The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 14, October 3, 1840

We need hardly have acquainted our Irish readers that in the prefixed sketch, which our admirable friend the Burton has made for us, they are presented with the genuine portrait of a piper, and an Irish piper too—for the face of the man, and the instrument on which he is playing, are equally national and characteristic—both genuine Irish: in that well-proportioned oval countenance, so expressive of good sense, gentleness, and kindly sentiments, we have a good example of a form of face very commonly found among the peasantry of the west and south of Ireland—a form of face which Spurzheim distinguished as the true Phœnician physiognomy, and which at all events marks with certainty a race of southern or Semitic origin, and quite distinct from the Scythic or northern Indo-European race so numerous in Ireland, and characterized by their lighter hair and rounder faces. And as to the bagpipes, they are of the most approved Irish kind, beautifully finished, and the very instrument made for Crump, the greatest of all the Munster pipers, or, we might say, Irish of modern times, and from which he drew his singularly delicious music. Musical reader! do not laugh at the epithet we have applied to the sounds of the bagpipe: the music of Crump, which we have often heard from himself on these very pipes, was truly delicious even to the most refined musical ears. These pipes after Crump’s death were saved as a national relic by our friend the worthy and patriotic historian of Galway—need we say, James Hardiman—who, in his characteristic spirit of generosity and kindness, presented them to their present possessor, as a person likely to take good care of them, and not incompetent to do justice to their powers; and the gift was nobly and well bestowed! Yet, truth to tell, Paddy Coneely is not to be compared with John Crump, who, according to the recollections of him which cling to our memory, was a Paganini in his way—a man never to be rivalled—and who produced effects on his instrument previously unthought of, and which could not be expected. Paddy is simply an excellent Irish piper—inimitable as a performer of Irish jigs and reels, with all their characteristic fire and buoyant gaiety of spirit—admirable indeed as a player of the music composed for and adapted to the instrument; but in his performance of the plaintive or sentimental melodies of his country, he is not able, as Crump was, to conquer its imperfections: he plays them not as they are sung, but—like a piper.