Uilleann pipes
The earliest surviving sets of uilleann pipes date from the second half of the 18th century, but it must be said that datings are not definitive. Only recently has scientific attention begun to be paid to the instrument, and problems relating to various stages of its development have yet to be resolved. The Uilleann pipes or union pipes might have originated from the Pastoral pipes (Border pipes, Northumbrian pipes, Scottish smallpipes) and gained popularity in Ireland within the Protestant Anglo-Irish community and its gentlemen pipers, who could afford such expensive hand-made instruments. The Irish Uilleann pipes are far more elaborate in their design, and their development is likely to have occurred among the well-to-do. Certainly many of the early players in Ireland were Protestant, possibly the best known being the mid-18th-century piper Jackson from Co Limerick and the 18th-century Tandragee blind pipemaker William Kennedy. The famous Rowsome family from Co. Wexford were also Church of Ireland until the mid-late 19th century. The Uilleann pipes were often used by the Protestant clergy, who employed them as an alternative to the church organ. As late as the 19th century the instrument was still commonly associated with the Anglo-Irish, e.g. the Anglican clergyman Canon James Goodman (1828–1896) from Kerry, who had his tailor-made uilleann pipes buried with him at Creagh (Church of Ireland) cemetery near Baltimore, County Cork. His friend, and Trinity College colleague, John Hingston from Skibbereen also played the uilleann pipes. Another piping friend of Canon Goodman, Alderman Phair of Cork (founder of the pipers club in Cork in the 1890s) had Goodman's pipes recovered from Creagh cemetery. They were later donated to Cork piper Michael O'Riabhaigh, who had re-established the (by then extinct) pipers club in Cork in the 1960s.