Words and Music

I am Billy.

It is a cold crisp day here in the mountains, with strong light shining through my window. On the chessboard of life I am now in the endgame, and so I thought that I would share some of the things I have seen and heard throughout my long life. I have seen many changes and been to many places … but the one thing that has always been constant has been the pleasure and solace I find in playing music on me little tin whistle. Each and every tune I play takes me back to a time long past. When I get settled into playing I can feel the breeze, the warmth of the sun, the bitter cold of winter, the smell of the ocean, or whatever it is that I felt at a time long gone and lost forever.

It was an old tinker man who showed me how to play the whistle. My grandmother, may the Lord look kindly on her soul, had a bit of a yard; every winter she would allow a few families of travellin’ people to pull in there and stay over the cold winter that settles over the mountain region. I know now that those mountains of my youth were nothing compared to the mountains around here, but I was younger then, and knew no better.

It was from the travellers that I learnt many tunes and songs. Many great tales were told around the campfire, and these tales of different places gave me a great desire to leave the mountains of my youth and travel around.

It was near the end of a bad winter when the tinker man told me they would soon be leaving for a Fair that was held every year in a little village called Donnybrook just outside of Dublin. I had heard many wonderful stories about this fair, and I begged to be taken along with them. Out of a sense of debt to my grandmother they agreed. Little did I now that I was setting out on a journey that would result in my killing my closest friend. It was not my intention to kill the man–far from my mind was ever any such thought–but kill him I did, just as if I had driven a three-pronged hay-fork through his throat and smashed him down on the sharp stones that lie around the bottom of the mountain.

The journey from the little village of my birth to the Fair took over a week. The travellin’ people liked to settle down for the night as soon as the sun set. It was a wonderful week for me as I had never been further than ten miles from the village in all my life. I had never seen the endless stretches of bogland, covered in heather and colours I never knew existed. Never had I thought it possible for a river to be as deep and mysterious as the Shannon, which we crossed after a night in a town called Athlone. I was out in the wide world now and no man knew greater happiness.

Many times during the journey to the Fair we would meet other travellers and we would stop and exchange news and inquire as to the wealth and health of other families. It was clear that I was not one of them, but once the headman gave the nod I was accepted without question. Many’s the tune I learnt around the campfires that week.

Well, now, eventually we got to the village of Donnybrook–and what a sight it was. I had never in my twenty three years of life seen, or even imagined, so many people gathered in one place. Hundreds of travellers setting up their stalls and countless others buying, selling, singing and playing lovely tunes all through the night. My grandmother had once or twice told me about the Tower of Babel, but even that could not compare to the hundreds of different accents I heard just walking about the Fair. Men and women from every corner of Ireland, from villages that I had never heard of and would probably never see, for back then I thought that a single lifetime would not be long enough to travel to all these places.

It was during the second night of the Fair that a terrible chain of events began. I had been sitting around the campfire playing music with a few others when we stopped to pass the bottle around and talk about various people, some of whom had not been seen at the Fair for the first time in many years.

There was a lull in the conversation as every man, warmed by the bottle, stared into the flames and was alone in his thoughts–when we heard a noise like nothing ever heard before. It is very hard for me to describe this noise that came out of nowhere and startled every man from his silence. It sounded to me like somebody was screaming at the top of their voice; but once we got over the shock it dawned on me that it was not really an unpleasant sound, just totally unexpected and unique. It had a certain kind of tune to it, but just what kind of a tune was beyond my way of thinking. A few of us went to investigate this quare happening and as we looked around we heard it again. This time it was longer in duration and a lot nearer, so we followed the crowd and soon found the source of this unlikely alliance of melody and screaming.

A noisy crowd had gathered around a large man whose skin was as sun-darkened as any traveller, but he was clearly not of that race. Egged on by the crowd, who were themselves egged on by strong drink, he put his hands to his mouth, as I have done many times myself to shout down the mountain, and then out of his very throat came this noise which was half melody and half something else which I could not put a name on. Many of the crowd tried to do it themselves, in the same way you’d try to play a new tune that you’d heard a few times, but to no avail. All they could do was shout and scream like madmen. Only the big fella could make it sound pleasing to the ear.

