MacPherson's Rant: and Other Tales of the Scottish Fiddle

Introduction

The Fiddle

The role of the fiddle in Scotland is a long and chequered one. As far back as the medieval period there were stringed instruments played with a bow, such as the croud mentioned in the fourteenth-century poem Orfeo and Heurodis. The croud was an early form of the fiddle, with a shallow rectangular body about sixty centimetres by thirty centimetres and five centimetres deep; it was probably the direct ancestor of the traditional box fiddle that survived into the twentieth century. Originally it had two horsehair strings, which were bowed, but later it developed three and six-string versions. It is quite likely that the fiddle developed independently in Scotland, though there were similar instruments in the Baltic countries of Estonia and Finland at an early date. They, like the croud, were probably of a tenor pitch. A similar instrument, the crwth, was still in use in Wales in the nineteenth century. It had four strings for bowing and two which could be bowed or plucked, set to one side of the fingerboard. Another version of the same instrument was the Shetland gue and it has been suggested that the instrument originally either came from the British Isles or Scandinavia. The long-term contacts between the peoples of these two areas make it impossible to be precise about such matters, as there has not been a great deal of investigation into the mutual influence between the peoples of Scandinavia and what we now call Scotland.

Another early bowed instrument was the rebec and there is a carving of one on the twelfth-century Melrose Abbey. Arguments have been put forward that such stringed instruments were brought back from the Crusades, which lasted from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. It seems more likely such stringed instruments were developed here in Scotland, or the British Isles. Similarities between the Shetland gue, the Welsh crwth and the bowed harp of Scandinavia make it impossible to decide in which direction influence travelled, so we might as well say that the fiddle is a truly Scottish instrument, as well as being indigenous to many other countries. What underlines its role as a native instrument is the music played on it and, as we shall see, in this respect Scottish music is distinctive. The name fiddle itself may have derived from an early Irish term ‘fidil’, but again it is impossible to be definitive about this.

What we can be absolutely sure of is the importance of the fiddle in Scottish music. There is the report of a French soldier and historian who visited Mary Queen of Scots in 1561 which tells of five or six hundred fiddlers coming to Holyrood to play for the queen. These were not professional musicians but citizens of Edinburgh. It is telling that John Knox, often portrayed as the personification of Puritanism, wrote positively about the same event. The instruments they were playing were most likely flattopped, like rebecs. The arch-top of the modern fiddle came about through the influence of viols, which generally had six strings but were bowed like the fiddle. These instruments were brought in from the Continent in the sixteenth century and were very popular at the court. The improved construction, volume and tone of these instruments had a profound effect on indigenous instruments and the development towards what we now think of as the traditional fiddle was given a significant boost. It is reported that viols were played at the Cross in Edinburgh on the occasion of the coronation of James V in 1513. A considerable amount of music was written for these instruments, which were usually grouped in sixes with two each of the bass, tenor and treble instruments. Although the music for these instruments cannot really be considered as traditional or folk music, it is part of the development of Scottish music as a whole. The cross-fertilisation of musical styles between high art and traditional art is something that has always taken place; but amongst those more concerned with the high art end of the spectrum such mutual interplay is generally ignored, or at best under-rated. This tends to be more the result of social prejudice rather than any meaningful divergence in the different types of music.

A poem attributed to Thomas the Rhymer, who is said to have lived in the thirteenth century, tells of:

Harp and fedyl both he fande

The getern and the sawtry

Lut and rybid ther gon gan’

Thair was al maner of mynstralsy.

Sir Walter Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,

vol IV, 1833 ed., Appendix

Here the getern probably refers to an early form of English guitar or a cithern; the sawtry is the psaltery and the rybid the rebec. The fiddle is just one of the portable musical instruments mentioned in the poem, but over the centuries its popularity has in no way diminished, while the others have disappeared. There are those who contend that the guitar developed independently in the British Isles and there is no doubt that there were what are now called ‘English’ guitars being made here in the seventeenth century and probably earlier. There was a substantial repertoire of tunes for the guitar and the lute in eighteenth-century Scotland, but, like some other instruments, their popularity faded away in the face of the widespread use of the fiddle. By the time the modern violin was finally developed in Italy in the seventeenth century by the Amati family, there was a ready audience for it all over Europe. Scotland was no exception; soon fiddle-makers in Scotland were using the new techniques and the indigenous tradition of fiddle-making was well established. Scotland may not have given birth to a Stradavarius or Guarneri but there are many fine old instruments that still repay the love and attention paid to them.

