Box and Fiddle
Year 19 No 06
March 1996
The Fiddlers of Cape Breton
by Dr Kevin McCann M.D., D.P.H.
One cold December’s day in 1965 whilst driving to my clinic situated in the remote Settlement on the West Coast of Newfoundland, on the Gulf of St Lawrence, I was very pleasantly surprised and interested to hear some very fine fiddle music being played on the car radio.
It was announced that the music was played by a Winston ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald and that the radio station was located in the town of Sydney, Cape Breton, part of the adjoining province of Nova Scotia, Canada.
The whole incident was so unexpected and pleasing that I can still remember some of the tunes played that morning. They were mostly Scottish tunes, some of which I recognised. They were ‘Mrs Scott Skinner’ – slow air, ‘The Smith’s a Gallant Fireman’, reel ‘Johnny Cope’, march, ‘Paddy on the Turnpike’, reel, also known in Ireland as ‘The Mills are Grinding’, ‘The Flowers of Limerick’ ; the final tune being ‘The Banks Hornpipe’.
I had never previously heard of Winston Fitzgerald, usually known as ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald, so I wasted no time finding out all about Scotty and Cape Breton Island.
I discovered that Cape Breton was situated 100 miles from Newfoundland separated by the Cabot Straight which connects the Gulf of St Lawrence from the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Breton Island was separated from Nova Scotia by a narrow strip of ocean about ¼ mile wide until £100 years ago when a Causeway was built connecting the two by road and rail.
Cape Breton Island is about two thirds the size of Ireland and has a population of about 150,000. It is truly a beautiful country, with a varied coastline with alternating rugged cliffs, rocky shores and sandy beaches, quite like Ireland. There are also numerous salmon and trout rivers. Inland the country is a mixture of farmland and extensive forests of spruce, pine, larch, birch and maple and needless to say has a great attraction for visitors from other parts of Canada and the USA who come to enjoy its scenery, its fishing and hunting, its friendly people and its music and song.
HIGHLAND CLEARANCES
The population is mainly of Scottish Highland and Western Isles of Scotland origin who migrated here during the latter half of the 18th century and early 19th century. The rest of the people are of Irish, English and French descent plus a large indigenous native Indian Min Mac Indian population.
Unlike the Irish who had to leave Ireland due to famine, the Scots were forced of their crofts and estates by Scottish landowners who forced 500,000 people off their land in the notorious ‘Highland Clearances’ for the purpose of rearing sheep and formation of game reserves.
The most notorious character by far who partook in the Clearances was the First Duke of Sutherland who ‘cleared’ some 15,000 residents from his one million acre estate to make way for sheep farming in the early 19th century. There is no doubt that the Vlearances contributed to the destruction of communities in the Highlands and Islands from which they never fully recovered.
With them when they left Scotland, the emigrants brought their Gaelic language, their music, oral tradition, religion, their work ethic and by communal effort cleared the forests, created farms and developed a thriving fishery and farm culture.
During the long snowy winter days and nights they passed the time ‘ceilidhing’ with their neighbours, story telling, card playing, playing music on bagpipes and fiddle, lilting and singing and thereby kept their music alive and well, and so it is today.
The Gaelic did not fare so well and is rarely spoken today. I heard it spoken by a few dozen older folk in the Cape Breton Highlands and have grave doubts about its survival.
On visiting Cape Breton in May, 1966, I was amazed and pleasantly surprised to learn that there were literally hundreds of fiddlers on the Island, young and old, men, women and children. Apart from tunes of Scottish origin all the music was strange to me. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of airs, reels, jigs, strathspeys and marches being played in Cape Breton today that have never been heard in Ireland or Scotland. This is mainly due to the fact that numerous musicians are also composers and there seem to be new tunes appearing every week.
