I've added a few new photos to the "Gallery" - some shots from this past summer, good times knocking tunes around with Floyd and Cecilia MacKinnon of Richmond, PEI.

New Pics

I've added a number of photos to the 'Photo Gallery', a couple of real old-timers.  Check'm out ....

There Oughta be a Law!

A gang of youths, who were parading the roadway, shouting obscene language, playing mouth organs, and pushing respectable people down.  The young ruffians were all armed with thick leather belts, on which there were heavy brass buckles.

                                 -         The Daily Graphic (England), Aug. 25, 1898; quoted in:  
                                       Geoffrey Pearson, Hooligan, London, 1983; p.83 (my italics)

Updates

I've just put recordings of three original tunes on the 'Listen to the Music' page, guitar accompaniment by  Calgary rocker Craig Galambos.

Lots of new things in the 'Library', including a link to "Arm of Gold", on youtube.  This is the documentary film about Cape Breton fiddler Lee Cremo going to compete in Nashville.  Highly recommended.

Irrepressible Hopefulness

From Middlemarch, by George Eliot:

So Fred was gratified with nearly an hour’s practice of Ar hyd y nos,
Ye banks and braes, and other favourite airs from his Instructor on
the Flute; a wheezy performance, into which he threw much ambition and
an irrepressible hopefulness.

Fiddle Contests in PEI & Cape Breton?

In the latest edition (June, 2012) of The Island Fiddler, there's an article in memory of Bishop Faber MacDonald, a founder of the PEI Fiddlers Society, in which the author, Margaret Ross MacKinnon, recalls that:

Father Faber strongly emphasized the 

necessity to end the damage and hard feelings 

caused by fiddle contests by banning fiddle 

competitions on P.E.I. and avoiding the jealousy and 

disunity that competitions create. In our vocations as 

an Ordained Priest and a Registered Nurse 

respectively, Father Faber and I knew that it was 

critical for our new group to develop trust, respect, 

cohesiveness, comradeship, esprit-de-corps and 

have fun in order to share our individual God-given 

talents and let go of the competitive ways of the past. 

Somewhere years ago, I read a similar remark about fiddle contests in Cape Breton - but have come across no such reference since. Does anyone out there know anything about early fiddle contests in Cape Breton, and when and why they came to an end (assuming they did)?

I've come across another youtube clip of Cape Breton fiddler Billie MacPhee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ViFis3efeE&feature=related.  He starts off with a version of the old standard Road to the Isles, but with variations that I haven't heard before.

jt