About two years ago a friend of mine Patsy Flynn had a new boxwood chanter made for him by Tom Trant a flute maker from just outside ventry, west of Dingle. It,s a beautiful piece of work(pitched in B ) with lovely turning in the boxwood .But Shortly after getting the chanter Patsy noticed his style of playing on the chanter changed from his normal fast playing into a very slow plodding style and it was only on this chanter that he,d played this way, when he played his concert pitch set he was back to his fast way of playing .He asked me too have a go of it , to see what I thought and I couldn,t believe it when I tried to play it,the chanter would just not let you play fast .When you tried to play fast the sound would just not come out ,but when you got the pace of the chanter it would play beautifully.,it was amazing .Anyway I suggested to Patsy ,he should it back to Tom Trant to see what was the problem .
Ole tom was stumped himself ,even with different reeds, the chanter would not play any faster than it wanted too .After they had given up for the day they were in the kitchen having a cup of tea and Patsy started asking a few questions about the chanter ..It turns out the boxwood used for the chanter was got from an old graveyard near anascaul that was being cleared by the council of overgrown shrubs and bushes.
Tom Trant heard about the work and went to see if there was anything worth taking as he knew that boxwood is common in graveyards .All he got was the one bush that he made the chanter from .A week or so later Patsy and Tom were up in the graveyard and Tom showed Patsy exactly where the boxwood was cut from ,It was right next to a grave marked Edward( Ned )McCarty who died in 1962 .
About a month after that Patsy and Myself were at a session in Ballyferriter and we got talking to an old accordian player John Foley who,s in his eighties.It turns out he knew Ned McCarty and he was telling us he was a piper who he played with many years ago and the thing about Ned was that he was the slowest piper that John had ever heard .In fact he was so slow and steady he was employed by a local dancing teacher for play for beginners .Needless to say the shivers were running up and down my back and up the back of my neck.
The boxwood used to make the chanter was nourished by the decaying remains of Ned McCarty.and now the chanter will only play the way Ned played .
I refused to play the chanter after that but Patsy says it doesn,t bother him and he cherishes it now and says he plays it as a tribute to Ned!!
RORY
A possessed chanter
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You see........that's what happens when you don't harvest the boxwood on the night of a new moon in January!
Pipers Gathering--More Fun, More Music
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