SCOTTY FITZGERALD
The first person I looked up when I got to Sydney was Scotty Fitzgerald and found him to be a quiet, unassuming, friendly knowledgeable man who loved his music and his native Cape Breton. He informed me that he had spent his early years in Boston and had received a few violin lessons there but developed much of his musical ability himself by dint of many hours of solo practice and playing with others who were numerous in Boston in his youth and who are still numerous in Cape Breton.
A neighbour of his, a fiddler of note, was Johnny Willmott who had spent most of his early life in America in the Boston area and on the Canadian mainland in Toronto where he met and played with numerous Irish fiddlers and played with James Morrison, met Michael Coleman and was a great admirer of both and played a lot of their music for me during my visit to him.
Cape Breton music is conventionally considered Scottish in origin and flavour but there is a pocket of distinctly Irish influence in its repertoire and performance style.
Paul Cranford, Editor and principal writer of the fine Cape Breton Newsletter ‘Silver Apple News’ has done some research on the musical linkages between Ireland and Cape Breton Island, particularly The North Side Irish Style. He states, “although the general consensus has it that Cape Breton music is ‘pure’ old style Scottish dance music, any survey of the repertoire of the 20th century fiddlers who recorded on the first Cape Breton 78’s – reveals a significant percentage of Irish Jigs, Reels and Hornpipes”.
Cape Breton’s above mentioned Johnny Willmott (1916-93) who played with outstanding Irish musicians as Kerry fiddler Paddy Cronin, and Massachusetts’s born accordionist Joe Derrane, was originally the most prominent of Cape Breton fiddlers who went for the Irish music and style. Paddy Cronin was heard to say that “Johnny was the liveliest Irish jig player he ever encountered”.
Cape Breton and Donegal are indirectly connected through the influence of Scottish traditional music on their fiddle repertoire and styles. In Ireland, the strathspey that is so prevalent in Scotland and Cape Breton, is only found as a musical form in Donegal where it is adapted to a local dance form called a ‘Highland’. In eastern Northern Ireland, particularly in Co. Antrim the strathspey is played as such as in Scotland.
Cape Breton and Northern Ireland also share other traditional similarities, including single-stroke bowings, the preference of paired fiddlers to play together in octaves, and an overall staccato sound. Small wonder then, why the largely Donegal-based repertoire of Altan has embraced some Cape Breton tunes in recent years.
In the thirty years since I first visited Cape Breton I have met many fiddlers, young and old, good and very good and of many different styles.
WINNIE CHAFE
One of the most striking and pleasing players I met in the coal-mining town of Glace Bay, a fifth generation descendant of the MacMullan Clan, originally from the Isle of Uist, Scotland was Winnie Chafe.
She was one of that rare breed, a classically trained player who could play Bach, Beethoven and Mozart on the one hand and then at a ceilidh play Scottish dance music of the finest kind. She played with San Francisco Symphony in her early days and returned to Cape Breton to marry and play traditional music.
She made a grand recording of Cape Breton music in her local church of St. Michael’s, Glace Bay, accompanied by daughter Michelle on the magnificent pipe organ there and a finer combination it would be difficult to hear. It brings to my mind Liam Og O Floinn’s pipes in Dun Laoghaire Church accompanied by the late Seamus Ennis’ daughter Catherine on the magnificent pipe organ there.
I visit Cape Breton yearly if possible and have met most of the musicians there and have spent many hours at the numerous ceilidhs and house parties listening to great music.
Although there is no organisation in place in Cape Breton, such as CCE, to promote the traditional music, the innate love of their traditional music keeps the music alive and vibrant and many new young players appear on the scene there yearly.
TWO NOTABLES
The two notables are Natalie MacMaster, a niece of Buddy MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaacs who can play jazz, pop and traditional music on the fiddle and is in great demand all over Canada.
Every summer there are numerous Festivals, competitions and sporting events featuring pipers, pipe bands, singers and athletic events based on Scottish sport such as ‘Tossing the Caber’.
There are far too many fiddlers and singers of note to detail in this article but I will mention a few of the more outstanding players in action today.
