Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1882 — The Auld Fiddle. [ARTICLE]

The Auld Fiddle.

At a banquet held in Huron, Canada, Mr. James Dickson, a Scotch emigrant, narrated the following touching reminiscence of “Auld Scotia:” It is now forty-eight years since I first came to this* country. I was then little more than a boy, fresh from Edingburgh University, and had come with my father to bear the trials and privations of early pioneer life in the backwoods. My mother and the other members of our family were in the old land, and an ocean and a wilderness lay between them and us. Our worldly possessions, when we reached the Huron tract, consisted of two chests, which had been brought from Hamilton in an ox-cart. After attending to the duties which devolved upon us for our immediate needs, we sat down to ponder on the best course to pursue in our battle with the mighty forest After a while my thoughts went from our present surroundings to the dear ones at home in the old land, and possibly my father’s thoughts drifted thitherward also. Finally he said to me: “Jeanies, wad ye open the kist, an’ see if th’ feddle is a’ richt?” I did as he told me, for, knowing him to be a good fiddler, I thought the tunes of the old land might cheur us both. On opening the chest I round the fiddle and nanded it to my father. He took the violin from my bands, and after thumbing the strings, touching the bridge and tapping the sounding board, his face illuminated as he ejaculated: “She’s a’ richt, Jeames; she’s a’ richt.” He then rubbed the resin on the bow, and drawing the latter across the strings struck up one of the grand old Scotch airs, “The Broom o’ the Cowden Knowes,” which he had often played for mother and the bairns in “Auld Scotia.” When he had finished the first tune he played another and yet another, and as the beautiful melodies rose o!i the air I could not help thinking: “Father, ye play the fiddle a great deal better now than ye ever -did in Scotland.” The music was finished at last, my father relinquished the instrument to my hands for safe keeping in the chest, and I saw then what I never saw before or since—the tears rolling down his cheek.