Thanks for the ideas about tartan trousers- these "trews" have been worn by the Scottish Lowland regiments for many years so are very apropos.

I think I'm going to hit some thrift shops in the morning!

Now people may be wondering why they're hiring an uilleann piper. They have a Highland piper as well, but they heard me play the uilleann pipes at our local "Pipes of Spring" concert and they wanted that sound for their event.

Actually, most Scottish folk songs don't fit on the range of the Highland pipes. I'll be playing a number of Burns songs that are perfectly playable on the uilleann pipes but not on the Highland:
The Lea-Rig
My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose
Ca' the Yowes
Afton Water
Ye Banks and Braes
Loch Lomond
and of course
Auld Lang Syne.

(Yes Highland pipers including myself play some of these but the melodies have to be mangled somewhat to fit onto the limited gamut of the Highland pipes.)

A very interesting recent book, Bagpipes: A National Collection of a National Instrument by Hugh Cheape demostrates that the so-called uilleann pipes probably had its origins in London, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen as well as Dublin:

"On the basis of material evidence alone, it is possible to argue for a Scottish origin for the Union Pipe, or at least shared and coterminous develpoment of the intrument between the urban centres of Edinburgh and Dublin and possibly Newcastle."

"By the early 19th century most of the surviving sets of Union Pipes are marked and the picture becomes clearer: with Hugh Robertson and Donald MacDonald in Edinburgh, Malcom MacGregor in Glasgow and London, Robert Scott in London and James Reid in North Shields."

For some unknown reason the Union Pipes fell out of favour in Britain but flourished in Ireland. With the instrument's past conveniently forgotten and a spurious Gaelic name concocted, the uilleann pipes by the mid 19th century had become the Irish national instrument in popular culture.