Box and Fiddle
Year 19 No 03
November 1995
Keep Faith
By Jimmy Allan
My story concerns an old fiddle, a white waistcoat and Scottish dance…….
In 1912, my father, a gamekeeper and a native of Perthshire, moved up to Morayshire to work on an estate there. Dad, a self-taught fiddle player, had played for an old dancing master in his native Perthshire and was a pretty good dancer, having learned whilst watching the master at work.
Mam was taken with the white waistcoat and a romance blossomed. The First World War started and dad, like many more stalkers and keepers, joined the Lovat Scouts as a sniper.
Time moved on and our happy family home in Morayshire was visited by many of the locals to get “a tune fae Bob on the fiddle”. He always started his ‘thrash’ with ‘The Smith’s a Gallant Fireman’, whereupon my big brother Bert and I used to pull faces behind his back. Dad threatened, but never skelped.
The nearly village hall was the scene of many great night’s entertainment. With the fiddle, Bob attended all the dances, in plus-fours, but minus the eye-catching white waistcoat which had been eaten by moths during five years’ enforced idleness in a bothy kist during the war years. Picture the scene – paraffin lamps, the locals in their best clothes, most of them wearing boots, the women mostly in blouse and skirt, all awaiting the first notes of the battered old fiddle to strike up the Grand March, then straight into the Circassian Circle. As a youngster I sat and watched with eyes popping, completely hooked on the great spectacle. The smell I recall is that of sweaty bodies; the men, I suppose, like dad wore long drawers and must have been almost cooked. The smell of ‘roset’ from the lads who worked ‘in the wids’ mingled with farm smells and the unmistakable aroma of mothballs. The women, a little more refined, smelt of scent (Californian Poppy) – sixpence in Woolies.
Mam, herself never a dancer, used to warn us two boys to “stand well back when they do the Lancers”, and we had to come straight home when the Lancers was finished. As dad called the dance from the platform he was MC as well, and we used to beg him “dad, don’t put on the Lancers too soon”. When the Lancers was called we retreated to the door and watched. What a spectacle! And the highlight of the dance was what dad called ‘baskets’, though we did not understand why. This was the point when the men birled round at such a speed that the women were airborne – we saw their bloomers! We used to know who was the best birler and who could lift the women the highest. Mam’s worries about injuries to spectators were well founded.
Meanwhile the gentry up in the big hoose had their own form of entertainment – a world that we, as youngsters, knew nothing of. We were not allowed even to be seen near the big hoose – we were taught that we had to respect these people – who smelt not of sweat, roset or farm manure, but of tweeds, cigar smoke and French perfume. The lady of the big hoose decided that a bit of culture should be brought into the lives of us ordinary folk, and members of a string orchestra were engaged to entertain. The locals duly turned up to hear Mozart, Schubert and Bach, and applaud politely. They listened, but it was not their kind of music. My dad was doorkeeper on this occasion, and as they left the comment was made “Faur’s yer fiddle, Bob? We want to hear a richt tune!” Dad smiled, and was secretly greatly chuffed.
My parents sent me to learn the fiddle, but I did not make much of it. I hated the sound I made. I was always attracted to dance classes, so I packed in the fiddle and with my 1/6d went instead to lessons in ballroom dancing. As a serviceman during the second war, I was able to put this to good use in such places as the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, but was later brought down to earth when stationed at a small airfield near Paris. Dr Donald Caskie, the Tartan Pimpernel, invited me to a ceilidh at his home in Paris where he said, “We do a few Scots dances”. I found that I was totally inept at the Eightsome Reel ! I determined to rectify this.
After the war, my work took me to various parts of Scotland and I had the opportunity to learn Scottish Country Dancing which I always thoroughly enjoyed, completely hooked as I was on Scottish music and dance. But at the back of my mind I always hankered back to the great fun of the old-time village hall dances. The wonderful spectacle on television of Jimmy Shand and the dancers at Letham kindled a spark in me that I found hard to extinguish. Were the dances that I knew in my childhood coming back? I often wondered if dad would have approved of the sophistication and precision of modern Scottish Country Dances, and sometimes I almost felt like a defector. He had thought it prissy to be holding the woman at arm’s length. “It’s nae natural. That’s the wey the toff’s dance!” he’d say.
