It’s like hearing a voice from the past, a reflection of people and art lost and now reclaimed from the artifacts left behind.
I’m listening to Steven Mallory play two-hundred-year-old tunes on a fiddle that’s nearly that old. The tunes are selections from a new CD created by Mallory and the Old York Historical Society from two of the artifacts in their extensive collection, the Boon Island Fiddle and the Alexander Dixon Tune Book. Unrelated except by time and topic, in qualified hands these two artifacts have been used to make Revolutionary-era folk art accessible to us all.
Mallory, an independent historic preservation consultant and an accomplished musician, first encountered the Boon Island Fiddle about a decade ago when he found it in the collection of the Society. “The fiddle was in tatters,” he says.
Captain Eliphalet Grover, who was born in York in 1779, built the fiddle. Records show Grover was a mariner, but from 1818 to 1821 Grover was the lighthouse keeper on Boon Island, off the coast of York. One of his first duties as light keeper was to remove the bleached bones of his predecessor from the island and return them to town for burial. Tradition holds that it was during his time as lightkeeper that Grover built the fiddle. He left detailed diaries, but the fiddle is never mentioned. Grover died in 1854, and the fiddle was donated to York’s Old Gaol Museum in 1900, where it hung on the wall for sixty years.
Mallory says when he first got hold of the fiddle, “It probably hadn’t been played in a hundred fifty years.” As an old homemade fiddle, “It probably wasn’t respected.” After he started restoration, “A lot of what was done was undoing a history of nasty repairs.” He used a hundred percent of what remained of the fiddle in the restoration, adding some wood as necessary, but retaining as much of the original as existed.
The Alexander Dickson Tune Book is a tiny credit-card-sized collection of 115 tunes transcribed by hand in brown ink on music paper. It was discovered by curators in 1997 in the Elizabeth Perkins house, one of the houses owned by the Old York Historical Society. Alexander Dickson apparently collected the tunes in 1788. Mallory says the tune book is a typical artifact of the era, designed to be slipped into a fiddler’s pocket.
“These were very popular tunes and everybody knew them,” says Mallory. At the time of the Revolution, Scottish and Irish music was popular in the British court, and that popularity carried over to the colonies, where it endured long past the time the fashion moved on in England. Interestingly, all of the patriotic American songs that might be found in a typical revolution-era tunebook are omitted in this particular book, fueling speculation that Dickson may have had Tory sympathies. “Musically,” says Mallory, “It’s kind of a mix.” There are popular dance tunes; jigs and reels and hornpipes, as well as ballads. Some of these tunes were so popular that ships were named after them. These are exactly the kinds of tunes that you would have heard in an early American tavern or at a contradance where a solo fiddle would be all the music available.
Listening to Mallory play his classical violin and then play the same tune on the Boon Island Fiddle makes the differences clear. The antique classical violin, made by European craftsmen, is louder and has a fuller, more resonant sound, but the Boon Island Fiddle is relatively typical of the kind of instrument available to early New England musicians. “It’s the authentic voice of early American music... It was okay for them.” Mallory points outs out that there were a lot more instruments like the Boon Island fiddle around during the period than fancy European-made violins.
Eliphalet Grover’s Boon Island Fiddle is now an important artifact. Mallory says it’s difficult to play, hard to keep in tune, and the highest string is particularly problematic. Trying to play it today is, “Like taking a Model A out on I-95.” Perfect intervals like fifths and fourths are impossible to play.
Grover built the entire fiddle out of white cedar – possibly cedar shingle stock he had close at hand. The most striking feature is the carved face on the head of the fiddle, perhaps a reference to Grover’s maritime profession. Based on the wear pattern on the fiddle, Mallory says it is clear that Grover played this fiddle a lot, and probably played tunes along the lines of those found in the Alexander Dickson Tune Book.
The Compact Disc is called: Whistle O’er the Love O’t: Boon Island Legacy . It includes 33 of the tunes from the Dickson Book, performed by Mallory and recorded in York at Riversong Studios. Proceeds from the sale go to the Old York Historical Society.
The CD is available for $15, discounted to $10 for Old York members, by stopping into the Old York Historical Society at 207 York Street, telephoning (207) 363-4974 or emailing mail orders to admin@oldyork.org. All proceeds benefit the Old York Historical Society.
by Chad Gilley |
Recordings copyright 2005 Old York Historical Society - Used by permission |
Contact: gilleymedia@live.com
