History: Etymology of Pennywhistle and Tin Whistle

I've been doing some research on the origin and use of the words "pennywhistle" and "tin whistle." It seems that usage was uncommon until the 20^th century. Robert Clarke began selling his instruments around 1843, but his company was advertising them as "Clarke London Flageolets" or "Clarke Flageolets" in 1900. I checked some early 20^th century reference books, and neither the dictionary nor the thesaurus nor the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica mention either term, although the latter's whistle entry does mention metal flageolets.

Although usage seems to be uncommon, however, both terms do predate Robert Clarke. With the aid of my friendly local librarians I found citations in the Oxford English Dictionary. Note that, unlike most dictionaries, OED inclusion and citations are chronological rather than by popularity so an OED citation does not mean that a word was in common use.

At any rate, the OED's citation for "tin whistle" comes from John Neal's 1825 novel Brother Jonathan:

As if he were sounding a charge with... a tin-whistle.

The OED has multiple citations for "penny whistle:"

1730 Gabriel Odingsells Bay's Opera III. 64 "Musicians with Halters about their Necks—Their Instruments strung behind, penny Whistles, Trumpets, and so forth, in their Hands"
1817 Scott Rob Roy I. x. 233 "Pipes!—They look more like penny-whistles."
1931 N. Douglas London Street Games (ed. 2) 29 "I went down the lane to buy a penny whistle, A copper came by and pinch my penny whistle."

It would seem that the speculation that the words "tin whistle" and "pennywhistle" date back to the first mass production, namely, Clarke's instruments, is probably incorrect:

• The words were in use earlier.
• Clarke and Clarke's company called their products "flageolets" for at least part of their history.
• The words didn't become popular enough to be reflected in dictionaries or encyclopedias until the last half of the 20^th century.

Whistle Care: A Burr in the Fipple

I have a couple of inexpensive whistles. A few days ago I noticed that one of them, a Feadóg was unusually sensitive to overblowing and tended to break into the third (!) octave. For a while I thought it was because my other whistle, a tweaked Clarke Sweetone had higher air requirements, and I needed to learn how to blow differently on each whistle. That's true to some extent, but I was finding it difficult to even play a long high G without getting a "warbling" sound due to the third octive breaking in a little.

Then I remembered reading a description of a similar problem on the Chiff and Fipple forums, which, according to the writer, was resolved by removing debris from the fipple. So I removed the Feadóg's fipple and, sure enough, there was a thin strip of plastic projecting from the bottom. I don't know if it was a manufacturing defect or if I created it by scraping the side of the fipple with the edge of the body while tuning the whistle, but I suspect the latter since the problem just appeared. I removed the burr with a thin kitchen knife and the whistle now sounds quite a bit better.

By the way, the Feadóg and the Sweetone have very different sounds, and both are quite pleasant. I would guess that this is mainly due to the conical vs. cylindrical bodies. They're very inexpensive, so if you've tried only one style of whistle body it might be worthwhile to have at least one of each.