Collections of Scottish music began to be published from the late seventeenth century onwards but specific collections of fiddle tunes did not appear till the mid-eighteenth century. This is still earlier than the collections of tunes for Scotland’s other main popular traditional instrument: the Highland bagpipe. The role of the pipes in Highland culture made them dubious in the eyes of many after the civil wars of the eighteenth century, even though pipes had actually been popular for a long time in many Lowland areas. The first collection of indigenous fiddle music was published in 1757, when Scots reels or country dances was published in Edinburgh. However, there are many extant copies of fiddlers’ manuscripts from even earlier. It was common practice for fiddlers to keep their repertoires in manuscript form. Many of these contain quite a variety of tunes, such as jigs and reels, now historical forms such as bourrees and chaconnes, reflecting French influence, as well as slow airs. By the late eighteenth century collections like that of Angus Cumming, published in 1780, show us a vibrant and popular tradition of traditional music, much of it used to accompany dancing, an activity that was embraced by all classes of society. Although many collections of fiddle tunes were subsequently published, the line between composing specific melodies and developing tunes from traditional music is one that at times is indistinct.

The fiddle has been at the heart of all kinds of social activity in Scotland for hundreds of years. Its portability, volume and range made it an ideal instrument to be played at weddings, dances and all kinds of small-scale gatherings, within families or in public places. Its usefulness for dance music, as the accompaniment to singing and also its solo playing have made it an integral part of traditional music in Scotland. Its versatility has ensured that many traditional Scottish fiddlers have also played other types of music from classical to jazz.

Shetland

To the north of Scotland are the Orkney and Shetland Isles, both of which were for a long time part of the possessions of the Norwegian Crown. The Shetland Isles are the most northerly outpost of the United Kingdom – over a hundred lowlying and virtually treeless islands cluster together about as far from Aberdeen as the Faeroe Isles or Bergen on the west coast of Norway. Shetlanders often maintain that they are no more Scottish than Scandinavian. The Shetlands were ruled from Norway until 1469, and remnants of the old affiliations remain. To this day the dialect of Shetland is very distinct from other Scots dialects, reflecting its origins in Norn, the old local dialect of Norwegian. Shetland men, like many other Scottish islanders, have long been sea travellers; musically, they have always been open to outside influence, while still maintaining local traditions.

The fiddle in particular had long had a central place in Shetland culture. Even today the most famous proponent of the Shetland style of fiddle, Aly Bain, travels the world, and the instrument retains its popularity amongst Shetland’s youngsters. The Shetland fiddle tradition is very much alive and well, preserving a continuity of traditional music that is hundreds of years old. The survival and growth of interest in the tradition was greatly encouraged by the late Tom Anderson in the twentieth century; under his influence, fiddle teaching became a regular part of the school curriculum in Shetland.

The development of the fiddle in Shetland has a unique history. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Sir Arthur Edmonstone wrote that around ten per cent of the Shetlanders played the violin and that at least some of the music was of Norse origin. He also mentioned the gue, an instrument with two horsehair strings that was played upright like a cello. Researchers have noted that this is something like an instrument from Iceland known as a fidla, and resemblances have also been noted with what has been called the Eskimo violin or ‘tautirut’, though both of these have also been referred to as bowed box-zithers. Whenever the violin actually arrived in Shetland, it is clear that it was absorbed into an indigenous and thriving string-playing tradition. In the 1970s a rough headcount of musicians was taken in the village of Cullivoe on the island of Yell. Of the seventy adult men, more than twenty were, or had been, fiddlers; guitars and accordions or melodeons were played by another nine. In addition, there were a further eight known to be singers, meaning that more than half the male adult community were musicians of one standard or another. Since then, of course, the fiddle has been taken up by more and more women, some of whom have achieved considerable professional success, and it is fair to say that the Shetland fiddle tradition continues to thrive into the twenty-first century.

Although there was no early history of violin-making in the islands, the tradition of Shetland men going off to sea – in the British navy and in the fishing and trading fleets of Britain, the Netherlands and Norway – meant there were always fiddles being brought back from elsewhere.

The role of the fiddle in Shetland was absolutely central in a variety of social rituals. These included weddings and the annual celebrations of Yule, during both of which the ancient tradition of guising also played a part. Guisers were groups of young men, dressed in truly ancient traditional clothes made primarily of straw, with high hats and blue veils over their faces, whose identity was always secret but without whose blessing many social occasions were considered incomplete, or worse. At weddings the ‘scuddler’ or chief guiser would lead off the dancing with the bride, while his companions danced with the other females of the wedding party. They would then be given a drink, after which they would leave and the general festivities would begin. One of the surviving auld or muckle reels that hark back to the days when Shetland was part of Norway is itself known as the Guisers’ Reel.

