Great Irish Warpipes

Irish warpipes (Irish: píob mhór; literally "great pipes") is an instrument that is native to Ireland. "Warpipes" is an English term. The first use of the Gaelic term in Ireland is recorded in a poem by Seán Ó Neachtain (c. 1650-1728), in which the bagpipes are referred to as píb mhór.

A likely first reference to bagpipes being played in war is found in a manuscript written between 1484 and 1487 containing an Irish Gaelic version of “Fierabras”: the quote "sinnter adharca & píba agaibh do tionól bur sluaigh" translates as "let horns and pipes be played by you to gather your host". The first clear references to the Irish píob mhór relate to Henry VIII's siege of Boulogne. A muster roll of the "Kerne to be transported into Englaunde to serve the kinge" contains entries of various pipers attached to these forces, such as "The Baron of Delvene’s Kerne: Brene McGuntyre pyper". and according to an entry in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) for May 1544, "In the same moneth also passed through the citie of London in warlike manner, to the number of seven hundred Irishmen, having for their weapons darts and handguns with bagpipes before them: and in St. James Park besides Westminster they mustered before the king."

In a 1581 volume, musician Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer Galileo, wrote that the bagpipe "is much used by the Irish: to its sound this unconquered fierce and warlike people march their armies and encourage each other to deeds of valor. With it they also accompany the dead to the grave making such sorrowful sounds as to invite, nay to compel the bystander to weep". In the same year, John Derricke published the poem "The Image of Ireland", in which the pipes are already used to convey signals in battle:

Now goe the foes to wracke
The Kerne apace doe sweate
And baggepype then instead of Trompe
Doe lull the back retreate

One famous description of the pipes from Richard Stanihurst's De Rebus Hibernicis (1586), reads as follows in English translation:

The pipes seem to have figured prominently in the war with William of Orange. When the exiled King James II arrived in Cork City in March 1689, he was greeted with “bagpipes and dancing, throwing their mantles under his horse’s feet”. On his way to the castle in Dublin, “the pipers of the several companies played the Tune of The King enjoys his own again”.

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