My grandfather made a nice violin for my father, and he used to keep it out ofmy sight, fear I might get it you know. Well, this time I got it all right. My mother didn’t see me take it out to the end of the house. I was at it and it went out oftune... . I dug a hole in the sand and I smashed her right into that, covered her over. My father was looking for the fiddle the next evening. And my mother’s name was Flora. “Floddie,” he said in Gaelic, “where did the fiddle go?” “I don’t know.” Looked all over but he couldn’t find it. And he got me and asked me ifI had the fiddle. No, I had no fiddle. He went outside and looking around, and he seen this place here and he took it up and here was the remains ofthe old fiddle. Oh, he was awful mad about it.

My grandfather found out this and he made a fiddle and took it up to me. It was a good one too. There was maple and pine on top. He ’d make a fiddle in about four days. '

Family Ties

I was born in Garfield. [Then] we were down in Cape Bear there for seven years. We went down there; we run the lobster factory down there. And then we moved from there, and we went up to High Bank. [My father] was a blacksmith, you know, [and] he had a fishing boat and was fishing lobsters.

I was 14 [when] I left home and I went to Amherst, Nova Scotia, and I worked at Rhodes and Curries. They were building cars, you know, railroad cars and flat cars... . And that was my job for a while.

So I came home. My mother wanted me to come back home so I came home, and I went to United States when I was 19. I was up there for four years before they ever saw me. She was wanting me to come home, to see what I looked like, I guess. And I grew. I was near six feet when I came home and I weighed 185 pounds. They didn’t know me. I grew up.

She was down in the basement taking up a bunch of butter for their supper when I come along. They didn’t think I was coming down at all you know. I asked if she could direct me down to Roseberry. That’d be the next section, oh, about two miles from my place. I had to laugh, andjust when I laughed she knew who she had.

I was married twice and my both wives are dead... . I was 24 the first time. She was a Mamie Cecilia McCaull from Nova Scotia, Antigonish. She was 19 when she married me. We got acquainted one time at a big dance when I was playing there for them [in Boston]. She was in a group and when I stopped from one reel, she sat on this sill of the window there and she was

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