The Legendary Blood Fiddle.

Louis Shalako photo.

Louis Shalako

This is the legendary Blood Fiddle, which belonged to my friend's grandfather. The story is, he went to the Sarnia rez, bought himself a deaf and dumb girl for about sixteen dollars and made her his wife. They had five daughters and sometime during WW II, he started a band. Years later, she died of cancer, somehow bleeding all over the place and one of the children used the blood to paint the front of the fiddle...

I forget the grandfather's name, but she still has the band going, and she's working on some new songs. She sang a bit of one to me and she definitely has a good voice.

They're not real big, are they.

On this particular instrument, the outer strings are not rigged, as it appears the bridge is broken. The lady says she spent some money, as the thing 'was in pieces' and I guess she knew some guy.

Yeah, we talk once in a while.

At some point, she brought out a real violin. This was in fine condition. For the first time in my life, I held a violin in my hands. The strings were pretty loose, and I put my finger on a line painted on there and began stroking the bow, across, back and forth, just listening to the tone of the thing.

It sounded a lot like a violin.

When I was five or six years old, I asked my parents for a violin, and of course they just laughed.

End