Should the likes o’ me care tippence aboot
Castle or mansion or spire?
The fowk that were my fowk lived by their skills
In smiddy and bakehoose and byre
Though their hames are but rickles, tae us they hae left
Their music, their smeddum, their speik
Keep playin it, sayin it. Ever keep faith
Keep it here for oor bairns, should they seek!
Reading Betty Allan’s lines I wondered, was I keeping faith with my dad?
My story is now brought up to date as I find myself dancing at the Summer School at Stirling University. We did the dances that I remember from my days in the village hall – Lancers, Quadrilles and dad’s favourite La Va. Bert and I used to sing as he played,
“Can ye nae dae La Va?
Can ye nae dae La VA?
If ye canna dae La VA
Ye’re nae esse at aa.”
All these and many more were expertly taught at Stirling by Jessie Stewart from Dufftown and resulted for me in four days of nostalgia and enjoyment, of which Bob the fiddler would have heartily approved.
All the characters in the early part of my story are now gone. Mam and dad are long since buried at Tullich on Deeside, and Bert is commemorated along with them on their headstone. My brother never lived to experience the joy I’ve had in dancing – war and the Wellington bomber saw to that. We are told that Tullich kirkyard was the scene of the first Reel of Tullich when the congregation danced while waiting for the minister on a cold Sunday. I often stop there on my visits up Deeside and in my imagination I hear the strains of the old fiddle, or perhaps it’s just ‘a curlew wheeplin across the meer’.
I suppose if Bob the fiddler appeared at an Accordion and Fiddle club today he would be outclassed by the many talented young players. Such is the standard of playing now that expectations are higher, audiences have become more critical, and enjoyment more difficult to achieve. In Bob’s day people expected less but got much more pleasure from his playing because he played ‘fae the hert’.
By Jimmy Allan
My story concerns an old fiddle, a white waistcoat and Scottish dance…….
In 1912, my father, a gamekeeper and a native of Perthshire, moved up to Morayshire to work on an estate there. Dad, a self-taught fiddle player, had played for an old dancing master in his native Perthshire and was a pretty good dancer, having learned whilst watching the master at work.
Mam was taken with the white waistcoat and a romance blossomed. The First World War started and dad, like many more stalkers and keepers, joined the Lovat Scouts as a sniper.
Time moved on and our happy family home in Morayshire was visited by many of the locals to get “a tune fae Bob on the fiddle”. He always started his ‘thrash’ with ‘The Smith’s a Gallant Fireman’, whereupon my big brother Bert and I used to pull faces behind his back. Dad threatened, but never skelped.
The nearly village hall was the scene of many great night’s entertainment. With the fiddle, Bob attended all the dances, in plus-fours, but minus the eye-catching white waistcoat which had been eaten by moths during five years’ enforced idleness in a bothy kist during the war years. Picture the scene – paraffin lamps, the locals in their best clothes, most of them wearing boots, the women mostly in blouse and skirt, all awaiting the first notes of the battered old fiddle to strike up the Grand March, then straight into the Circassian Circle. As a youngster I sat and watched with eyes popping, completely hooked on the great spectacle. The smell I recall is that of sweaty bodies; the men, I suppose, like dad wore long drawers and must have been almost cooked. The smell of ‘roset’ from the lads who worked ‘in the wids’ mingled with farm smells and the unmistakable aroma of mothballs. The women, a little more refined, smelt of scent (Californian Poppy) – sixpence in Woolies.
Mam, herself never a dancer, used to warn us two boys to “stand well back when they do the Lancers”, and we had to come straight home when the Lancers was finished. As dad called the dance from the platform he was MC as well, and we used to beg him “dad, don’t put on the Lancers too soon”. When the Lancers was called we retreated to the door and watched. What a spectacle! And the highlight of the dance was what dad called ‘baskets’, though we did not understand why. This was the point when the men birled round at such a speed that the women were airborne – we saw their bloomers! We used to know who was the best birler and who could lift the women the highest. Mam’s worries about injuries to spectators were well founded.
