, Well, a bit of biographical indulgence here. It amazes me how much I've been referring to my grandfather lately.    He seemed like an ordinary person when he was alive, but I now know he had been through some extraordinary circumstances to remain a regular, self-taught intellectual, kindly fellow. Circumstances like the battle of Vimy Ridge and two years of other World War One horrors; losing a beloved daughter to scarlet fever; being a new immigrant arriving in Winnipeg during the 1919 General Strike; a very dysfunctional marriage that lasted fifty years and ended in the mid-60's with my grandmother's succumbing to throat cancer; and a lot of family intrigue that I never understood. He was a commercial artist, a photoengraver to be precise, by trade. As a musician, he wasn't a fiddle player or a trained classical player--he played classical by ear, playing along with the radio! I never heard him play, he put the fiddle away for some reason before I was born and never picked it up again.

One of my strongest recollections of him was being the Sadly Disappointed In Me Scottish Grandfather every time I would quit piano lessons, and the opposite number "That's the best news you could have given us!" when I would start them up again. (These two events happened a lot in my younger life)

When he died, I asked for and received his two fiddles, one of which was a cheap Czech number with a carved wolf or bear head peghead. I don't know what happened to that one, which was interesting but not in playable condition.

In the thread on 60's/70's movies which Little Hawk started, I mentioned the movie Missouri Breaks. In June 1976 I had just hitchhiked across the U.S. west to east and was visiting my college friend Karrie in (Greetings From) Asbury Park New Jersey. Karrie's a movie buff, and we went out to an early showing of Missouri Breaks. When we got back to her house, I phoned my parents to tell them that I was on the East Coast, and would be heading home to Ottawa in the next couple of days. When my mother answered the phone, she told me that Grandpa was near death in his Montreal home. He died that night, in his own bed, at the age of 88. I arrived in Montreal the next day, and we had the funeral a few days later. It was held at Mont Royal Cemetery on St-Jean Baptiste day, Quebec's national holiday. After the service I walked across the park to the enormous festival going on on the other side of the mountain. There was a band called La Reve Du Diable playing, (The Devil's Dream) and they had a pile of fiddles and 8-strings and stuff. That was my first exposure to Celtic music, Franco-Celtic in this case, and I was completely captivated. Changed my life, it did. And I figured I knew where I could get a fiddle for myself...      

Well, the deal is done with the old bow. I've got one now (on a one-week trial basis) that is awesome to play on, and I am a player who's trying to be a better player. That's what it's all about. Greg won't have the restoration done on the old one for a few months--he's got several building commissions that are more pressing--so since the one I'm holding now will be a used bow by then, if I do undertake to buy it back, it will be a totally new deal. Meanwhile, I have a really good player's bow, and my good old fiddle to play it on (and he sold me a set of new Dominant strings for it really cheap) and I'm looking forward to the next few months.

Among other things, it's a bird in the hand.   

Thanks for your comments everyone. Hope I didn't disappoint you. I think Grandpa would be OK with my choice.
Willie-O