WHO PAID THE IRISH PIPER –

IF NOT HIS DAUGHTER, 1550–1850?

SEÁN DONNELLY

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 WHO PAID THE IRISH PIPER – IF NOT HIS DAUGHTER, 1550–1850?1

SEÁN DONNELLY

‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’ is a common saying; less common is ‘he who
dances must pay the piper’. Since medieval times the collective noun for pipers has
been ‘a poverty of pipers’, and traditionally ‘piper’s pay’ was ‘more kicks than
pence’. But while Irish pipers seem not to have been paid very much over the
centuries, an occasional one has found his way into accounts kept by various people
and institutions.

COURT MASQUES, LONDON, 1552

A very early record of a payment to a piper is in the accounts of the Master of the
Revels at the court of Edward VI of England. On Twelfth Night 1551–2 (6 January
1552), the court saw The Masque of Irishmen, and the accounts list the cost of
providing ‘Irish’ dress, head-dresses, and weapons. Among the expenses was ‘John
Holte for the hier of an yrishe bagpipe plaier on twelfth night iijs ...’ [three shillings].
This piper is likely to have been the one who was in the retinue of the king’s Lord of
Misrule, the facetious official who presided over the Christmas celebrations at court:
‘his Mynstrell A garmente of Russet damaske for the Iryishe bagpiper ye makinge
ijs’ [two shillings].22

The next entry is for the Lord of Misrule’s three dancers who performed
‘Trenchmore’, the earliest mention of this famous dance. Its title has never been
explained, but it may have been an Irish place name, and possibly the piper
accompanied the dancers. 3 On Shrove Tuesday, 1552, the court saw The Masque of
Irishwomen, in which bagpipers also featured, but their nationality is not given, or
how much they were paid. The Masque of Bagpipes, originally scheduled for
Christmas 1552 was postponed because of the king’s ill-health – suffering from TB
he was to die in July 1553 at the age of sixteen – and was performed on Easter 1553,
being repeated on May Day. It featured huge wickerwork figures in the form of apes
playing bagpipes, with a piper inside of each. While there was no obvious Irish
connection, the pipers were dressed in yellow material, and Irish kern (native foot-
soldiers) were usually attired in clothes died with saffron. 4

MILITARY PIPERS, 1550–1680

After the fall of the earls of Kildare in 1534, their standing military forces passed into
the service of the crown. These would have included kern, as well as galloglass, the
professional heavy infantry of Scottish descent, and payments to these soldiers are
recorded throughout the rest of the sixteenth century. Government accounts for the
period 13 April 1556–22 June 1559 include payments to ‘the Captains of the Irish
Bands ... three pipers Patrick Sheredain, Odonaught, and Shane Duff, ...’ – though the
amount paid to each is not specified.5 During the same general period, Sir Henry
Sidney, lord deputy of Ireland – a man of gargantuan appetite called Henri Mór na
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Beorach [‘Great Harry of the Beer’] in Irish – rewarded a piper at Mellifont, co.
Louth, a rare instance of one featuring in the domestic accounts of such an eminent
official: ‘Item geven to a bagpiper at Millifaunt vjd’ [6d.].6 Fifteen years later, Walter
Devereux, 1st earl of Essex, mounted an expedition from Dublin to south Ulster. His
expenses from June 1573 to January 1574 included those of a guide at eighteen pence
a day: ‘Patrick Oge Gwyde to ye said Erle, xviiid pr. diem’; an interpreter at sixteen
pence a day: ‘Edmond Boye, interpreter to ye sd Erle, xvid pr. diem’; and a piper at
two shillings a day: ‘a Piper, per diem, ijs’.7 The piper would have been attached to
the 100 Irish kern in the earl’s force, and that he was paid more than a guide and an
interpreter is a hint of a piper’s rising status at this time. Over a century later,
accounts kept by the steward of Lismore Castle, Lismore, co. Waterford, recorded a
payment to drummers on 11 June 1680; ‘to ye 6: drumers by y[ou]r Lo[rdship]’s
order 00:10:00’ [ten shillings]; and to a piper on 14 June 1680: ‘Given to ye piper by
y[ou]r Lo[rdship]’s order 00:01:00’ [one shilling].8 Seemingly the drummers and
piper were on board a frigate that had just docked in Waterford. ‘Your Lordship’ was
the earl of Cork and Burlington.

