Transcript

File: macleandanny-oh-partieshome_M.mp3

Speakers:

DM – Danny MacLean

KP – Curator Ken Perlman

KP: When you were a kid, or a "young fellow" as they say up here, did you have parties in the house just among yourselves where you were playing music at night?

DM: Oh yes, sure.

KP: What were those like?

DM: Yes, well we were about the only ones that played [there], but there was other ones that might come in, and sometimes they'd be playin the spoons and this and that. And then some of them would try knittin’ wires. You know, have you ever seen knittin’ wires? And they played them on the strings of the fiddle when you'd be playing the fiddle.

KP: Knitting needles?

DM: Them things.

KP: I heard about that.

DM: Yeah, they used to get them…

KP: When this would happen in the house, who would be doing the playing? Would it be your father?

DM: Well my father, and my brothers, and my sister.

KP: Would they take turns with one fiddle or did each of them have their own fiddle?

DM: Sometimes they'd have about three of them going.

KP: And this would be happening in the house in the evenings? Summer and Winter?

DM: Mostly in winter, mostly in winter. They come round in the winter time and well our house seemed to be a place for them all to – Like come Sunday, they'd be sitting all around the walls in there just talking and carrying on and wrestling and playing and

singing and stuff like that, yeah.