Welsh bagpipes

Welsh bagpipes (Welsh: pipa cŵd, pibau cŵd, côd-biban, côd-bibau,pibgod, cotbib, pibau cyrn, chwibanogl a chod, sachbib, backpipes, bacbib) The names in Welsh refer specifically to a bagpipe. A related instrument is one type of bagpipe chanter, which when played without the bag and drone is called a pibgorn (English:hornpipe). The generic term pibau (pipes) which covers all woodwind instruments is also used. They have been played, documented, represented and described in Wales since the fourteenth century. A piper in Welsh is called a pibydd or a pibgodwr.

In 1376, the poet Iolo Goch describes the instrument in his Cywydd to Syr Hywel y Fwyall. Also, in the same century, Brut y Tywysogion ("Chronicle of the Princes"), written around 1330 AD, states that there are three types of wind instrument: Organ a Phibeu a Cherd y got ("organ, and pipes, and bag music"). Continuous use of the instrument has since waxed and waned in popularity according to musical fashions. Pipe making has historically been localised and idiosyncratic, and piping since the sixteenth century has generally been employed in celebratory or public roles such as weddings, markets, or dances.

"Mabsantau, neithioirau, gwylnosau, &c, were their red-letter days, and the rude merrimaking of the village green the pivot of all that was worth living for in a mundane existence. I do not remember much about the Gwylmabsant and the Gwylnos - I came a quarter of a century too late for those wonderful orgies - but I remember the neithior with its all-day and all-night rollicking fun. We did not have the crwth, but we had the fiddle, and occasionally the harp, or a home-made degenerate sort of pibgorn. I myself am a tolerable player on the simplified bibgorn."

A hiatus of fifty years occurred between the playing of Meredith Morris and the renaissance of native instruments in the 1970s, during which piping in Wales was carried mainly on the Great Highland pipe.

The Welsh Academy in 2008 noted that "[i]t is unlikely that there was ever a single standardized form of bagpipe in Wales". Today there are two types of bagpipe made and played in Wales. One species uses a single-reed (cal or calaf) in the chanter (Welsh: llefarydd, see image top right), and the other uses a double-reed (see image on right). The single-reed chanter is also furnished with a cow-horn bell. Both types of chanter may also be played un-attached to the bag; the single-reed type in the form of a hornpipe. (Welsh: pibgorn pl:pibgyrn, see image below right), and the double-reed type in the form of a shawm. The double-reed type is characteristically louder, and can over-blow a few notes in the upper register. The single-reed type plays only an octave. The bagpipes may be drone-less or furnished with drones (byrdwn) via the bag (cwdyn).

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Wikipedia