Heck, caul probably ain’t the medical term, anyway. It’s an old one, though.
OK, so we have more ideas about the foal’s covering…boy, I really would like to know more about this ivy leaf thing. I hope it hasn’t completely died out.
Sounds like a double reed version of a grass whistle on steroids.
I’ll say.
Whatever it is, if you can play tunes on it, I’m interested.
Amazing what some people will stick in their mouths … 
djm
This from a cat. 
Some people still don’t recognize the value of the feline recycling method. 
When someone asks you to smoke ivy - just say NO.
Horse afterbirth - the anti-drug.
Oh, well. I’m on a mission, here. When I get over to Ireland I’ll be driving people batty asking about this.
Here ya go:
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_895341.html
heard this a while back on NPR . . .
Cool, thanks! I wonder if it’s the same technique.
Nice story. Too bad none of the audio clips work. I would have liked to have heard them.
djm
Hm. Just clicked on the link to hear the fella playing a traditional Mexican folk song, and it worked fine for me. I’ll stick with flute, for my part, but the cleverness of playing that music on a simple ivy leaf is pretty impressive.
I’ll try the clips when I get home…don’t like downloading stuff at work.
Again, thanks for the link. Cleverness, indeed! The guy’s playing it one-handed, missing an arm as he is. At first I thought it would be something like a kazoo, but he’s really playing it. 
A friend pointed me to a clip on YouTube of a man playing music on a leaf:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6dTeQwf488&feature=related
A search here revealed this thread, and I thought I’d resuscitate it, since it seems to fit. It may have strayed from the Irish Traditional Music Forum, but that’s where it started. The link to the NPR story about the one-armed guy playing a leaf still works.
he mentions the “ivy leaf”. Neither my IrTrad friends nor I have ever heard of it. Does anybody know what this is?
As a kid growing up in Belfast NI, I am familiar with the ‘Ivy leaf’, spent many an hour mucking around with the things. The Ivy leaf, in comparison with some other leafs is thickish and fairly stiff, making it a good material for a vibrating reed.
The best time to make a reed from them (for us kids anyway) was in the autumn, a drying out leaf with just the right amount of stiffness was what we looked out for.
We also used the seed pods from the sycamore tree; they look and are shaped like the blade of an aeroplane.
Let me see if I can describe what our technique for playing the ivy leaf is….
I used to cut a strip of leaf, vertically down its length, about an inch wide or so to make a sort of reed.
Take the ‘reed’ and place it lengthways between the two thumbs, positioning the uncut edge of the leaf so that it sits flush between the thumbs and facing you.
The hands should be cupped together with the two thumbs lining up side by side.
Rotate your hands around so that the thumbs face you in an almost horizontal position, place your lips up to your thumbs and blow air across and between your thumbs into the cavity formed by your hands. The air passing over the leaf should make it vibrate and if you move the fingers of one hand to allow some air to escape then you are able to adjust the tone being played.
Some kids were able to place two pieces side by side in the gap and get an even raspier sound, I could never do it, I found it hard enough getting a sound from a single leaf.
This may not work for all, with everyone’s thumb shape being slightly different from each other, and it may take a fair bit of time to get any sound at all. (a bit like trying to get the embouchure correct on the flute, he-he!)
I can remember when I was young, some of the auld fella’s playing on a leaf (don’t know if it was ivy that was being used or not) and it was pretty amazing the sounds they could get from a little leaf. I think that’s why us kids spent so much time trying to perfect it, we could see and hear how good you could get at it, and it was an innocent way to while away the hours.
I hope all the above makes some sense to someone
That makes sense to me. As a kid I used to do something similar except all I did was blow over the leaf stretched between the thumbs with open hands. I’ve never tried using cupped hands and moving fingers to affect the sound. I’ll have a go at that one. 
Yeah Hotblack, I did the ‘between the thumbs with open hands’ thing as well, it just seemed to make a bit more resonance with the cupped hand method (maybe because the sound stayed close to me that way rather than travelling/moving away with open hands?
I found it hard to change/bend pitch with open hands, where as the cupped hands seemed to have the same sort of effect that a harmonica player gets when they cup their hands around their instrument. A bit like having a ‘hand only’ ocarina really, move a finger here and there to change pitch, not that hard when you think about it.
Whoooo…I just clicked on the first page of this thread, started in 2003…a long time between drinks there
we was supposed ta stop an’ wait for ya
bit late for that now, innit