A Scottish Storyteller

A personal tale of Aberdeenshire's great fiddler, James Scott Skinner.

Who... I'd not even heard of until I decided i was going to learn to play the fiddle! Which some people find rather shocking - but then my parents didn't listen to that sort of music when i was a kid.

I'm not very good at the fiddle... Still just beginning. But back in spring, I was learning to play Music Of Spey.

So, what with the good weather coming in and all, I decided that I'd walk home not through the Duthie Park (like usual) but through the Allen Vale Cemetary - which was all coming out in cherry blossom. I had my personal stereo and it had just come to the end of the album. After the music had stopped I continued walking, and started humming "Music Of Spey" (which Scott Skinner wrote). Then for no apparent reason, I stopped. I stopped walking. Not something I often do, because when I'm walking home from work I usually thunder on and nothing gets in my way!

I wondered why I had stopped, such a very odd thing.

Now I'd never been through the cemetary before and don't know anything about it's, ummmm, "occupants." So imagine my surprise when I found I'd stopped just at the grave of... James Scott Skinner!

My fiddle teacher reckoned he was trying to tell me something... That my fiddle playing (and humming of his music) is "Bloody Awful"