There’s a fair amount of folk tales where, say, someone comes back from a visit with the fairies carrying an enchanted harp or set of pipes. Or encounters with a fiddler in abandoned places who turns out to be a ghost. Turough O’Carolin is supposed to have fallen asleep on a fairy rath and awakened with the tunes that would enchant Ireland running through his head.
Never a tin whistle is heard of. No one ever goes to the Sidhe and finds any of the Good folk busking away on a tin whistle. Out of curiosity, anyone care to speculate on this one?
Perhaps the “tin” whistle, as opposed to bone and other more primordial whistle forms, is not an ancient enough instrument to have earned a spot in the old mythologies.
The time is ripe. Write a ghost story featuring a whistle.
“Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” by M. R. James.
The speech served to remind Parkins of his little discovery of that afternoon. It was with some considerable curiosity that he turned it over by the light of his candles. It was of bronze, he now saw, and was shaped very much after the manner of the modern dog-whistle; in fact it was - yes, certainly it was - actually no more nor less than a whistle.
