(Fr. flageolet, flûteau d’un sou, flûte en fers blanc; Ger. Blechflöte; Sp. flauta metálica; Flem. blikken fluit, fluitje van een cent).
A popular form of Duct flute. It was invented by Robert Clarke (1816–82), a farm labourer who lived in Coney Weston, Suffolk. He was a talented performer on a small wooden six-holed duct flute, possibly a Flageolet. He copied this instrument with help from the local blacksmith using the newly available tinplate. After a dispute with the farmer over his wages, he started to make tin whistles for sale in 1843; he later moved to Manchester, walking there with his materials in a barrow. He started manufacture in a hut but when he became successful he purchased a larger property in nearby New Moston. Shortly thereafter he was exporting all over the world, particularly to Ireland where his tin whistles became the most popular and easily available instrument for traditional music.
Clarke’s first tin whistle was called the ‘Meg’ (‘meg’ being the Lancashire name for a halfpenny, the price for which he sold them). The Meg had six finger-holes in front and a wooden block crimped into the mouthpiece. Later he produced, by the same method, a larger instrument in the key of C, which became universally known as the Pennywhistle. The origin of the name is uncertain. Clarke’s price was threepence a dozen wholesale. It is said that they were so called because street musicians played them for pennies. Clarke tin whistles were made in other keys but these were only available until just after the turn of the century. The business remained in the family until 1986, when it was purchased by Jim Weedon. He later produced a pennywhistle in the key of D, together with a new version named the ‘Sweetone’, which has a plastic mouthpiece.
See also Tin whistle.
D. Thompson and L. Thompson: ‘Folk Musical Instruments at the Kutztown Folk Festival’, Pennsylvania Folklife, xxxi (1982), 158–61
Na Feadánaigh: the Whistle Players (Glyndon, MN, 1984–5) [pubn of the Penny Whistle Society]
P. Varlet: ‘Le flageolet ou tin whistle’, Tradition vivante, xi (1987), 223–30
N. Dannatt: The Pennywhistle: the Story of Robert Clarke and his Famous Tinwhistle 1843–1993 (Tonbridge, 1993)
NORMAN DANNATT