LANDLORDS AND PIPERS, 1700–1820

In 1725 Valentine Browne, 4th viscount Kenmare, of Killarney House, Killarney, co.
Kerry, had a piper in his household, or at least one living nearby. His household
accounts for that year record that 1s.1d. was paid to ‘the piper’s daughter for a
salmon bought by Mrs. Nelly Archdeacon [housekeeper] ...’.9 Lord Kenmare
descended from Sir Valentine Browne, an Englishman granted land around Killarney
in the Plantation of Munster (1586), and his family were one of the few Roman
Catholic ones who succeeded in retaining their estates through the era of the Penal
Laws. Farther north, Francis Edgeworth (1701–70) of Edgeworthstown, co.
Longford, grandfather of the famous novelist Maria Edgeworth, recorded various
payments to musicians, including pipers, especially around Christmas when he was at
home in co. Longford:

1 January 1735 ‘To the piper’ 1s.1d.

3 April 1735 ‘To a piper’ 1s.1d.
29 December 1735 ‘To the piper’ 1s.1d.
29 December 1742 ‘To the Piper and Fidler at Edgeworthstown’ 2s.2d
13 February 1750 ‘To a Fidler & Piper’ 2s.2d. 10

The standard payment to a musician around this time does seem to have been 1s.1d.,
or ‘one-and-a-penny’, as was called in pre-decimal days. It may have been
significant that, until the British and Irish currencies were united in the early
nineteenth century, an English shilling was worth thirteen pence Irish. Occasionally
two persons shared the expense of a piper. On 15 May 1751 Nicholas Peacock, a
farmer and land agent on the banks of the Maigue River in co. Limerick, dined with
his wife at a neighbour’s, a man who was also a tenant of his: ‘Catty and I dined att
Thos Harragans I borrowed 6½ and gave it ye Pyper’, and doubtless Harragan also
contributed 6½d. The piper was probably the one Peacock mentioned on the 9
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February 1745: ‘... I gott 3s from ye pyper for greasing ...’ [‘grazing’].11 In co. Sligo
Charles O’Hara of Nymphsfield [now Annaghmore], near Tobercurry, also paid a
piper a half-fee, this time for making ‘a public service announcement’ rather than
playing music: ‘19 May 1743 ... Paid to a Piper for proclaiming a Filley belonging to
Charles O’Hara Esqr: and Strayed out of Nimphsfield 00-00-06½.’12 Presumably the
piper would announce details of the missing filly as he rambled through the country
playing in alehouses and at crossroads for dancers. Also in co. Sligo, an account
book kept by the Wynnes of Hazelwood House, just outside Sligo town, recorded 1s.
1d. disbursed in July 1761 ‘to the Colonl to give ye blind piper ...’. 13 Three pipers are
also named in an account book kept by Christopher St George of Kilcolgan Castle,
Oranmore, co. Galway, between 1810 and 1819. They were ‘Chambers, piper’,
‘Donovan, Athenry, piper’, ‘Nyland, piper’, but the published index does not say how
much they were paid. 14

A GUINEA AND A DUEL, 1760S (?)

On at least one occasion a piper earned a guinea for the customary after-dinner
recital, though in rather dangerous circumstances. Co. Westmeath is the original
homeland of the Geoghegans, and it is no coincidence John Geoghegan published the
‘Humours of Westmeath’ in his Compleat tutor for the pastoral or new bag-pipe
(London, 1743), p. 27. Another John Geoghegan from Co. Westmeath – he died in
1776 – once fought a duel over a piper, an act typical of his wild and reckless
behaviour. With the Penal Laws still in force, most Catholic gentry kept a low
profile, but not Geoghegan, who went out of his way to needle the local Protestant
establishment. The penal law that forbade a Catholic to own a horse worth more than
£5 meant in practice that a Protestant could require that a Catholic sell him a horse,
not matter how valuable, for that sum. When a local Protestant demanded
Geoghegan’s two carriage horses for £10, rather than sell he shot them, a point well
made but unfortunate for the horses. Geoghegan did not conceal his animosity even
on social occasions:

