I mentioned that I would be attending Catskills Irish Arts Week.
Upon checking into the Blackthorn Resort around noon on Monday, I discovered that Mary Bergin would be leading the session in the Blackthorn pub Monday evening. This seemed fortuitous. I’d never met Mary, and had been hoping for years to get a chance to have her try my whistles.
Uncertain how to approach her, I mentioned to the barkeeper, Rob, who happens to be a whistle player and purchased a tweaked D Generation from me shortly after I arrived (which also seemed fortuitous), that I was unsure how to proceed. He said, “I know Mary. I’ve taken her class. When she arrives for the session, I’ll tell her you’re here.”
Shortly before ten, Rob came around to where I was working on my laptop in the lobby and reported he’d seen Mary, told her about me, and she wanted to meet me. So I went into the pub, which was packed of course, and found a place on the periphery up against the bar where I could observe the proceedings and wait for the room to clear out, which I understood would take some hours.
After a little while, a dog wandered through. A medium sized CALICO dog, the only such dog I’ve ever seen, with white, apricot and black fur, one blue eye and one brown eye. Seemed very much at home, friendly but polite, perfectly calm. Went around checking the place and the people out systematically, solicitously making sure each person was OK, until Rob the bartender came through, found the owner and explained the dog would have to be on a leash.
The owner leashed the dog, who remained perfectly well mannered, and set himself and the dog up at the bar right next to me. As the evening proceeded, I engaged the owner in conversation, discovered that he had no experience with Irish music and was feeling despondent because the human race is about to end due to financial collapse and catastrophic climate change. I made my best effort at offering reasons to look a little more on the bright side, but he would have none of it. The whole (long) time, I kept my eye on Mary to make sure I didn’t miss an opportunity to make contact. However, the room remained quite full, and Mary’s attention was clearly 100% occupied leading the session.
So I waited.
The room began to thin somewhat, and it began to look like my chance might come eventually.
Then the man turned to me and said, “I have to go to the bathroom. Would you mind taking the leash until I get back?” I did so, and the dog and I waited patiently, though I had a vaguely uneasy feeling about the arrangement.
Still a fair while before midnight, Mary rather suddenly got up, and the people who had come with her also got up. They worked their way through the seated participants and headed in the direction of the door. Not a good sign, I thought, and what with the dog that had been entrusted to me, I couldn’t go after her. I couldn’t be angry at the dog, as he was about the most innocent creature on the planet, but there I was, stuck with a dog that belonged to someone else, and no way to save the opportunity. I watched Mary round the end of the bar towards the door and disappear from sight. Oh, well. Maybe next year.
Then, as I continued to look after where Mary had gone, I watched as she re-materialized from around the end of the bar, strode the length of the room directly up to me and asked, “Are you the man with the whistles?” (She seemed not to notice the calico dog.)
I admitted that I was, and asked if she was coming back. “No,” she said, “I’m exhausted,” and she asked how we might arrange for her to get some whistles to try. At which point, I opened the bag I had brought and handed her eleven whistles. She looked astonished and delighted at the same time, as if someone had just handed her a pot of gold. We agreed that I should show up just before her class the next day, and she could let me know what she thought of them. Knowing she likes Generations, I had brought her a selection of tweaked Generations, plus Mellow Dogs in D and C.
When I did arrive, I found Mary and the class already seated and involved with their instruction. I went to Mary’s side, concerned that I was interrupting the lesson. She noticed me and immediately said, “I LOVE the Bb and I LOVE the F. The F has just the kind of sound I like.” (This was a tweaked high F Generation.) She pulled the whistles out of her bag, indicating that she would give them back. I told her she should keep the Bb and F, and she seemed genuinely surprised. I said, “You’ll have to pay for the Bb, though. The price is half a minute of being able to hear you play it.”
She played for more than half a minute. She played an entire, fairly lengthy tune, though now I can’t tell you if it was a slow air or a reel. All I can tell you is it was the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever heard, not least of all because she was playing a whistle I had created. After thanking her for such beautiful playing, I excused myself as quickly as possible, not wanting to hold up the class. (As the week went on, I worried that I had imposed on the students, but later, one who had been there said they’d loved it and liked the tune so much they made her teach it to them.)
Based on the fact that she said she liked the sound of the high F, and the fact that she hadn’t seemed impressed with the tweaked Generations in C, D or Eb, I thought she might be looking for something brighter and purer voiced. I put together a selection of Blackbirds and intercepted her in the parking lot just before she arrived for another lesson. She took the whistles, and I watched as she walked towards little St. Mary’s church where the class was held, holding the whistles in the air as if they were a bouquet of flowers.
I found her a day or so later, and she said she liked the Blackbirds and would like to try a few more of them to see if she could find exactly the ones she wanted. She made a comment that made me suspect she might be looking for Eb and D Blackbirds with a very subtle adjustment from the setup I had given her, so I went back to where I was working and glued up four that incorporated the adjustment. I found her after those had been completed, told her what I’d done and that I would make some more with yet a further adjustment. I also told her the whistles were visually indistinguishable, but I would be able to determine which ones she liked by measuring with calipers after she’d made the choice.
All this transpired over the entire week of the event, leading up to Saturday, the final day, on which there would be an Irish music festival from noon to seven in the evening. Mary would be performing at two. She came around to my vendor’s table about 12:30 and said she’d like to spend some time going over the whistles with me after her performance, but not before because beforehand she wanted to keep her mind on the performance.
During the time before her performance, people came and went, tried out whistles, talked about whistles, purchased whistles. A woman came to the table, said she plays the clarinet and would like to take up the whistle. We discussed the fact that the clarinet is a cantankerous instrument that overblows to the twelfth, but a saxophone’s fingering is similar to a whistle’s. She told me the middle register of a clarinet fingers similarly to a saxophone. So I told her to pretend she was playing the middle register of a clarinet and gave her a Mellow Dog to try.
She came back in a few minutes (my vendor’s table was set where I could send people to a place they could hear themselves over the performers) and said she wanted to get her friend who plays the whistle so her friend could try the Mellow Dog and advise her.
In a few more minutes, she showed up with Mary Bergin! I burst out laughing and said, “Is this your friend who plays the whistle?” She said, “No, I couldn’t find my friend, but I ran into Mary, and she said she’d try it for me.” Mary tried the Mellow Dog, pronounced it worthy, and went on her way. I completed the sale and shortly after, listened to an absolutely transcendent set of music, performed by the great Mary Bergin.
Some more time passed, and Mary appeared at my table again. We went through the whistles, and she picked a C Blackbird, two D Blackbirds and two Eb Blackbirds that she said were exactly what she wanted. I checked with my calipers, and found that all four had been set up exactly the same way, with the one very subtle adjustment I had applied, the first four I had set up for her. (All Eb and D Blackbirds will now be set up that way, btw.)
As we went through the whistles Mary had picked out, people came and went, asking about whistles, trying whistles, asking Mary for advice about whistles, asking Mary to try whistles for them, purchasing whistles. She showed no sign of impatience, but rather, clearly was enjoying herself.
“I love all whistles,” she said.
Best wishes,
Jerry
