File: cousinsjohn-oh-badinstrument_M.mp3
Speakers:
JC – John Cousins
JC: There was a belief in the community around here that if a man ever became a fiddler, a good fiddler – In order to be a good fiddler, you couldn't be any good for anything else. First of all it implied an addiction to the instrument, and there was an addiction to it. And young fellers, once they got playing it they'd spend all their time playing the fiddle and do nothing else. And so the belief was that if you became a good fiddler you were useless for anything else.You were done for, you would never be a success in life, that was it. That was a strongly held belief. And somebody told me that down at Rock Barra, which is near where you fellers were staying, near East Point – Somebody told me, now whether this is a myth or not – Anyway, Rock Barra is now a deserted community. There's nobody there. You drive along and I don't know if there's a farm there or not. But someone attributed the demise of this community – Everybody had gone, the farms all went in decay. And somebody attributed it to the fact that there was too many good fiddlers (laughter). And they just never did anything else but play the fiddle and they were useless. And so there was – To an extent there would have been a little stigma attached to playing the fiddle. Fiddlers were pretty – they had a function. Virtually everyone in the community had a function . Communities remained stable over decades. In order for it to work, everyone sort of fitted in place and of course the fiddlers were the center of the entertainment. And there is a good deal of lore about fiddlers and about their neglect of their work. One of the best fiddlers here, and I didn't know this man but people my age remember him. He lived out – Probably would be not too far from O'Leary. And his name was Guy Bolter, and Guy Boulter was a great fiddler. And I remember they told stories about Guy Boulter. He farmed, but he never made any success of farming at all, because he always neglected his farming. This was like cocaine almost: the God-blamed fiddle. And they said he would go to cut grain. Now in order to cut grain you had to haul a binder. In order to haul a binder you needed three horses, a binder was the heaviest piece of machinery that was on the farm for horses to haul. I have a binder right out there [points outside] as a matter of fact, but no horses. It was quite a complicated maneuver to hitch a three-horse team. I can't do it; I never learned.
They said Guy Boulter would, if he was out on the binder: hitch the horses he'd be out cuttin' grain – And if a tune got goin' through his head, he'd be thinking about this tune. It'd get to him so bad, that he'd get off the binder, he would drive to the barn, he would unhitch the horses, and he would put them in the barn and he would go in and sit down and play that tune on the fiddle. He couldn't stop himself.
