Celtic Music in Appalachia

Part II: Early Instrumental Music

by Charles H. Ball

We have heard it all our lives, how the Celtic people -- particularly the Scots-Irish -- came to the hills of Appalachia and brought the music that was to become known as old time Appalachian, and finally Bluegrass and Country. If this is true, what was that music like? The fact is, we don't know. Most of what we "know" about it is folklore, transmitted from generation to generation and never very closely examined in any way that could pass for scholarly. What we can know about it must be learned by examining the clues which remain today -- our experience of what the music is like now and our more secure knowledge of what their music was like in their home countries.

The Celts of northern Europe enjoyed a varied and active musical life. Singing was important, and several important traditions were already old at the time of the first American emigration.Love songs, work songs, lullabies, narratives songs abounded in English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic. (Without doubt also in Manx Gaelic and Cornish.) Song is portable; you carry your instrument with you wherever you go. And Celtic songs came to America, took root, and grew. This will be the subject of a future column in this series.

Bagpipes were in a fairly developed state and were used as warpipes and as dance instruments. Each society had its own version -- the piob mor of highland Scotland, the smallpipes and half-longs of the Scottish lowlands and northern England, and the king of them all -- the uillean pipes of Ireland, although these had not reached their final state of perfection.

The harp tradition still existed, although it was nearing the end of its "golden age." The harp tradition in Ireland had been, despite the symbolism and the great sentiment toward it, an instrument of the ruling classes. In ancient times it served kings and chieftains, in more modern times it belonged to the English ascendancy. True, native Irish harpers abounded, but they were largely in service to their English masters. We know that fiddle-like instruments were used, and we also know that the Scots began at an early date to use the modern violin.

Looking at what we know of current music in Appalachia, and using a little reason about what might have been its ancestry, we immediately notice several things. First is the absence of song in the Celtic languages. This may be a result of history. With time foreign languages would naturally have died out under the circumstances. But there is a simpler and more direct explanation: the Celtic songs never got here in the first place. When we remember that the predominant group among these early Celtic settlers were the Scots-Irish this is easy to understand. The Scots-Irish were originally lowland Scots, who never spoke Gaelic in the first place. The lack of songs in Irish certainly suggests that the Gaelic Irish were not present in any great numbers, since Irish Gaelic was the everyday language of the Irish peasant even then. But more about all that in a future column.

Another glaring fact is the lack of harp and pipe music in Appalachia. The current infatuation with the Great Highland Bagpipe is of recent vintage and is part of the Celtic revival in Appalachia more than it is of the Celtic tradition in Appalachia. The Scots-Irish, being lowlanders, didn't play these pipes, and it is the Scots-Irish more than the highlanders who settled early Appalachia. And what about harps? Being associated with the aristocracy more than with the peasantry, the harp simply didn't make it to these hills. Besides, the harp is not well suited for frontier life. Davy Crockett would have looked strange playing the harp, I am sure!

But the fiddle did get to the mountains. Many were made at home from materials as simple as boxes and gourds. The old mountain song that sings of "a corn-stalk fiddle and a shoe string bow" is not just a fanciful verse; it reflects a reality. We can listen to the "old time" music of Appalachia today and hear clearly what must have been its origins. It is music for dancing and for pleasure. Its antecedent is, without doubt, duple-time dance music of Celtic origin -- reels and hornpipes. Some of the tunes themselves are tunes still played in Ireland and Scotland today, tunes such as "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" and "Soldier's Joy."

But the fiddle in Appalachia had a companion -- the banjo, an instrument of African origin. The African Americans (although few, by comparison with most of the South) introduced the banjo, which was perfectly suited to play the fiddle tunes and which could be home-made even easier than could the fiddle. The skinhead fretless banjo is still to be found in the hills of Appalachia. The banjo played a profound part in the first, and perhaps greatest, transformation of Celtic music into Appalachian music. The banjo was constructed with one string shorter than the other four (or sometimes three) strings. This gave rise to the characteristic boom-tiddy, boom-a-tiddy rhythm characteristic of "clawhammer" style. This rhythm, when transferred to the fiddle, gives rise to the shuffle stroke, the characteristic bowing style of Appalachia. It is the shuffle stroke which, more than anything else, differentiates Appalachian dance tunes from the Irish or Scottish tunes. Take just about any Irish reel or hornpipe, superimpose the shuffle stroke on it, and you will have an Appalachian fiddle tune. In the next newsletter we will look at some of these tunes and see how they eventually became what they are today.