Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

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9 3 27 20130712 27 Hugh Robertson the Turner and pipemaker re- turns to adding ‘and pipemaker’ to his entry in that same Edinburgh Post Directory, while there exists a set of his ivory and silver mounted bellows blown pipes with an addi- tional regulator which has an assay office mark for 1793-4. 4 Bellows pipes themselves were not unusual in Scotland so was it perhaps the addition of a regulator that made them ‘Irish’? 1 National Archives of Scotland (NAS) GD112/21/84/19 2 NAS GD112/21/84/27 3 NAS GD112/21/94/1 4 Sanger K, ‘An Edinburgh bagpipe teacher’. Common Stock. Volume 22. No 1, (June 2007). T HE HIGHLAND PIPES skirled “Amazing Grace” as the sleety rain fell on a grey day South Shields. They were there to send off our old friend Kenny Fisher who had passed away recently. Although Ken played the highland pipes with the band, he had made the Uilleann Pipes and played them. Indeed I think he was fonder of them though a shy player. I first met him in the 1970s, and he was talking about making some Irish Pipes from some plans he had come across. At that time it was very difficult to get hold of pipes with so few active makers. The skills to make pipes could- n’t be assumed and the necessarytools were a problem to make. There were wood-work, metal-work and leather-work skills needed. Also reeds were the bane of our lives. If it was- n’t for the likes of Ken Fisher and Matt Kier- nan and their reed-making, many of us wouldn’t have been playing at all. However Ken Fisher made reeds with seeming ease – not a man for measurements, more an approx- imation, but as rough as they looked, they al- ways worked. Ken was a tall well built man with a cheery smile and a friendly disposition. He was one of many skilled artisans like his friend, neighbour and co- conspirator in making, Tom Green. Both served their time in the shipyards of Jarrow in the north east of England where many Irishmen came to work in the good times when ships needed build- ing. However there weren’t always good times and Jarrow is famous for the marchers who walked to London to protest against the drastic unemployment in 1936. Ken and Tom were a gen- eration younger than the Jarrow Marchers but knew hard times as well. Ken told me of when he went looking for work in the Forest of Dean down in the far south-west of England, driving a motor cycle and sidecar with his wife Pat and child in, and the weather was so bad he had to stop and shelter behind the sidecar out of the rain. He was glad to get back to the north-east but while down in the south-west he came across some drawings for the uilleann pipes and he set up a workshop with a view to making them. When I write “workshop” it was a former outside toilet and his lathe was a welded iron bedstead with a Black and Decker drill. Ken was a master of in- vention and that was all he seemed to need to make some wondrous things. With advice and help from piper John Martin he made his first set of pipes about 1974 for John, made out of Lignum Vitae and brass keys. Lignum was a wood used in the shipyards for engine bearings due to their ~ OBITUARY ~ KEN FISHER 1938–2013

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