The strings? Well now, there’s very few knows this. There’s a first, second, third, and fourth, ain’t there? Treble, tenor, counter, bass. The bass, you know; you don’t play anything on the bass. It’s all your three strings. I went to buy strings in town and he didn’t know what I meant.

I have a good violin, you know, and she was loud. I played at Vernon River, at a concert there; there was nine of us... . I had four boys playing that night, me own four sons.1 After we were done of our supper and everything down below I had to play up above. And Curley from Charlottetown in the Co—op store — he was looking after the meat, cutting the meat _ he had a violin, but she was very low, she wasn’t sharp or nothing. He was playing and he give it up. He says, “I might as well put it away,” he says. “I can’t hear it at all, my own violin.” I says, “I didn’t put much push on my own. I can play it louder than that.” So I played, and they give me 11 dollars for what I done for them.

[My sons] picked it up themselves. Only Jimmy — one time he went to Percy’s [MacKenzie] over there on a Sunday and there was quite a few in the house. And Percy had a violin, good one too. And he wanted Jimmy to play. And he says, “Can you play any hymns?” “Yes I can.” So he come on to the Lord MacDonald’s Reel; he played it for him. “Is that a good hymn?” he says. He didn’t know a hymn from any other thing. Poor Jimmy, he was a dandy violin player, but he took a stroke, you know, in his fingers, this hand, twice.

Lots of Music

I sold a violin I had here [at Beach Grove]. There was a Mackenzie fella in the card party was after it twice. He wanted to buy it. And the reason I sold it, they wanted me to be playing so often here and I was getting tired of it. Lots of times I didn’t feel like playing at all.

I had a mouth organ down here. She was that long. She got all the notes of a piano on her. I play a little on her but hard on the wind you know.

They [had a]...time here one night. There was quite a crowd in. There was a hundred or more. [The band wanted] to know if there was anybody here could take their place for a while. “Well, there’s a young fella back here. He plays the harmonica.” “Well, set him up.” They thought it was

1. Angus Leslie had 11 children, seven of whom are still living, all on the Island. It was one of the largest families in the area and something of a novelty for the community.

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2 10 BELFAST PEOPLE