Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

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7 4 22 20110920 22 ~ Seanchas ~ THE LIFE OF WILLIAM TALBOT THE PICTURE featured on this issue’s cover – of the celebrated piper William Talbot – was discovered in the National Library of Ireland by Emmett Gill, to whom we are in- debted for bringing it to our attention. Entitled “Mr. Talbot, the Celebrated Performer on the improved Union Pipe”, it is described on the NLI website as a ‘hand-coloured lithograph’ and was published in August 1823 at the Artist’s Depository, 21 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, London. No references to this picture have been noted in the various works on the pipes in Ireland, and it has seemingly remained unknown to re- searchers and enthusiasts until Emmett’s dis- covery. Talbot was known to many writers on the pipes, and this picture’s emergence from obscurity affords us a happy opportunity to re- view the several accounts of his life that have been published through the years. Probably the most picturesque, published in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology in April 1906, was said by the editor, Francis Joseph Bigger, to have been found “in an old book at Ardrigh” (his home). This source has never turned up and the author of the piece is uknown. It was re-printed in An Píobaire (Sraith II, 44) in July 1989, submitted by Ken McLeod. This can be found on our website and is worth reading, not least for the story about Talbot producing excellent music out of an old stocking. Francis O’Neill’s account of Talbot, in Irish Minstrels and Musicians (Chicago 1913), is based mostly upon the work of William Car- leton and W. H. Grattan Flood which, for the record, are re-printed below. Seán Donnelly contributed two items on Tal- bot to An Píobaire. In February 1982, in an ar- ticle entitled “In Dublin 170 Years Ago”, Seán quoted from several contemporary sources to establish that in 1812/13 Talbot was a regular performer at Dignam’s O.P. Tavern in Trinity Street, at The Struggler tavern in Capel Street, at The Old Struggler in Cook Street and at the Lamb Alley tavern off Cornmarket. The sources also reveal that Talbot was a pupil of the piper Crampton, played the flageolet as well as the pipes, and that he gave piping in- Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland

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[Periodical]

2011-09-22T00:00:00

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