Where It's At

It is virtually impossible, and possibly undesirable, to give a comprehensive Michelin-type guide to traditional music venues. Ostensibly regular session in pubs may vanish like snow off a ditch once they are publicised in any coherent way: they may lapse anyway, for no better reason than the musicians' finding a more congenial venue. To some people, its comparative inaccessibility, its waywardness, its sometimes underground nature, are part of the charm of the music; others are just exasperated by it. Occasional frustration is not necessarily a bad thing; an important part of learning about music is finding it out for yourself, a process which may involve chance encounters on lonely mountain roads, complex negotiations of obscure verbal maps of neglected side-roads, crossroads, forks, hump-backed bridges and derelict garages; often, derelict pubs. The tourist in Ireland has only to ask and he will be directed towards something; whether or not it is what he thinks he is looking for is another matter.

The Fiddle Competition There was this fiddle competition once upon a time
And there were three fiddle players in for it.

The first fiddle player came up.
He was dressed in a dress suit.
He was wearing a white shirt and a dickie bow and he was carrying a crocodile-skin fiddle case.
And when he brought out the fiddle,
What was it but a Stradivarius.
He started to play.
And beGod, he was useless.

The second fiddle-player came up.
He was dressed in a three-piece lounge suit and a matching shirt and tie.
He had a nice mahogany fiddle-case and a good fiddle.
He rosined the bow and he drew it across the strings.
And beGod, he was useless.

So the third fiddle-player came up.
He had an ould battered shiny blue suit and there was no collar to his shirt.
His toes were peeping out from his shoes.
And the fiddle-case was held together with bits of string.
He brought out the fiddle and there was more strings on the fiddle than there was on the bow.
He started to play.
And beGod, he was useless too.

From the story-telling of Mick Hoy, fiddle-player.

From the Appletree Press title: Irish Traditional Music.
Also from Appletree: Irish Pub Songs and A Little Irish Songbook.