John Geoghegan of Jamestown, better known as ‘Jack the Buck’ was one of
the well known characters of his day. Many extraordinary stories were told
of his reckless daring, particularly as a duellist, most of which are now
forgotten. He was invited to dine at Durrow [in the Queen’s County, now co.
Laois], by Mr. Stepney, among the company was Jack St. Leger. After
dinner, the Piper, as was the custom, made his appearance to amuse the
company, and to play the appropriate airs to the different toasts. St. Leger
told the Piper to play up ‘King William over the Water’ and threw him a
guinea. He took up the money but hesitated to play the required tune, being
in dread of Jack the Buck, whose political feelings were strongly averse to
the monarch of ‘pious and glorious memory’. Not being gratified with his
favourite tune, St Leger desired the Piper to return the guinea. Jack the Buck
immediately said, throwing him another, “here’s a guinea that won’t go back
and play up ‘Geoghegan’s Vagary’”, which was accordingly done. At this, St
Leger took offence, and word followed word – a challenge was given and
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 accepted; the parties withdrew to the hall-door steps, where they fought by
candle-light, and Jack the Buck hit his man.

The Buck never forgave St. Leger for the affair of the Piper, and some years
after, when travelling from Dublin on horseback, he stopped at the town, or
village, of Clane, in the county of Kildare, to feed his horse; he found St.
Leger there before him. When the Buck got into the parlour, he commenced
cleaning his pistols, adn squibbing them off. The landlord sent the waiter to
enquire what the noise was, and to know the name of the gentleman who
firing the pistols in the parlour. Mr. St. Leger was sitting in the room
overhead, and heard all that passed. The waiter came in and made the
enquiries as he was directed. Mr. Geoghegan said ‘Tell your master that I am
Jack the Buck Geoghegan from Westmeath. I see a man upstairs that I
thought I had killed some years ago in the King’s County [sic], and I am now
determined to finish him.’

St. Leger, not particularly wishing to be finished, got on his horse and rode
off. 15

TREES AND CAKES, 1650–1810

At the other end of the social scale, pipers in Fingal, or north co. Dublin, in the late
1690s were not receiving so much from a single source. In 1698 the English
bookseller, John Dunton, paid an extended visit to Ireland, basing himself in Dublin
mainly. Surprisingly, Fingal (which in earlier centuries took in parts of south-eastern
co. Meath) was famously conservative in customs and manners, despite being so
close to Dublin city. Dunton commented on the old Irish dress that survived in the
area, and the dialect of medieval English spoken there. He observed another
obviously old custom in the area, that of dancing around particular trees:

The Irish have another custom, to plant an ash or some other tree which will
grow big in the middle of the village, tho I never observ’d them to be planters
of them any where else. In some towns these trees are old and verie great, and
hither all the people resort with a piper on Sundays or holydays in the
afternoon, where the young folk daunce until the cows come home (which by
the way they’ll doe without any one to drive them). I have seen a short truss
… young woman tire five lusty fellows, who hereby getts a husband: I am sure
I should hardly venture my selfe with one who been so able for so many. … If
in the dance the woman be tired, the man throws her to the piper, whose fee
is halfe a penny, and the man, if tired is served the same way.16

The dance Dunton saw was a test of endurance, with the dancers holding out as long
as possible, and a poem set in Fingal, published in 1716, has the lines: ‘And after all,
’tis there confest / The longest Dancer dances best.’17 Obviously the custom of
dancing around trees was very old. It is assumed to have been of pagan origin, and it
is probably no coincidence that in the common tradition of fairy bushes and trees, the
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fairies are always said to dance in a ring around the bush or tree. Coincidentally, at a
wake in Connemara, co. Galway, Dunton noted of the games and amusements, which
were again of pagan origin: ‘Sometimes they followed one another in a ring (as they
say faries doe), in a rude dance to the musique of a bagpipe, ...’. 18