The crowd soon broke up and headed back to their own little fires and caravans, but I was rooted to the spot. I thought if I could learn how to make this sound then I would have something to bring back to the mountain, something better than any new tune or ballad. The travellers said he was mad and best left to himself; but I always had a sense of what was bad and what was good in a man, and I saw no harm in the big fella. I went up to him and made myself known to him. He looked me up and down and saw no danger and bid me to sit down beside him. I had a bottle in my pocket and offered him a drink.

Soon we were talking about this and that and I asked him about the strange sound he could make, and where he learnt to do it. Over the next hour he told me a tale that no traveller could ever tell; for no traveller that I had ever met had travelled so far for so long. The big fella had been a sailor for many years, and one of his shipmates was from a place called Switzerland. The big fella laughed long and hard when I asked him what county that was in. He told me how in Switzerland the mountains were so big and so many that people had to have a way of talking across the valleys and peaks–otherwise they would have to climb for days just to talk to a neighbour. The big fella laughed even harder when I told him I was of the mountains. He told me he had seen pictures in a book, and that the mountains that I called home would fit into the smallest valley with room to spare.

We talked for a while and then I came out with it and asked him what this thing was called. “Yodeling,” he told me. Well now, never in my life had I heard such a word, and by now I knew that I had to bring it back to the mountain with me.

I asked him, would he care to spend an hour or so in showing me how to do this yodeling, and he said he would. We walked past the caravans and campfires along the banks of a little river called the Dodder. When we were a good distance away from the fair we sat down on a fallen tree and he explained to me the things that had to be done to make this sound. It was a lot harder than I thought, but by the end of the bottle I could do a reasonable yodel that could only get better with practice. Sure it was no different than getting a new tune on the whistle; you have to take the time to really get to know it and bring out the best in it. The big fella then started walking towards the place down on the Dublin Quays where his ship was moored. He had to be back early to catch the tide. I never saw him again.

The travellers who had brought me to Donnybrook were heading northwards after the fair, but being decent and kind people, they got me a berth with another family that were heading west for the summer. They left me about sixty miles from the mountain, so I could walk the rest of the way in two days. I was no stranger to sleeping in haysheds and barns and the weather had been getting better. The journey back was another great time of music and songs, but I did not want to practice the yodeling in their company, lest I frighten the children and find meself a lot further than sixty miles from the mountain.

On returning home, I went straight to my grandmother’s place to greet her and tell her about the sights and sounds that lie out there on the road. While she cooked up a big feed for me, I played her a few of the new tunes I had picked up and told her of the strange things I had seen. I did not mention the yodelling, though, because I wanted to save that for my best friend, a fella I had grown up with from the time of my birth.

Many times over the years, I and my dear friend would talk about finding something that would make us stand out from the crowd, something that would set us apart from the rest of the people around us — and now I had found it. The minute I saw him walking down the mountain I hid behind a large rock and fired out the yodel I had learned from the sailorman.

Well, he stopped his walking there and then and looked around him with an expression halfway between fear and awe. Nothing in his wildest dreams could have prepared him for that sound. As soon as I stopped laughing I made the yodel a second time, adding a bit of a variation that I had worked out myself during a practice session on the walk to the village the day before. I peeped out from behind the rock and saw him picking up a stone to throw at the demon he expected to pounce on him at any moment.

Unable to contain myself any longer, I jumped out and called his name. “Run!” He shouted at me. “The Devil himself is near. Run!”

“Hold your hour,” I called back to him. “It’s meself making the sound.”

Well, he walked up to me and shook my hand, still holding the stone just in case, and we walked and talked for a while before finding a sheltered little nook where we sat down and swapped news.

I told him all about my travels to the Fair at Donnybrook and the sailorman. It was only a few hours later that he could do a passable yodel himself; and before the night fell down around us we had three distinct yodels worked out, each with its own meaning.

