Folk music is part of many people’s lives and is a wonderful provider of background situational atmosphere in free online fiction.
Traditionally, folk music takes place in pubs of Ireland, Scotland and England and the more rural the better. In the free online short story Cornish Guilty Secrets
The warm mellow notes from my bagpipes communed with the beams, danced around the old oak windows and mingled with the Cornish sunshine as it struggled through the tiny old glass windows of this ancient Cornwall inn.
In the free online novella The Blooding of Amelia-Rose
The violin was warm from his playing. She ran her finger along the neck and gently sounded the strings with her left hand, feeling their texture. They sounded perfectly in tune.
Standing up, she lifted the violin to her chin, raised the bow to the strings and sounded each one in turn. The bar was now perfectly quiet. Everyone had stopped talking and was gazing intently at the beautiful young woman in jeans and a T-shirt who held in her small hands the most precious possession of one of their most respected players.
Amelia-Rose brought the bow down sharply on the strings creating a deep and strong chord at once dark and primitive. Before the harsh sound had died away her fingers executed a brilliant cadenza that swept up through all the notes a violin could make until it reached its highest point. She held the note as if it was lark flying in the air and then slowly moved down through the chords in triplets rising and falling but always becoming lower and deeper until she regained the powerful chord that was her beginning.
Then she was away lost in notes and sounds the pleasure of holding a violin again lifting her to new heights as she sped through the opening parts of a virtuoso party-piece she’d often played as a teenager. The violin was beautiful and she could have gone on playing it forever.
But she knew that the very essence of this community was that everybody could join in so minutes later she moved away from the haunting classical melody into an old folk tune that she’d played long before. In seconds, everybody was joining in and the bar was awash with the simple melody, repeated endlessly and hypnotically.
Sometimes, pubs or bars are used to tell stories. In Countryside Storytelling Tales of the Unexpected
When the winter came, there were fewer visitors but the village community that lived in the valley would draw close around the log fire that roared its way up the stone chimney until its smoke mingled with the moors beyond - and the stories would go on.
“Who is to tell the story tonight,†Tom would enquire.
The drinkers at the bar and the diners at the tables would look away, trying to avoid his steely eye.
In all the history of storytelling in this isolated stone-built hostelry, with its blue wisteria that clambered around the low entrance porch in the summer, its white inner walls and its worn stone flags, there’d always been somebody willing to tell their tale.
Romance flourishes and relationships of all sorts are formed to the sounds of folk music in pubs. In Sarah’s Price
Candles were lit on tables and the inn began to fill up. At the other end of the bar, a folk circle swung into action. Each person took turns to select a tune or song which was then quickly taken up by the others with gusto. They all seemed to know each other and were involving their audience too.
Guitars strummed, recorders trilled and accordions danced to the accompaniment of much raucous and cheerful banter.
Many diners that had previously been engrossed in their conversation, stopped talking, grinned at each other and started to tap their feet to the music.
Sarah returned, smiled shyly and stood to be admired. She’d put on a knee length flowered dress with shoulder straps and a low cut neck. She had also made a very important call to Reception on Peter’s mobile phone.
As she’d waited for Reception to answer her call, she’d looked at herself in the mirror knowing that the dress she had put on teased and made a big promise. The thought filled her with trepidation. It was a promise that she was planning not to keep.
The body of people who are interested in folk music, stories and culture is huge and can be found everywhere. In future posts I hope to document many more examples of free online articles and stories about folk stories and folk music.
I hope you will return often, perhaps using the wonderful RSS aggregator technology
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Copyright Rob Hopcott 1999 - 2006, all rights reserved. All characters are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.