Dancing in Shetland had its own traditions too, some of which, like guising, seem to hark back to ancient times indeed. Some of the tunes survive in fragments known as the ‘Auld Reels’ or ‘Muckle Reels’. While it is clear that the old style was affected by incoming tunes from the mainland of Scotland, brought in by both Scottish farm workers and the fishermen who came to Shetland’s shores every year, the Shetland tradition remains distinctive. Though today the majority of tunes surviving in Shetland can be seen as part of the wider Scottish fiddle tradition.

A great deal of literature has been written about Shetland folklore, in which the fiddle played a central part, and it is clear that fiddlers have always had a respected role in island society. Descriptions of early weddings and dances all note the importance of the fiddler. They also had a role to play on ships, particularly during the nineteenth-century flourishing of the whaling industry. It was not unusual for whaling ships to be caught in the winter ice and forced to overwinter in the darkness of the far north. The presence of a Shetland fiddler or two amongst the crew would be a great advantage in staving off the boredom and monotony of the months spent in virtually permanent darkness. In fact, every Shetland ship would have at least one fiddle. Ships from other areas would have melodeon players or fiddlers. All were hired either as common sailors or specialists, such as carpenters, but their musical abilities entitled them to an extra share of the eventual catch.

The Fiddle and the Dance

The fiddle has long been central to the Scottish dance tradition even though, like all musical instruments, it was anathema to the more extreme Presbyterians of the period immediately after the Reformation. This period actually saw the prohibition of dancing and widespread denunciation from the pulpit of all sorts of normal human activities – in Scotland we have historically had a lot of problems arising from religious differences. The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century seem to have been particularly incensed by the dances that took place at the Scottish court. Queen Mary brought back many new dances from France and some of these were considered almost obscene. That France was a Catholic country and the Reformers were of a puritanical Protestant bent just made the situation worse. This antagonistic attitude survived into the seventeenth century, with people regularly being hauled before Kirk Session and fined or otherwise punished for dancing. The fact that there are so many references to this from the period shows that the prohibition on dancing never really worked – it was too much part of contemporary culture to be eradicated completely. As late as 1668 a farmer in North Knapdale was refused a certificate of church membership because he practised dancing. Thankfully, he had the decision overthrown on appeal and we hear no more of this ridiculous prohibition, despite the minister concerned claiming that dancing ‘was a sin and bitter provocation to the Lord’.

Many eighteenth-century fiddlers continued the tradition of accompanying dancing – some fiddlers made a living as dancing masters and many of them toured the country instructing and playing for dances. The dances that took place ranged from those held in threshing barns on farmtouns to great society balls in Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere – and all of them needed fiddlers. The farmtouns were where much of Scotland’s rural population lived until the eighteenth century. People farmed rented lands in common, using the ancient runrig system. These cottars, as they were known, suffered the same fate as so many of their Highland cousins later did – they were cleared from the land as soon as the landowners came up with a way of making more ready cash through ‘agricultural improvement’. As with all traditional music forms, there were also a great many people who played for their own amusement; though many of them wanted to ‘make the big time’ and become dancing masters themselves.

Auld Clootie and the Fiddle

During the tragic years of witch persecutions in Scotland, many women were burnt at the stake. Their execution usually followed their confession of their supposed evil deeds. The fact that these confessions were extracted by torture was in no way seen as diminishing their force and relevance. After all, hadn’t they been accused of being witches? Not only is the barbaric and misogynistic treatment of these women a foul blot on Scotland’s history, the confessions themselves seem to have been put in the women’s mouths. Time and again we hear the same things being confessed in virtually the same words. While there were undoubtedly some pagan cult activities surviving into the eighteenth century and later, the behaviour that the witches confessed to were more to do with the expectations of the people torturing them than with reality.