The first to come to mind would be Teresa MacLelland, a fine strong fiddler and her sister Marie who accompanies her on piano. Both have been prominent on the Cape Breton scene since I came to Canada. The number one fiddler on the Island in my opinion is Kyle MacNeill who heads the ‘Barra Mac Neill’ group and whose forbears came from the Isle of Barra.
Kyle, who has classical training, can play Irish, Scottish and Cape Breton music with equal facility. He is a great air player and is the only fiddler I know in Cape Breton who can play rolls in his music as well as any Irish player. He told me his first love is ceili band music.
His sister Lucy, is also a fine fiddle player, singer and harpist. Another brother, Ryan’ plays bodrhan and Uilleann pipes and Seamus plays piano accordion, the only accordion player in Cape Breton.
BERT (BUDDY) McMASTER
Last, but not least, I must mention Buddy McMaster, aged 70, and considered by most to be the ‘Dean’ or ‘Grandaddy’ of Cape Breton fiddling and uncle of Natalie who can fiddle and dance simultaneously. I believe Natalie played in Cork, Ireland, at the ‘Feis Cois Laoi’.
The piano is a popular instrument for playing Cape Breton music and the chief exponent is Doug McPhee who can make the piano ‘hop’ when he plays and has composed scores of tunes, marches and airs, strathspeys, reels and jigs.
On the subject of composing, one would have to give pride of place to the late Dan R. MacDonald, a great fiddler, now alas deceased who composed at least 2,000 tunes, some of which are available in two music collections containing MacDonald’s music. Having seen the collections and having heard hundreds of them played I can safely say that there’s not a dud tune in the whole lot. A great admirer of Dan R’s music is Larry Gavin of Tulla who knows and likes Cape Breton music and plays it most capably on his accordion.
Cape Bretoners and fiddle enthusiasts have a great affection for Irish music, and have L.P.s and tapes of the most prominent players. The number one player of Irish music on fiddle is Sean McGuire, closely followed by Seamus Connolly and last but not least Cape Breton musicians are stone mad on Mary Bergin’s tin whistle playing and I have heard every tune she recorded on her L.P. played by Cape Breton fiddlers, particularly Jerry Holland a very fine fiddler from Margaree in the Cape Breton Highlands.
Some Gaelic songs are still sung in Cape Breton, particularly by the Rankin family who have a large collection of Hebridean Gaelic songs in their repertoire.
To return to the quality and type of music played, most experts on Scottish traditional music believe that the Cape Breton music is far more traditional than that played by fiddlers in Scotland today. Because of this Buddy MacMaster has for many years been traveling to the Isle of Skye giving fiddlers there workshops characterizing Cape Breton fiddle playing.
That great Scots fiddle player and student of Scottish traditional fiddle music, Alasdair Fraser, believes that Scottish fiddle music, particularly that composed by James Scott Skinner has become too classical and stilted and lacks the spontaneity and verve of the Cape Breton music which hasn’t changed for 200 years since it arrived there from Scotland.
Be that as it may, there is a very real increase in interest by Scottish fiddlers in Cape Breton music and Cape Breton fiddle groups are frequent and popular visitors to Scotland and there is now a much closer liaison between the two musical cultures than there was thirty years ago.
In Ireland Maura O’Keeffe is a great Cape Breton music enthusiast and from John Gordon of Beleek to Sean McGuire in Co. Antrim, Cape Breton music is included in their repertoire.
MUSIC COLLECTIONS
There are numerous collections of Cape Breton music extant, too numerous to name here but if any Irish enthusiast wants to dig further into Cape Breton music the best person to contact would be Danny Fraser, 1121 West Mount Road, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada.
He is a fine player and an avid collector of tunes and collections of tunes and knows every fiddler in Cape Breton. He is a fine character, a type common to Cape Breton.
