EAMON Gaffney remembers Melbourne Archbishop Daniel Mannix never went anywhere unless he had two bagpipers with him.
Mr Gaffney picked up the traditional Irish bagpipes when he was 11 years old and soon found himself playing for Archbishop Mannix, a staunch Irishman, in the late 1950s.
He said he shadowed Archbishop Mannix at communion breakfasts, foundation stone blessings and fetes – “he’d always have two pipers with him”.
“I was one of them but I was only a young lad then of course,” he said.
Now a piper with a lifetime of experience, Mr Gaffney and fellow Queensland Irish Pipe Band piper Daniel McDiarmid have played the bagpipes at St Patrick’s Day Mass at St Stephen’s Cathedral for several bishops over many years.
This St Patrick’s Day was no different.
A sea of Brisbane Catholics – all wearing something green – packed the 10am Mass with Archbishop Mark Coleridge and the two pipers piping.
Mr Gaffney said today was about “celebrating what we have and what we’ve inherited – it’s very important”.
“The Irish played an awfully strong part in this country, and certainly here in Queensland,” he said.
The Queensland Irish Pipe Band is the oldest Irish pipe band in Australia and one of the oldest pipe bands in Queensland.
“It’s a very traditional Irish instrument really,” Mr Gaffney said.
“Irish pipe in particular is used all over Ireland, the same way it is in Scotland.
“Every town and village and county in Ireland has an Irish pipe band – it’s part of our culture.”
Mr McDiarmid said each year he and Mr Gaffney have a choice of what to play on St Patrick’s Day, and they often had a bit of fun with the choice.
This year it was a hymn that was hardly ever sung anymore – Faith of Our Fathers.
The hymn has rebel elements to it because the words are written in memory of the Catholic martyrs who were killed at the time of the formation of the Church of England.
It was written by Oratory Father Frederick William Faber, who converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1845, and became a noted English hymnist.