Time and again they confessed to having consorted with Satan and of dancing regularly at witches’ covens. The dances were rarely described in detail, but were assumed to be orgiastic. And time and again we find that the music for such dancing was said to have been provided by the devil himself. His preferred instruments were the fiddle and the bagpipes, the most popular instruments in Scotland throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The best description of this fantasy occurs in Burns’s ‘Tam o Shanter’, where Auld Clootie is playing the pipes. But in many other instances he is portrayed as playing the fiddle. We must remember that for many of the fanatically puritanical clergy of Scotland in the years following 1560 all music other than hymns and psalms were the devil’s work. Dancing too was seen as essentially sinful in anything other than strictly controlled gatherings. Burns satirised such notions in the song ‘The Deil’s Awa wi the Exciseman’, in which Auld Hornie ‘cam fiddlin thru the toun, and danced awa with Exciseman.’ Popular opinion of the exciseman made it likely that his idea of the devil taking away ‘gaugers’, as they were known, was widely appreciated. Although Burns himself worked as an exciseman, his basic beliefs regarding the taxation on spirits are probably summed up in the phrase ‘Whisky an Freedom gang thegither.’ It is notable that the devil in Scotland, sitting playing the fiddle or the pipes, bears little resemblance to the epitome of evil as represented by Satan, the fallen angel in charge of the fires of hell.

But the idea of the devil fiddling for the witches was a strong one, reinforced by the words put in the mouths of many so-called witches by their persecutors in the horrendous witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Time after time in the heartrending reports of such trials we clearly see that the poor victims were brutally and systematically tortured till they told their persecutors exactly what they wanted to hear. The idea of the satanic musician crops up in some odd ways, perhaps none more so than the placename Fiddlenaked Park in Airdrie. Local tradition tells us it was the rendezvous of wizards and witches, who met to celebrate their unholy Sabbats. They were said to have danced naked round their fiddler, who was also unclothed and may or may not have been Auld Clootie himself. It was generally a place that people reckoned was best avoided after dark. When we remember that traditional tales tell of public rituals in which young couples made love in stone circles at midsummer, it is conceivable that such remnants are in fact faint echoes of ancient religious practice from pagan times.

Even today people sometimes try to use what they think is magic. A couple of hundred years ago such practices were much more widespread. There were, for instance, widespread practices of divination – trying to see into the future – which took place at Halloween. These are relatively well known and many of them are described in Robert Burns’ poem ‘Halloween’. Some people think that ‘dookin for apples’ is a remnant of an ancient ritual of looking into the future. However, there were lots of other practices that were common when most of the population of Scotland still lived in rural areas. Many rituals, such as visiting healing wells, involved doing certain things a specific number of times. After making a prayer, it was common to have to go round such wells three or even nine times to make sure that the prayer worked. While many such rituals were basically concerned with healing, in days when going to the doctor was too expensive for many poor people, there were other types of magic practice that were resorted to.

While Christian ministers often saw such types of behaviour as little different from Black Magic, or seeking help directly from the devil, it is much more likely that they are remnants of practices that were common in pagan times. The idea that people worshipped the devil before the enlightenment of Christianity came upon them is erroneous. The truth is that long after Christianity came to the British Isles people continued to carry out ‘superstitious’ practices out of sight of the priests and ministers, mainly because they thought that such activities worked. Their parents and grandparents had done such things and it was better to be safe than sorry; so they kept up the practices.

One of the stranger beliefs was that if you crawled underneath a brier rose or bramble that was rooted in the earth at both ends your wishes would be granted. To make this charm or spell work it was necessary to crawl under it, naked, nine times in all. Such rites would usually be carried out on the ancient holy days of Beltane, 1 May, or Samhain, 1 November, which were the most magical days in the old pagan year.

The Role of Storytelling

The material in this book is taken from both traditional tales and reminiscences, and memoirs of actual events. Recent research has shown that the oral tradition, long spurned by historians as little more than entertainment, does in fact contain memories of events and societies that can help us gain a clearer picture of how people lived in the past. Many such stories have survived over remarkable periods of time and have eventually been written down in collections. Though some such stories may come from the twentieth century, others have roots that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. While historians prefer to rely on the written word to tell us of our past, we are only now becoming aware that the oral tradition can in fact retain factual data over thousands of years. Stories have been told for as long as people have been on the planet and the process of storytelling was how knowledge was passed on from generation to generation, whether it was practical knowledge, mythology and ritual, or tales of heroes and heroines. Such tales continue to be told for as long as the audience finds them relevant and are not necessarily superseded by the arrival of literacy. There is currently a worldwide surge of interest in storytelling and we are only now beginning to understand that these remnants of the past can teach us a great deal about our ancestors. We should remember that even in the modern Western world not everyone can read and write.

Just a couple of hundred years ago literacy was often very limited amongst the rural and urban working classes. So, although the storytelling tradition was not as structured as it had been in earlier times, it continued to flourish. Even today you hear people in pubs, at parties and other social gatherings who are natural storytellers; often the stories they tell are based on traditional material – old tales in new clothes. The historians’