Finally, I believe that closer contact between Cape Breton, Irish and Scottish fiddlers can only be of benefit to them all.
by Dr Kevin McCann M.D., D.P.H.
One cold December’s day in 1965 whilst driving to my clinic situated in the remote Settlement on the West Coast of Newfoundland, on the Gulf of St Lawrence, I was very pleasantly surprised and interested to hear some very fine fiddle music being played on the car radio.
It was announced that the music was played by a Winston ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald and that the radio station was located in the town of Sydney, Cape Breton, part of the adjoining province of Nova Scotia, Canada.
The whole incident was so unexpected and pleasing that I can still remember some of the tunes played that morning. They were mostly Scottish tunes, some of which I recognised. They were ‘Mrs Scott Skinner’ – slow air, ‘The Smith’s a Gallant Fireman’, reel ‘Johnny Cope’, march, ‘Paddy on the Turnpike’, reel, also known in Ireland as ‘The Mills are Grinding’, ‘The Flowers of Limerick’ ; the final tune being ‘The Banks Hornpipe’.
I had never previously heard of Winston Fitzgerald, usually known as ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald, so I wasted no time finding out all about Scotty and Cape Breton Island.
I discovered that Cape Breton was situated 100 miles from Newfoundland separated by the Cabot Straight which connects the Gulf of St Lawrence from the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Breton Island was separated from Nova Scotia by a narrow strip of ocean about ¼ mile wide until £100 years ago when a Causeway was built connecting the two by road and rail.
Cape Breton Island is about two thirds the size of Ireland and has a population of about 150,000. It is truly a beautiful country, with a varied coastline with alternating rugged cliffs, rocky shores and sandy beaches, quite like Ireland. There are also numerous salmon and trout rivers. Inland the country is a mixture of farmland and extensive forests of spruce, pine, larch, birch and maple and needless to say has a great attraction for visitors from other parts of Canada and the USA who come to enjoy its scenery, its fishing and hunting, its friendly people and its music and song.
HIGHLAND CLEARANCES
The population is mainly of Scottish Highland and Western Isles of Scotland origin who migrated here during the latter half of the 18th century and early 19th century. The rest of the people are of Irish, English and French descent plus a large indigenous native Indian Min Mac Indian population.
Unlike the Irish who had to leave Ireland due to famine, the Scots were forced of their crofts and estates by Scottish landowners who forced 500,000 people off their land in the notorious ‘Highland Clearances’ for the purpose of rearing sheep and formation of game reserves.
The most notorious character by far who partook in the Clearances was the First Duke of Sutherland who ‘cleared’ some 15,000 residents from his one million acre estate to make way for sheep farming in the early 19th century. There is no doubt that the Vlearances contributed to the destruction of communities in the Highlands and Islands from which they never fully recovered.
With them when they left Scotland, the emigrants brought their Gaelic language, their music, oral tradition, religion, their work ethic and by communal effort cleared the forests, created farms and developed a thriving fishery and farm culture.
During the long snowy winter days and nights they passed the time ‘ceilidhing’ with their neighbours, story telling, card playing, playing music on bagpipes and fiddle, lilting and singing and thereby kept their music alive and well, and so it is today.
The Gaelic did not fare so well and is rarely spoken today. I heard it spoken by a few dozen older folk in the Cape Breton Highlands and have grave doubts about its survival.
On visiting Cape Breton in May, 1966, I was amazed and pleasantly surprised to learn that there were literally hundreds of fiddlers on the Island, young and old, men, women and children. Apart from tunes of Scottish origin all the music was strange to me. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of airs, reels, jigs, strathspeys and marches being played in Cape Breton today that have never been heard in Ireland or Scotland. This is mainly due to the fact that numerous musicians are also composers and there seem to be new tunes appearing every week.