The next day we hid ourselves in different parts of the mountains and yodeled back and forth a couple of times through the day. That night we went to the public house and sat listening to the talk of strange noises and devilish screams that everybody in the place was talking about. Some thought the world was ending and spoke of going to the Priest for advice and solace, others believed there was some strange animal running wild that had escaped from a ship bound for Americay and had swam ashore.

I played a few tunes that night, and when I played “The Donnybrook Jig” I could see my friend fighting hard to hold back the laughter. Sure the crack was mighty altogether. Many’s the poor man travelling through the mountain feared for his life when we would throw a stone into a hedge and do a few yodels. Some even began to carry shotguns by their side to defend themselves from the wild, unseen animal in their midst.

It was only a few weeks after I had returned from the Fair when a strange coincidence occurred … a coincidence that would soon change everything. There was an old man in the village who had a brother living over in London; every now and then he would recieve a parcel of newspapers and magazines that could not be bought locally. When he had read them he would get me to bring them to my grandmother, for he knew that she liked to read the London papers. I would have an odd read through them myself on occasion. It was one evening as I sat there reading about a big football match that an advertisement caught my eye. It was, I thought later, like the Devil himself had twisted my head down to the bottom of that very page.

There was a place called The Simplex Nature Press that sold educational material through the post.Among the titles offered for sale, well, what did I see but a book called “Advanced Yodeling Techniques.” There was no other information available, but I figured that it could only be a good thing to learn some advanced techniques. I scraped the seven shillings and six pence together and walked the ten miles to the post office to get a postal order, and off went the money.

The postman called to the village twice a week. During his second visit of the third week the parcel arrived. It was more of an envelope than a parcel, and not quite what I had imagined a book about advanced yodeling techniques to look like.

It consisted of seven sheets of paper with various drawings and advice on practicing the techniques described. It seemed to be very badly spelled (not that I would know a lot about spelling myself); but at the end of the last page it said that the author was a world champion yodeller who did not speak English very well and offered his apologies to those who might struggle with his writing.

One of the pages contained a warning about what can happen to people who try out advanced techniques with having learned the basics, or failed to do some serious warm-up exercises. The example given was of a man in Americay who went straight into a very complicated yodel and damaged his throat so badly that he could only speak about four or five words every three months or so. This led to terrible problems for his family, as there had to be somebody with him at all times to write down what he said and pass it on to the other members of his family. One tragic evening, after a silent spell of three months, he managed to utter a few words — but the person with him was listening to the radio and failed to realise that the voice was not on the radio but had come from the poor unfortunate victim of enthusiasm. It is heartbreaking to imagine the frustration that poor man felt, as he would have to wait another three months or so to speak again. A greater tragedy was that this man could not read nor write, so the pen was of no use to him at all. It is hard to believe that such suffering could come out of something so beautiful as a well-delivered double octave yodel.

Well, over the next few weeks my beloved friend and I studied hard and managed to learn the double octave, the reverse bass and, after some serious practice, master the single-octave quadruple split. That was a hard one I’ll tell ye. Even though we could now manage some of the more graceful yodels, we needed a lot of practice to get the rhythm and the flow running nice and smooth. No different from playing tunes on a tin whistle really, it takes a lot of playing to get the piece sounding natural and effortless.

The last page in the bit of a book was devoted to the triple-octave back throat echo. This particular yodel was one of the most complicated and, it must be said, dangerous yodels to attempt. The yodelling master said that three years of constant practice and use of the yodels mentioned earlier was essential to develop the throat and tongue to a point where this final yodel could be learned safely. The yodel itself he described has being like a thousand butterflies of every colour and hue, soaring with the grace of a hawk and the precision of an arrow through clouds of billowing silk, sprinkled with stardust. (He had a grand way with words for a fella who did not speak a lot of English, I always thought).

