I could use some advice...

[bogman]

You can make playing low whistle easy by using your pinky not your ring finger on the bottom hole. You just miss out the ring finger. For people familiar with uilleann pipe fingering imagine there is the ghost d hole below your ring finger. On pipes you play D with all four fingers down, for E you raise the pinky and ring finger at the same time. If you apply the same to low whistle then there is absolutely no stretch. It takes a very short time to get used to.