SCOTTY FITZGERALD
The first person I looked up when I got to Sydney was Scotty Fitzgerald and found him to be a quiet, unassuming, friendly knowledgeable man who loved his music and his native Cape Breton. He informed me that he had spent his early years in Boston and had received a few violin lessons there but developed much of his musical ability himself by dint of many hours of solo practice and playing with others who were numerous in Boston in his youth and who are still numerous in Cape Breton.
A neighbour of his, a fiddler of note, was Johnny Willmott who had spent most of his early life in America in the Boston area and on the Canadian mainland in Toronto where he met and played with numerous Irish fiddlers and played with James Morrison, met Michael Coleman and was a great admirer of both and played a lot of their music for me during my visit to him.
Cape Breton music is conventionally considered Scottish in origin and flavour but there is a pocket of distinctly Irish influence in its repertoire and performance style.
Paul Cranford, Editor and principal writer of the fine Cape Breton Newsletter ‘Silver Apple News’ has done some research on the musical linkages between Ireland and Cape Breton Island, particularly The North Side Irish Style. He states, “although the general consensus has it that Cape Breton music is ‘pure’ old style Scottish dance music, any survey of the repertoire of the 20th century fiddlers who recorded on the first Cape Breton 78’s – reveals a significant percentage of Irish Jigs, Reels and Hornpipes”.
Cape Breton’s above mentioned Johnny Willmott (1916-93) who played with outstanding Irish musicians as Kerry fiddler Paddy Cronin, and Massachusetts’s born accordionist Joe Derrane, was originally the most prominent of Cape Breton fiddlers who went for the Irish music and style. Paddy Cronin was heard to say that “Johnny was the liveliest Irish jig player he ever encountered”.
Cape Breton and Donegal are indirectly connected through the influence of Scottish traditional music on their fiddle repertoire and styles. In Ireland, the strathspey that is so prevalent in Scotland and Cape Breton, is only found as a musical form in Donegal where it is adapted to a local dance form called a ‘Highland’. In eastern Northern Ireland, particularly in Co. Antrim the strathspey is played as such as in Scotland.
Cape Breton and Northern Ireland also share other traditional similarities, including single-stroke bowings, the preference of paired fiddlers to play together in octaves, and an overall staccato sound. Small wonder then, why the largely Donegal-based repertoire of Altan has embraced some Cape Breton tunes in recent years.
In the thirty years since I first visited Cape Breton I have met many fiddlers, young and old, good and very good and of many different styles.
WINNIE CHAFE
One of the most striking and pleasing players I met in the coal-mining town of Glace Bay, a fifth generation descendant of the MacMullan Clan, originally from the Isle of Uist, Scotland was Winnie Chafe.
She was one of that rare breed, a classically trained player who could play Bach, Beethoven and Mozart on the one hand and then at a ceilidh play Scottish dance music of the finest kind. She played with San Francisco Symphony in her early days and returned to Cape Breton to marry and play traditional music.
She made a grand recording of Cape Breton music in her local church of St. Michael’s, Glace Bay, accompanied by daughter Michelle on the magnificent pipe organ there and a finer combination it would be difficult to hear. It brings to my mind Liam Og O Floinn’s pipes in Dun Laoghaire Church accompanied by the late Seamus Ennis’ daughter Catherine on the magnificent pipe organ there.
I visit Cape Breton yearly if possible and have met most of the musicians there and have spent many hours at the numerous ceilidhs and house parties listening to great music.
Although there is no organisation in place in Cape Breton, such as CCE, to promote the traditional music, the innate love of their traditional music keeps the music alive and vibrant and many new young players appear on the scene there yearly.
TWO NOTABLES
The two notables are Natalie MacMaster, a niece of Buddy MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaacs who can play jazz, pop and traditional music on the fiddle and is in great demand all over Canada.
Every summer there are numerous Festivals, competitions and sporting events featuring pipers, pipe bands, singers and athletic events based on Scottish sport such as ‘Tossing the Caber’.
There are far too many fiddlers and singers of note to detail in this article but I will mention a few of the more outstanding players in action today.
