There’s as many fiddlers as shipwrecked ghosts strung along

this coastline but, you know, I picked up one of Rufus’s

CDs the other day. Guinchard. And it put me to thinking;

maybe there aren’t as many real fiddlers as I’d thought.

Sure there’s players, plenty enough, numerous as the day’s

catch of mainlanders sliding slick from the maw of the Argentia

ferry. Plenty of players who’d happily strum a tune or two, hum

a bar, shuffle their feet. At little charge, they’d even offer up

a nod and wink. That’s how they are ‘down here’. But not so

many fiddlers with cat gut for muscle, wide-eyed musical poets

with lyrical blood running in their veins. Old Rufus, though.

You don’t have to be a blind man to hear he never forced

a bow across a string in his life. Broke a sweat once, twice maybe

while contorting his fingers into a skeleton of song, but mind,

he merely witched the damned strings, readily hauled

the tune like a drag line, hand over hand from the murky

melody of the grey Atlantic, like his father before him,

he drew deep and set his spirit drifting.