File: maccormackfrancis06-oh-gettingstarted_M.mp3
Speakers:
FC - Francis MacCormack
FM: I was the youngest of eleven, there was eight boys and three girls, and we all played the fiddle. And if I hadn't learned to play the fiddle my father would have shot me (laughs). When I was too small, he wouldn't let me touch the fiddle. I used to sneak it when he went to the woods to cut the winter wood. I'd sneak the fiddle and my Mom would be lookin out the window watchin' him a-comin', and when she seen him come around the corner with a load of wood she said "Here comes Daddy, put the fiddle away." I'd put that fiddle away up the very same way I picked it up, cause I'd notice when I picked it up. He'd get home that evening and have supper and go to his room and he'd play the fiddle, and he wouldn't be in there five minutes, he'd say to my Mom, "Who had the fiddle?" "Oh," she said, "I don't think anybody it." "Oh, somebody had it!" That was the story as far as fiddling was concerned. I taught myself, 'cause I heard all the other fellers playing and I thought, "Well I can do that too." But I'll tell you a funny story; it's not funny, it's the truth. When we were kids, we couldn't afford fiddles so we used to make them out of shingles, you know, shingles off the roof . I made many a fiddle and I'd get them to sound pretty good; you can get a good tone out of them, you know. You get a little more cocky the many you made, you know. I made about 20, by the twentieth one you got some real rosin, not the gum from the woods, and you got a flat can, a sardine can, and you put a hole on each side and you wrapped it around the fiddle and you tied it to the back and give it an echo. We used to go to town on that. My dad used to tell me, "Put that away, I can't go to sleep!" [It had] quite a ring to it; It was next door to a Strad! Anyway, we had a great time with that; that's the way I learned.
