h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is simply lovely. History a la Flann O'Brien. (Sorry for no fadas, I have no Irish keyboard.)

Getting the cart before the horse, I always thought people called them the union pipes because they couldn't pronounce uillean.

Well that's the theory that Grattan Flood tried to put out. It seems that he didn't in fact invent the false etymology, but took it over from Joseph Cooper, who in 1786 had published his Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, and came up with (?the first instance of) the term Ullan pipes. Neither Cooper nor Flood seem to have had a good grasp of Irish, and the latter seems to have compounded the former's comlications, as follows:

Cooper noted (quoting one O'Connor) that Irish-speaking pipers called the pipes Cuisley Cuil, and (quoting a contemporary, Colonel Vallancey) that an 'ancient' Scots MS describes a place in the Hall of Tamar 'allotted for the Cuislinnigh; a word which, etymologically considered, evidently implies Bagpipes.'

Cooper continues: 'At this day [1780s] the pipers call their bellows, bollog na Cuislí*, the bellows of the Cuisli, or veins of the arm on the inside, at the first joint; and as this joint on the outside is denominated Ullan or Uilean (i.e. elbow), Vallency concludes that Ullan Pipes and Cuisli Pipes are one and the same.'

So the buck gets passed. But Cooper then continues (and this is where the story really starts): 'In Ullan Pipes we have, perhaps, the woollen Bagpipe of Shakespear, to which he attributes an extraordinary effect.'

To clarify: the ancient Irish and Scots name for bagpipes was Cuisli Cuil. Vallency (18th cent) makes an imaginative connection from Cuisle to Ullan. Cooper connects Ullan to Shakespeare's 'woollen bagpipe'.

Now this is all very well, but there are gaps in the lchain of deduction. The first linguistic gap arises from the term 'bollog na cuisli' which Cooper translates as 'the bellows of the cuisli'. Alas he is wrong: bolg means bag, and has done so for thousands of years. It also means stomach.

The next gap is a mistranslation of cuisle (plural cuisli). Cooper rightly identifies this as the veins of the inner arm, at the first joint. The joint in question is, however, the wrist, not the elbow: cuisle also means 'pulse', which is felt in the wrist. This in turn leads to the terms of endearment 'Acushla' and 'Macushla' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ92i188gXc meaning 'heartbeat'.

Vallencey, then, seems to have invented the term Ullan pipes, being unable to tell his cuisle (wrist) from his uille (elbow).

There is no contradiction in the bag being called 'bolg cuisle' from earliest times; it was squeezed with the inner arm (elbow to wrist) and it does not in the least imply a bellows separate from the bag. If anything it precludes a bellows, since it specifically names the bag only (bolg).

All three -- Vallencey, Cooper, and Grattan Flood -- seem to speak as though 'Ullan Pipes' was a common term already; but was it? I'm on my way to the TCD library to check how Vallencey couched his claim.

Cutting edge stuff, right here in hootoo.

*[Cuisli with the last i accented, for readers with recalcitrant browsers]

Hmm, that's clear as mud. Essentially, 'bollog cuisle' refers to the ancient mouth-blown bagpipe; bollog (bolg) means bag, not bellows, and the bellows are attached to the elbow but 'cuisle' is the wrist. Either Vallencey or Cooper seems to have wished the name Ullan onto the (cuisle) pipes, specifically to connect up with Shakespeare, in an attempt to locate the invention of bellows pipes in Ireland. Unfortunately for them, the bellows pipes are documented in France at Shakespeare's time, and not in Ireland until their own (18th) century.

Clearer? That's me I'm asking, by the way.

This is fascinating indeed - I have nothing to offer on the subject.

Only that it would seem that bollog (given how I would imaging the 'g' being pronounced) ought to be related to bollock - not in meaning perhaps, but just in general bastardization of use over time.

Anyway, it's all fascinating.

Thank you. The research continues; tomorrow I check out the material from Charles O'Conor of Belnagare.

Bolg would be pronounced 'bullug' now, but who knows how it was once.

Vallencey merely mentioned the word Cuislinnaigh, and translated it as Pipers, as the caption for one dining-table in his map of the banqueting hall of Tara. Now Tara ceased to be the seat of the high kings of Ireland in the twelfth century with the coming of the Normans, so we are certainly not talking about bellows-pipers here.

If Vallencey did talk about woollen/ullan/cuisle pipes it may have been in private conversation with Cooper. They were certainly acquainted.

Rewrite under way. Dowland will have to move to a separate entry.

I was wrong about bolg: it does also mean bellows.

Well here is the rewrite. Damme if it hasn't grown out of all proportion, but at least it didn't split into two as it threatened to do.

A53246153

This is getting better and better.

In a slightly different form, this would fit in 'Notes and Queries'.

I like the part about the proof being beautiful.

A few tidiyings and improvements . . . I found a tour guide to Dalkey on the net which refers specifically to the Dowland/Shakespeare/Hamlet story

Apart from <> being 18th Century and all other 'century' being 'Century'. This is well on the way to perfection.

Thank you. I hate that 18th Century convention, I was hoping no one would notice but thanks anyway!

You're welcome

While I enjoyed the essential brevity of the first iteration - you seem to have lengthened this without making it untidy, so that's a good thing.


In this first instance of the phrase:
"Why he a woollen bag-pipe"
Is there a comma missing?

This should link to the Edited Entry on bagpipes A748208.

I think the appropriate spot is the word "pipes", in "Irish pipes come in two varieties".

Thanks, Pailaway. The hyphen is in there because OED quote the spelling and orthography of the first edition.

Glad to do that, Gnomon. One of yours? (Soon see)

Yes indeed. And we agree on the pronunciation guide to 'uileann'.

Sorry Pailaway, it wasn't the hyphen you were asking about, but the explanation is the same for the comma.

So is it uileann or uilleann? You use both, and I'm confused.

But just because of the mental image you gave me...

http://public.fotki.com/Malabarista/hootoo-entry-challenge/shakespipes.html

(I'll make a smaller version as a blob.)

That's a highly accurate picture of a set of uilleann pipes.

My Irish isn't great, but Na Píobairí Uilleann certainly use to l's:

http://www.pipers.ie/

Uilleann. Anything else is either a typo by me or an earlier spelling by someone I'm quoting.