The point of Dunton’s comments on the lack of trees in Ireland was that most of the
dense woodland cover had been cut down earlier in the century; indeed, leases in
Fingal often required a tenant to plant a certain number of trees.19 He noted that the
trees around which the people danced were very old, and possibly the one recorded at
Dunboyne, co. Meath, in the Down Survey of 1655–6, was still standing: ‘At the
North end of the town by the highway stands a high Ash Tree seen over all or most
parts of the Barony about which the Country People used to Dance around on
Festivall Days.’20 At the time of the survey, Ireland in general would have been
recovering from the Eleven Years’ War, 1641–52, and the survey itself was a
preliminary to Cromwellian land settlement. Dunton’s account makes clear that the
old custom had been resumed by the 1680s.

Being ‘thrown to the piper’, who would have been stationed under the tree, meant
that a retiring dancer was expected to pay a halfpenny. In later centuries, dancing for
a spouse was recorded elsewhere in Ireland, when it was also associated with a
custom of pagan origin, the feast of Lughnasa. 21 Normally, though, the prize in one
of these dances was a large cake which was placed on a small round platform and
mounted on a pole. The custom is thought to have given rise to the phrase ‘to take
the cake’, which is found in both Irish and English.22 A poem on football match in
Fingal published in 1720 has a note: ‘It is the customary for the maids to dance for
cakes and have several other sports before the football is begun.’23 A cake was not
the only prize danced for in Fingal. Passing through Drumcondra, co. Dublin (now
part of Dublin city), Dunton noted that ‘on the faire day, a fine smock is exposed as a
prize for weomen to run a foot race, and a bagg of sneezing and a paire of broags for
the best dancer.’ 24 ‘Sneezing’ was the old name for snuff, while ‘smock races’, as
they were called, were traditional in Fingal, and were even mentioned in
advertisements for fairs in the area. 25

The writer and novelist Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, left an interesting account
of a cake dance in co. Sligo a hundred years later:

Although the fare of Sunday seldom rises beyond the accustomed potatoes
and milk of the rest of the week; some few halfpence are always spared from
the household purse to purchase the pleasures which the Sunday cake bestows.
In the centre of a field near some petit auberge, a distaff is fixed in the earth, on
which is placed a large flat cake: this cake is the signal of pleasure, and
becomes the reward of talent. The young and old of both sexes, for miles
round the neighbourhood, hasten to enjoy the pleasures of the cake, which is
sometimes carried off by the best dancer, and sometimes by the archest wag of
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 the company. At a little distance from this standard of revelry, is placed its
chief agent the piper, who is always seated on the ground with a hole dug near
him, into which the contributions of the assembly are dropt: the manner of
bestowing these donations is attended with a little gallantry not to be passed
over in silence. At the end of every jig, the piper is paid by the young man
who dances it, and who endeavours to enhance the value of the gift, by first
bestowing it on his fair partner, and though a penny a jig is esteemed very good
pay, yet the gallantry or ostentation of the contributer, anxious at once to
appear generous in the eyes of his mistress, or to outstep the liberality of his
rivals, sometimes trebles the sum which the piper usually receives. I have been
at some of these cakes, and have invariably observed the inordinate passion for
dancing, so prevalent among the Irish peasants. It is indeed very rare to find an
individual among them who has not for some time under the tuition of a
dancing master … . 26

That the piper was paid at the end of the jig, which would have been a solo or couple
dance, probably accounts for jig titles such as ‘Coppers and Brass’, ‘Sixpenny
Money’, and ‘The Tenpenny Bit’.

A FAKE (?) ELECTION BILL, 1826

To be ‘drunk as a piper’ was already proverbial in English by 1700, and this state is
referred to in what purported to be an old election bill said to hang in a frame on
a wall in Somerville House, co. Meath. Dated 16 April 1826, it was supposedly sent
to Sir Mark Somerville by the proprietor of a hotel in Trim, co. Meath, with
whom Sir Mark had boarded his freeholders, those of his tenants entitled to vote, over
a number days on the occasion of an election. Admittedly, though, while some items
on the bill look normal, many are facetious and ridiculous: the bill was obviously a
piece of ‘Paddy Whackery’. The final entry, intended to capitalise on the reputation
pipers had for hard drinking, reads: ‘I don’t talk of the piper or for keeping him sober
as long as he was sober, … 40l. 10s.’ But this incredible figure was probably a
misprint, as the amount in the tot reads ‘0 10 10’ [ten shillings ten pence].27

