A blind musician holding a uilleann pipe or pastoral bagpipe. Etching attributed to G. Grattan.

The bagpipe is called the pastoral bagpipe or uillean (McCandless loc. cit.). In the present engraving (showing a right-handed player), the bag and the bellows are not shown, but the bag would be inside the player's coat, under his left arm, and the bellows would lie under the right elbow. The blow-pipe connecting the bellows to the bag can be clearly seen emerging behind the right hand on the chanter and crossing the player's stomach to a point below his left hand. Just above his left hand can be seen what could be the bag neck descending from the top of the chanter, bending as it joins the body of the bag, and a right-angled shape which is correctly proportioned and positioned if it were intended to represent the stock. At that time the head of the chanter would have been tied directly into the bag, and this connection should be much more visible, as shown for example in a print of James Gandsey, the "Killarney Piper", reproduced in the Picture archive of the Na Píobairí Uilleann website (Information kindly supplied to the Wellcome Library on 30 August 2011 by Terry Moylan, Archivist of Na Píobairí Uilleann).

Possibly "Blind Daniel the piper" who is depicted in one of the prints by Hugh Douglas Hamilton forming "The cries of Dublin" (Dublin 1760)

[Dublin?] : [publisher not identified], [between 1800 and 1809?]

1 print : etching ; border 28.2 x 20.4 cm

Enough for nothing. Price 6d.

Attributed to George Grattan by comparison with an oil painting of the same composition in reverse, and with differences in the background, offered for sale at Adam's auction house, Dublin, Important Irish art, 28 March 2001, with attribution to George Grattan and dated 1801

Brian E. McCandless, 'The pastoral bagpipe', The pipers' review, 1998, 17 (2): 19-28

Wellcome Collection 16514i