Laurie Lee (Cider with Rosie etc) played the fiddle and even earned a crust with it in his travelling days. One of his pieces of journalism mentions a pub session in Ireland in the 1960s. Laurie, fuelled by whisky, borrowed a fiddle and played a slow air. At the end an old chap bashed his cap down on the bar and cried "Englishman, we forgive you!"