantly. Nowadays it is often quite a middle class pursuit, but as Mr. Gumby notes that has not always been the case. Ultimately, players from every class have had some influence, such that it's not really accurate to say that "traditional Irish music is peasant's music" any more than it is to say it's upper-class or middle-class or whatever music. The same is true of the amateur vs professional idea; as popular as it is as an amateur pursuit, it's hard to discount the significant influences professional musicians have had on it.

The point being that I'm not sure how much of a conclusion we can draw about the music we play today by looking much further back than the late 19th century, and even then we're looking at a markedly different music (again, despite the tourist brochures to the contrary).

[Terry McGee]

That is a relatively recent homemade fiddle. I was hoping for some artefacts from say early and late 19th century. I know, I don't want much....

And when we look at O'Neill's 1850 (1903) we see essentially the same music we play today, set out as we perceive them today as jigs, slip jigs, reels, hornpipes, set dances, etc. Although no headings for slides or polkas, I note! So, by the end of the 19th century, we were in full flight, with a repertoire we are familiar with still. How did we get there, when 50 years earlier, a large part of the country was in the most grinding poverty, a million people died of starvation and millions were emigrating. It's hard to imagine that the ruling upper classes had any practical interest in Irish traditional music. So who was playing this stuff? Surely someone must know!

[PB+J]

That is a relatively recent homemade fiddle. I was hoping for some artefacts from say early and late 19th century. I know, I don't want much....

And when we look at O'Neill's 1850 (1903) we see essentially the same music we play today, set out as we perceive them today as jigs, slip jigs, reels, hornpipes, set dances, etc. Although no headings for slides or polkas, I note! So, by the end of the 19th century, we were in full flight, with a repertoire we are familiar with still. How did we get there, when 50 years earlier, a large part of the country was in the most grinding poverty, a million people died of starvation and millions were emigrating. It's hard to imagine that the ruling upper classes had any practical interest in Irish traditional music. So who was playing this stuff? Surely someone must know!

Yes this is to me the interesting question. O'Neill lists the tunes he learned from his childhood, and he always frames them as if they are rooted in deep tradition, and maybe they are, but it's also possible they are much newer than he thinks. I think when we get interested in trad we tend to think, understandably, of long unbroken continuity. But it seems to me Ireland changed a lot after 1798 as An Seanduine posted. Politically a lot changes and demographically there was a remarkable population boom, and the mass poverty. I'm re-reading Breandan Mac Suibhne's really brilliant book The End of Outrage, about West Donegal and the Molly Maguires, and he mentions that there was very rapid population growth in the late 18th-early-mid 19th, and that this itself was a radical "disruption," leading to the ribbonmen and the mollies

Then you have the catastrophe of the famine, which is compounded by the immiseration of Ireland in the decades before.

I use the example in my book of Mary Ward, from who O'Neill say he learned "Rolling on the Ryegrass." He frames her as part of an enduring tradition, but also describes her as "a blind widow made mendicant by the famine" whom the O'Neill's routinely sheltered for weeks at a time. She was a source of all the local news, he wrote. That's not the unbroken continuity of tradition, it's radical disruption. Maybe she learned the tune from her mother, or maybe it was a new tune she learned as she traveled from house to house, dependent on charity and offering news and the ability to "lilt a good tune." And then in Chicago he gets a lot of tunes from policeman, and assumes they are ancient, and maybe they are, but then he also spends a lot of time going over the tunes and sorting out what's Irish and what's not, or what he feels is genuinely Irish and what he feels is not. in other words he forged a sense of unbroken continuity out of both the radical changes Ireland went through from 1800-1855, and from the radical dislocations of emigration.