BLUEMOMENT

As a piper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper's cemetery in the Kentucky back-country.

Since I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost. I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late.

I went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what else to do, so I started to play. The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family or friends. I played like I've never played before for this homeless man. And as I played 'Amazing Grace,' the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, we all wept together.

When I finished I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head hung low, my heart was full. As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, "I never seen nothin' like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty years."

I posted this on an earlier thread. Years ago, I used to occasionally play guitar or mandolin alongside a friend and colleague, now sadly missed, Graeme Allan. Graeme used to frequent the Aberdeen Folk Club in the 60s and 70s, but my appearances with him were in less salubrious surroundings mainly furth of the border.

Now Graeme was a crackin guid singer, with a rich voice, and a very rhythmic strummer on the nylon strung guitar, and his repertoire included a particularly maudlin number on which I used to play this dreary sentimental tinkling on the mandolin behind his sung melody. Aye, it fair brought a tear to the eye.

In fact one night, Graeme noticed two guys at the back both greetin tears into their pints, and he assumed that they, like most of the audience, had been overcome by emotion.

It was only later he found out that they were both both professional musicians.

apologies for missing the previous posting. It takes a long time for the Bluemoment electrons to get down south, and then the climb to the top of Exmoor is ver' steep.