Quote Originally Posted by auld argonian View Post
Okay, but why didn't (and why don't) the Irish Americans wear the green or saffron kilts? Looks like they went with Scottish tartans...availability wouldn't be much of a reason since it'd be easier and cheaper to weave a solid color than a tartan. It's been pointed out here that the Irish County tartans and family tartans were designed very recently so those weren't available though it would have been just as feasible for the 19th and early 20th Century folks to design a distinct tartan and have it woven back then.

It certainly doesn't annoy me (my bejesuses are nicely intact) but I am curious as to why a group that has always put a lot of emphasis on their traditions would just sort of get liberal about things like this while they're pretty specific about so many other things. If there were pipes in some historic period in Ireland, why would they not use pipes based on those rather than just accept pipes based on the Scottish model...I would think that there'd be some differences between the two...and why adopt a repertoire of Scottish tunes rather than Irish ones?

I have to speculate that the Irish Nationalists went with the kilt and the pipes as a shock tactic...to make a statement. I got no problem with that...when you're trying to kick start a political movement, ya' do what ya' gotta do.

I'm not making a case that "the Irish had to copy from the Scots" here...it's just pure academic curiosity. No ax to grind, folks. Just wondering if somebody said, "Hey, ya' know what we should do? We should get some of them kilts and wear those!" "Yeah...great idea....but most people think that kilts are Scottish not Irish..." "Ah....what do they know?"

I would suggest that, as far as those early Irish American pipe bands were concerned, they might have looked at the prospect of wearing a solid color kilt and figgered that observers would think that they were skirts...."if it's solid color, it's a skirt BUT if it's TARTAN, it's a kilt".

Best

AA
Concerning civilian pipebands in Ireland, specifically of the nationalist rather than loyalist kind, they did wear solid colour kilts to begin with, together with green caubeens on their heads, and a few of them still dress that way, in fact most of them apparently dressed like that as recently as the 1970s. Some of the bands seem to have had two uniforms, with either green or saffron kilts. The records that survive don't explain that particular detail, but I'd guess that whether you'd want to wear green was a function of how much you wanted to annoy the Brits, back when the whole island was under British rule. Over time, however, they seem to have mostly switched to tartan kilts and black glengarries, although they studiously avoid diced bands on the latter, considering it (rightly or wrongly) to represent the British crown.

As to Irish American police and fire department pipebands, you may have something about tartan being seen as less like a skirt. My own daughter has been known to order me to wear a tartan kilt rather than a solid colour one! I don't know whether they ever dressed more 'Irish' at some point in the past, but you have to remember that they were first and foremost Americans, and many of their members would have no Irish blood atall.

It is true that there were differences between Irish and Scottish pipes. The original bagpipes had one long bass drone pointing down, and these can still be seen in places such as Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria and some parts of what used to be Yugoslavia, to name a few countries. Pipes with two upwards pointing drones can still be found in Germany, Austria and France, and maybe other places, and the Irish pipes would have been something along those lines, but had fallen out of use by the time the Irish nationalists decided to revive them, except in the form of parlour pipes that you pump under your arm instead of by blowing into them. The Irish form of the parlour pipes are known as the uillean or sometimes union pipes, and are often thought of as particularly Irish, but exist in various forms in several countries including Scotland. Scottish pipes differ by having three drones.

Now, you couldn't use the parlour pipes in a marching band, because they aren't loud enough! So, the nationalists had to come up with something. The same goes for Irish units of the British Army faced with the same problem. French pipes such as the cornemuse might have been the closest thing to what the old Irish pipes would have resembled, but no-one seems to have adopted that particular solution, and I don't know whether there were any major makers in France at that time, which might be the reason(?). Or maybe they just didn't like the French, LOL! What seems to have been adopted instead were two drone pipes that were derived from Scottish designs, but minus a drone. Again, over time, they seem to have simply switched to the Scottish type of pipe, being no doubt cheaper and more widely available. I might venture to suggest that having the correct number of drones might never have been considered important in the US. I don't play the pipes, and I'm not sure they sound much different.