"What drives our poor musicians into drunkards' graves? False conception of hospitality - Money denied them, but drink forced on them." - Capt. Francis O'Neill
Quoted by Nicholas Carolan - A Harvest Saved - Francis O'Neill and Irish Music in Chicago
"Angus MacKay, a fine Scots musician lay on his death bed and asked for a last bottle of stout. He finished it and requested that the bedroom window be opened. 'I will throw this empty bottle and wherever it lands is where I wish my final resting place to be.' He was buried on the top of the wardrobe. " Dancing Feet - The Tannahill Weavers
I'm not real sure what those guys are doing over there, but I almost believe these fellas might be preparing an industrial strength batch of what your academic ethno-musicolologist types like to refer to as 'oldtime fiddle music enhancer'.
"Though
few people actually believe 'the devil rides a fiddle bow' and most have known fiddlers
who were as sober and upstanding as the day is long, the stereotype of the fiddler as
rowdy and hell-prone still exists. The sermons of the fire-and-brimstone preachers
have helped to keep it alive. At heart of the teachings of most Southern churches is
the belief that one must reject the things of this world in order to find
salvation." 
"While
there are intellectual sins to worry about, such as pride in one's possessions and
attainments, ministers have often concentrated on such activities as drinking,
card-playing, gambling, dancing, and music-making. Fiddlers who had been converted
were expected to give up their instruments or at least to stop playing secular music:
those who did not were subject to the disapproval of other Christians in the
community."
"Up to 1860 Roanoke was the fighting place of bullies on Saturdays," wrote General B. F. Weathers for the Roanoke Leader. 'Tus Duke was the Captain of Jackson Allen Company. Ike Broughton was Captain of the High Pine Co. The two companies would meet in Roanoke on Saturday, drink, fiddle and dance until about 3 p.m.,' and then break into fighting."
"Newt (Collins) was about the sorriest white man that ever made a track or flung a card in the settlement. The boys use to say he was a fiddler from Fiddlers Green, and he did drag a right nasty bow. He could play the fiddle and sing funny songs and swap horses and tell smutty yarns, but that was about all. He didn't take to work a single bit, sayin how he was a born genius and didn't have to work. He was also a natural born loafer."
"He weren't worth his weight in sap saw dust, and the general wonderment was that he could have the big lazies continually all the time and still keep out of the poor house. From playin' the fiddle and playin' cards, he got to drinkin' very hard and lyin' and stealin', and playin' the devil in generally. The last time I heard from him he had jined the chain gang for ridin' off on a horse that belongs to some other man, and if he has ever unjined himself, its more than I know." Quoted by Francis Bartow Lloyd
With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow
Joyce H. Cauthen