The first to come to mind would be Teresa MacLelland, a fine strong fiddler and her sister Marie who accompanies her on piano. Both have been prominent on the Cape Breton scene since I came to Canada. The number one fiddler on the Island in my opinion is Kyle MacNeill who heads the ‘Barra Mac Neill’ group and whose forbears came from the Isle of Barra.
Kyle, who has classical training, can play Irish, Scottish and Cape Breton music with equal facility. He is a great air player and is the only fiddler I know in Cape Breton who can play rolls in his music as well as any Irish player. He told me his first love is ceili band music.
His sister Lucy, is also a fine fiddle player, singer and harpist. Another brother, Ryan’ plays bodrhan and Uilleann pipes and Seamus plays piano accordion, the only accordion player in Cape Breton.
BERT (BUDDY) McMASTER
Last, but not least, I must mention Buddy McMaster, aged 70, and considered by most to be the ‘Dean’ or ‘Grandaddy’ of Cape Breton fiddling and uncle of Natalie who can fiddle and dance simultaneously. I believe Natalie played in Cork, Ireland, at the ‘Feis Cois Laoi’.
The piano is a popular instrument for playing Cape Breton music and the chief exponent is Doug McPhee who can make the piano ‘hop’ when he plays and has composed scores of tunes, marches and airs, strathspeys, reels and jigs.
On the subject of composing, one would have to give pride of place to the late Dan R. MacDonald, a great fiddler, now alas deceased who composed at least 2,000 tunes, some of which are available in two music collections containing MacDonald’s music. Having seen the collections and having heard hundreds of them played I can safely say that there’s not a dud tune in the whole lot. A great admirer of Dan R’s music is Larry Gavin of Tulla who knows and likes Cape Breton music and plays it most capably on his accordion.
Cape Bretoners and fiddle enthusiasts have a great affection for Irish music, and have L.P.s and tapes of the most prominent players. The number one player of Irish music on fiddle is Sean McGuire, closely followed by Seamus Connolly and last but not least Cape Breton musicians are stone mad on Mary Bergin’s tin whistle playing and I have heard every tune she recorded on her L.P. played by Cape Breton fiddlers, particularly Jerry Holland a very fine fiddler from Margaree in the Cape Breton Highlands.
Some Gaelic songs are still sung in Cape Breton, particularly by the Rankin family who have a large collection of Hebridean Gaelic songs in their repertoire.
To return to the quality and type of music played, most experts on Scottish traditional music believe that the Cape Breton music is far more traditional than that played by fiddlers in Scotland today. Because of this Buddy MacMaster has for many years been traveling to the Isle of Skye giving fiddlers there workshops characterizing Cape Breton fiddle playing.
That great Scots fiddle player and student of Scottish traditional fiddle music, Alasdair Fraser, believes that Scottish fiddle music, particularly that composed by James Scott Skinner has become too classical and stilted and lacks the spontaneity and verve of the Cape Breton music which hasn’t changed for 200 years since it arrived there from Scotland.
Be that as it may, there is a very real increase in interest by Scottish fiddlers in Cape Breton music and Cape Breton fiddle groups are frequent and popular visitors to Scotland and there is now a much closer liaison between the two musical cultures than there was thirty years ago.
In Ireland Maura O’Keeffe is a great Cape Breton music enthusiast and from John Gordon of Beleek to Sean McGuire in Co. Antrim, Cape Breton music is included in their repertoire.
MUSIC COLLECTIONS
There are numerous collections of Cape Breton music extant, too numerous to name here but if any Irish enthusiast wants to dig further into Cape Breton music the best person to contact would be Danny Fraser, 1121 West Mount Road, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada.
He is a fine player and an avid collector of tunes and collections of tunes and knows every fiddler in Cape Breton. He is a fine character, a type common to Cape Breton.
Finally, I believe that closer contact between Cape Breton, Irish and Scottish fiddlers can only be of benefit to them all.