As we practiced our ever-expanding repetoire, the rumours around the village got out of hand completely. People were saying that there must be two wild animals up there and that they were breeding; for what else could explain these new sounds that were appearing out of nowhere. Hunting parties were organised; but sure meself and the other fella were always in the hunt, so no savage animals were heard at all at these times. This, of course, led to even more rumours that the creatures were highly intelligent and had the cunning of foxes.

Now I’m sure by now you can imagine the amusement two simple mountain men got from all this yodelling and the wild rumours that came out of it all. Sure it was the best fun we’d ever had. But then, like all good things, it came to an end.

It was a foggy day on the mountain and my friend thought he’d climb three-quarters of the way up to the top and fire out a few yodels down onto the village below. Now there was no need for ropes and suchlike; but there were one or two parts of the mountain where a bit of skillful clambering was required to get past them. It being so foggy, nobody would see him climbing up, and thus our little secret would be safe. My part in this was to wait about an hour; that would be how long it would take to get up that far. On hearing the yodel, I’d run to the village and tell them all I got a glimpse of a savage beast with two heads and a huge mouthful of teeth in every one. Twenty feet long and six feet tall, with a tail like a massive snake. I sat down and played a few nice tunes to pass the while. When I thought that an hour had passed I put away me little whistle and waited for the yodel.

Then, after a few minutes, I heard it. It was not what I expected it to be at all. It was the most glorious sound I had ever heard in my life: Nothing in my imagination could have prepared me for the volley of notes that came cascading down from on high like a band of Angels. Hundreds of tiny notes all flowing together like the way a mighty wave on the ocean is made up of tiny drops of water. Even the larks in the field beside me stopped singing, humbled by the majesty of what I knew, there and then, to be the triple-octave back throat echo. I was mesmerised, and found myself being lifted out of my body and taken to a place that I never knew existed — such was the beauty of this magnificent yodel.

Then, out of nowhere, the beautiful music stopped for a heartbeat and in its place came the most horrendous sound I have ever heard. It was like a thousand devils defecating on the sizzling hot hob of Hell itself. The birds flew out of the trees and the rabbits dived into their underground chambers. I could hear women and children over in the village screaming for mercy, fearing that the end of the world had come.Then silence.

I ran towards the mountain and began the long climb up, for I knew well the very spot where he would have been. I tried a few yodels on the way up, hoping for a response, but nothing was returned, except an empty echo.
Well, I got to the place, and as I stepped forward I saw him. Lying on his back with his throat swollen out like a big fat frog. His eyes, that only that morning had twinkled in merriment, were cold and dull. He was dead. Stone cold dead.

I looked down on him to see what it was that had his throat all swollen and I got the greatest shock of my life. He had swallowed his tongue. The mighty yodel he had started involved flicking the tongue backwards and forwards as far back as the tonsils while breathing outwards through the nose. He had not developed his muscles enough to attempt it — and had paid dearly for his ambition.

It was myself, and myself alone, who had brought the yodel back from the Fair at Donnybrook. It was myself, me and nobody else, who had sent off for the advanced yodelling techniques book. So you see, I had killed him. It was my fault that a man I had known all my life was lying dead on a foggy mountain. There was only myself to blame. Had I been content to be the same as the next man, and not tried to better myself with strange tricks, he would be alive to this day, smoking a pipe and playing with his grandchildren.

I carried his body down the mountain, and on getting to the village, told them I had seen the beast but it had killed my friend before I could find something to hit it with. I have never yodelled again … and never will.

He was a long-legged fella who had a great stride, and the last time I ever saw him was when he took three great strides toward the mountain and then vanished into the fog. Those three steps were his legacy to me. That is why I always play “The Legacy Jig” after “The Donnybrook Jig”. Ye see, “The Legacy” starts off with three steps upward, just as my friend started up the mountain on that cruel day. Every time I play those three steps I can see him walking away from me without ever thinking of saying goodbye.

Well, it’s getting dark here now, so I had better be about my chores. I hope you don’t find my tale too sad; but sure sadness comes around every now and then to remind us what it means to be happy.

Good night, fellow travellers.