The Poet & The Piper – Seamus Heaney and Liam O’Flynn (Claddagh CCT21CD)
Live Recordings from the William Kennedy Piping Festival – Various (Armagh Pipers Club WKPFCD001)
Pre-Famine Ireland, according to the cliché, had a piper in every parish. Surprisingly, this is a testable claim. The number of parishes in Ireland, north and south, comes to around 2,500. Na Píobairí Uilleann has compiled a computerised archive of references in the literature to named pipers throughout Irish history. This yields a total of between 2,000 and 2,500 distinct names. Remember that this is covering at least six generations in some detail, with a smattering of references dating back to earlist times. It’s not a great fit, but taken...