The 2024 and latest World Fiddle Day Scartaglen has now been consigned to history and memory where events are played over and over with individual recollection and replay as varied as the numbers which attended.
There was a calmness about the Saturday afternoon as the 2pm photos and tunes time beckoned.
Even the sun wasn’t allowed to cast its usually harsh shadows on the happy-to-be-here countenances of the people who faced the many cameras before them.
A uniformly overcast sky didn’t dare to change as the group posed for the traditional photo at the village monument to Patrick O’Keeffe.
Sliabh Luachra Fiddle Tunes
Then Seán Fleming from Kilcummin with, a nod of encouragement from organiser P.J. Teahan, cut the gathering loose on a selection of Sliabh Luachra fiddle tunes.
They conducted themselves with impeccable fluency as the indoor / outdoor exhibition of musical artistry took its rightful place on this day of days for the violin family world wide.
The heart of Sliabh Luachra is wherever the music of the area is played like this. And on that fine, calm Saturday it was most certainly in Scart – you could feel it.
Are you from The States?
Talking of world wide: After the gathering I walked the 100 yards or so west the road of the village to the Sliabh Luachra Heritage Centre for another session.
I had two women from the USA for company on our brief journey. One was from Washington State and the other from Minnesota – a good half day’s flying between their home bases.
One was talking to me and the other, hearing the accent, asked “are you from The States” and so I got cut adrift from any further involvement in that particular cameo of the weekend.
Conversation Freed Brain
Then, for some reason, the memory of the many local people who walked the same short journey from the pubs of the village to the old hall, down through all the years, flashed across my conversation freed brain.
And, considering the company I was in, I silently paraphrased Kieran Donaghy’s 2014 Croke Park outburst thus: Well, Corney Tangney what do you think about that?
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