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1 An earlier version of this article was published in The Pipers’ Review – Iris na bPíobairí xxvi, 2 (Spring 2007), 18–20.
2 Albert
Feuillerat (ed.), Documents relating to the revels at court in the time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary
(Louvain, Leipzig and London, 1914), pp 48, 79.
3 Seán Donnelly, ‘‘‘Trenchmore:’’ an Irish dance in Tudor and Stuart England?’ @www.setdance.com
4Seán Donnelly, ‘Bagpipes in masques at the English Royal Court, 1551–1557’, Piping Times xlix, 2 (August 1997),
26–30.
5 HMC De Lisle and Dudley MSS I (London, 1925), p. 378.
6 Alan
J. Fletcher (ed.), Drama and the performing arts in pre-Cromwellian Ireland: a repertory of sources and
documents from the earliest times until c.1642 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 426.
7 Evelyn Philip Shirley, The history of the county of Monaghan (London, 1879), p. 48.
8 Dublin, National Library of Ireland, Lismore Papers, MS 26902 [unpaginated].
9 Edward Mac Lysaght (ed.), The Kenmare manuscripts (Dublin, 1942), p. 275.
10 Dublin, National Library of Ireland, Edgeworth Accounts, MS 1511, pp 17, 30, 75; MS 1515, p. 21; MS 1518, p. 202.
11Marie Louise Legg (ed.), The diary of Nicholas Peacock: the worlds of a county Limerick farmer and agent (Dublin,
2005), pp 133, 225.
12Dublin, National Library of Ireland, MS 36/324/2, Disbursements of Charles O’Hara Esqr: for one year ended May
1743, p. 6.
13 Dublin, National Library of Ireland, MS 4199, Wynne of Hazelwood Account Book, p. 14.
14Mary Keegan, ‘Index to persons in household account book kept by Christopher St George of Kilcolgan Castle,
Oranmore, co. Galway, 1 Jan. 1810–29 Dec. 1819’, The Irish Genealogist vii (1986), 106, 107, 110.
15 J.C. Lyons, The grand juries of the county of Westmeath (2 vols., Ledestown, 1853), II, pp 165–6.
16John Dunton, Teague Land: or a Merry Ramble to the Wild Irish (1698) … . Transcribed from the manuscript, edited
and introduced by Andrew Carpenter, with an essay on John Dunton and Irish Folklore by Ríonach Uí Ógáin …
(Dublin, 2003), pp 92–93.
17 Andrew Carpenter (ed.), Verse in English from eighteenth-century Ireland (Cork, 1998), p. 91.
18 Dunton, Teague Land, p. 80.
19 Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha, Fingal 1603–41: contending neighbours in north Dublin (Dublin, 2007), pp 85–6.
20 Charles MacNeill, ‘Copies of the Down Survey Maps in private keeping’, Analecta Hibernica viii (1933), p. 424.
21Máire MacNeill, The festival of Lughnasa: a study of the survival of the Celtic festival of the bringing of harvest
(Oxford, 1962; 2nd ed., with additions and corrections, Dublin, 1982), p. 143.
22 Seán Mac Mathghamhna, ‘The Cake Dance’, Béaloideas xi (1941), 126–42.
23Carpenter, Verse in English from eighteenth-century Ireland, p. 91. For cake dances in Fingal, see Maighréad Ní
Mhurchadha, ‘Two hundred men at tennis: sport in north Dublin, 1600–1760’, Dublin Historical Record lxi, 1 (Spring
2008), 101–2
24 Dunton, Teague Land, p. 152.
25 Ní Mhurchadha, ‘Two hundred men at tennis’, 94, 101.
26[Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan], Patriotic sketches written in the province of Connaught by Miss Owenson … (2
vols., London, 1807), pp 99–102.
27 ‘Irish elections in the olden times – a treating bill’, Ballina Chronicle, 3 October 1849.