Meanwhile the gentry up in the big hoose had their own form of entertainment – a world that we, as youngsters, knew nothing of. We were not allowed even to be seen near the big hoose – we were taught that we had to respect these people – who smelt not of sweat, roset or farm manure, but of tweeds, cigar smoke and French perfume. The lady of the big hoose decided that a bit of culture should be brought into the lives of us ordinary folk, and members of a string orchestra were engaged to entertain. The locals duly turned up to hear Mozart, Schubert and Bach, and applaud politely. They listened, but it was not their kind of music. My dad was doorkeeper on this occasion, and as they left the comment was made “Faur’s yer fiddle, Bob? We want to hear a richt tune!” Dad smiled, and was secretly greatly chuffed.
My parents sent me to learn the fiddle, but I did not make much of it. I hated the sound I made. I was always attracted to dance classes, so I packed in the fiddle and with my 1/6d went instead to lessons in ballroom dancing. As a serviceman during the second war, I was able to put this to good use in such places as the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, but was later brought down to earth when stationed at a small airfield near Paris. Dr Donald Caskie, the Tartan Pimpernel, invited me to a ceilidh at his home in Paris where he said, “We do a few Scots dances”. I found that I was totally inept at the Eightsome Reel ! I determined to rectify this.
After the war, my work took me to various parts of Scotland and I had the opportunity to learn Scottish Country Dancing which I always thoroughly enjoyed, completely hooked as I was on Scottish music and dance. But at the back of my mind I always hankered back to the great fun of the old-time village hall dances. The wonderful spectacle on television of Jimmy Shand and the dancers at Letham kindled a spark in me that I found hard to extinguish. Were the dances that I knew in my childhood coming back? I often wondered if dad would have approved of the sophistication and precision of modern Scottish Country Dances, and sometimes I almost felt like a defector. He had thought it prissy to be holding the woman at arm’s length. “It’s nae natural. That’s the wey the toff’s dance!” he’d say.
Should the likes o’ me care tippence aboot
Castle or mansion or spire?
The fowk that were my fowk lived by their skills
In smiddy and bakehoose and byre
Though their hames are but rickles, tae us they hae left
Their music, their smeddum, their speik
Keep playin it, sayin it. Ever keep faith
Keep it here for oor bairns, should they seek!
Reading Betty Allan’s lines I wondered, was I keeping faith with my dad?
My story is now brought up to date as I find myself dancing at the Summer School at Stirling University. We did the dances that I remember from my days in the village hall – Lancers, Quadrilles and dad’s favourite La Va. Bert and I used to sing as he played,
“Can ye nae dae La Va?
Can ye nae dae La VA?
If ye canna dae La VA
Ye’re nae esse at aa.”
All these and many more were expertly taught at Stirling by Jessie Stewart from Dufftown and resulted for me in four days of nostalgia and enjoyment, of which Bob the fiddler would have heartily approved.
All the characters in the early part of my story are now gone. Mam and dad are long since buried at Tullich on Deeside, and Bert is commemorated along with them on their headstone. My brother never lived to experience the joy I’ve had in dancing – war and the Wellington bomber saw to that. We are told that Tullich kirkyard was the scene of the first Reel of Tullich when the congregation danced while waiting for the minister on a cold Sunday. I often stop there on my visits up Deeside and in my imagination I hear the strains of the old fiddle, or perhaps it’s just ‘a curlew wheeplin across the meer’.
I suppose if Bob the fiddler appeared at an Accordion and Fiddle club today he would be outclassed by the many talented young players. Such is the standard of playing now that expectations are higher, audiences have become more critical, and enjoyment more difficult to achieve. In Bob’s day people expected less but got much more pleasure from his playing because he played ‘fae the hert’.