This paper was delivered on three occasions by Peter MacFie
Citations
A Fiddler, a Piper and Two Guitarists: Peter MacFie, Escape Conference, Dept History & Classics (UTAS) Strahan, Tasmania, 2003
A Fiddler, a Piper and Two Guitarists: Peter MacFie, Music & Social Justice Conference, Musicology Soc.Australia, Sydney, 2005
A Fiddler, a Piper and Two Guitarists: Peter MacFie, National Graduate Conference for Ethnomusicology 7-9 July 2006, University of Cambridge, UK.
Outline
The convicts passing through Port Arthur Penal Station included some with musical and other entertainment skills. These were at times valued by the military and civillian members of the society there.
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A Fiddler, a Piper and Two Guitarists
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A Fiddler & a Piper & 2 Guitarists
Cambridge Poster
NGCE poster, Cambridge University.pdf
Cambridge Programme
Interview with Peter by Tasmanian Times
Excerpt
When at Port Arthur Historic Site in 1984, I became intrigued with the survival of traditional folk music in Tasmania. In 1987, I retrieved a harp from the family of Welsh Chartist and political prisoner, Zephaniah Williams, left to disinterested locals at Latrobe in northern Tasmania. William’s son Llewellyn had been a champion harpist in Wales.
The life of another, unknown prisoner – Scottish born Neil Gow Foggo – also intrigued me. Perhaps he could be a window on the past? Foggo was a seaman, fiddler and apparently an alcoholic, housed at Salt Water River Probation Station in 1848. With his off-sider, Cornish born seaman and juggler, Joseph Crapp, they were permitted by Commandant Champ to travel to Port Arthur for 4 days – to entertain the Commandant’s children??!! For 4 days?? Some kid’s party! What was Champ up to – an adult’s party as well?! The situation at Port Arthur suggested that entertainment was contraband, to be traded as other articles were, and, as music had elevated Huddie Leadbetter – or Leadbelly – and Bukka White, and other black musicians, from the drudgery of Texas or Mississippi Prison Farms in the USA, musicians within the Australian colonial penal system used, and were used by, their penal superiors.
Other factors conspired to prevent the early documentation of the colonial folk music in Tasmania/Australia, and include the Hated Stain, and the lack of an Alan Lomax or a Library of Congress collection system. Other directions or sources leading toward the musical trail are scanty. Although convict conduct records reveal occupations, for example, mention is rarely made of their artistic/creative skills. This is a common problem when trying to resurrect the social and artistic lives of convicts in Tasmania – unless those skills are formally recognized by the culture of the period.
So, to a Tasmanian, the word ’escape’ takes many meanings – escape to and from the island of dreams or persecution. But what has ‘escaped’ documentation are the traditions, performances, events, songs etc., with which popular and innate folk or traditional music invigorates a culture. In 1982 I’d asked, ‘Why no folk culture in Tasmania?’ Did one ever exist? Could one be resurrected?’ While some current collectors, such as Steve Gadd, have unearthed melodies in various part of Tasmania, none relate to the early colonial period, but seem instead to cover the experiences of free settlers. None of these later melodies became part of a Tasmanian mainstream.
Neil Gow Foggo
In 1985, Neil Gow Foggo triggered this search. With assistance from a pen-friend in Scotland, Val McKay, we ascertained that Foggo was a descendant of the celebrated Scottish fiddler Neil Gow, who, with his son NathaNeil, helped resurrect the disappearing Scottish fiddle tradition by performing, composing and publishing old and new melodies. Neil (sic) Gow was the ‘Robert Burns’ of the Scottish fiddle. Margaret, one of his other children, was convict Foggo’s grandmother, and her brother NathaNeil became guardian for this family.
The bare facts of Foggo’s life are these. Born 1811, he went to sea aged 13, and by 1829 had been to the American colonies and the Cape of Good Hope. Returning as a reprobate, Foggo was imprisoned in Edinburgh in 1831. He was released, but re-tried in 1833 on his parent’s evidence for pawning valuables from their Edinburgh home, and transported to Van Diemen’s Land aboard the Isabella, (which also brought some of the first boys who began the Pt Puer experiment). In and out of Port Arthur over the next 8 years, Foggo then vanished from VDL in 1841, only to be re-transported again in 1844 from Kent, England, for theft. He revealed on arrival that he had absconded on an American whaler, the Hudson, from Hobart Town. From 1844 until his death in 1870 at Port Arthur, Foggo spent much of his time in prisons; in Hobart Town, Launceston, Port Arthur and other stations on the Tasman Peninsula. When he was not in prison, he appears to have been assigned to publicans, or settlers with Scottish connections, some of whom were in northern Tasmania.
But was Foggo just another, mad, ‘bad’, drunken convict musician? Apparently not, as in 1990, when my time at Port Arthur was coming to an end, I accidentally came across the following reference to Foggo from a 1905 Hobart Mercury, dated 35 years after his death. The newspaper report refers to a violoncello made at Port Arthur being for sale in a Hobart music shop, supposedly made by Neil Gow Foggo . A subsequent letter from a former Port Arthur official, and part-time musician, remembered that Neil Gow Foggo was a:
….. capable and clever violinist and a nephew (sic) of the celebrated player, Neil Gow….. as a musician he was a wonder. The violin was his favourite instrument. I have never heard his equal. The fullness of his tone and the accuracy of his chords and touch were remarkable.
His playing of ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland’ and ‘Caller Herrin’ were wonderfully fine performances, and his arrangement of those airs the best I have ever seen or heard.
His violincello solo, ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ will remain in my memory until I hear something better.[1]
The un-named Port Arthur official also recalled Foggo as the teacher at the Penal Station, where he conducted a musical ensemble and also taught stringed instruments. The former pupil recalled,
As a teacher of music, he was remarkably successful. He seemed quite at home in playing any instrument. He carried his music in his head, having an astonishing memory and could write page after page of difficult music as rapidly as shorthand writer could take down a speech.
I was a pupil of his and belonged to his string band. The ease and facility with which he would write out our various parts used to astonish me….. I never heard of what became of him….[2]
Lempriere family
While the social life of staff at a penal station is difficult to uncover, they are traceable, but the lives of prisoners are virtually unknown. However, one can lead to uncovering the other. At Port Arthur, Commissariat Officer Lempriere, artist and amateur musician, was given a ‘keyed flute with case’ from (Captain) Kinghorne, and tried to play the key bugle (or trumpet), testing the acoustics of the nearly completed church with his trumpet. His wife played the piano, and Lempriere records in 1836 several musical evenings, (as well as religious occasions) when ‘Dear Charlotte once more tackled the piano and we had a ‘Dear Fanny’ in style.’[3]
Commandant O’Hara Booth
Commandant O’Hara Booth’s (1834-43) owned several instruments, including a guitar, Broadwood pianoforte, accordion and flageolet. In 1837, Booth was apparently learning to play the guitar, an instrument presented to him by Lady Jane Franklin, wife of the Lt Governor. Booth ‘sang several airs in a very superior manner,’ according to Lempriere.[4] Some of the other airs Captain Booth sang – probably with his army officer friends from the adjacent subaltern’s house and barracks – were probably not the ones referred to on the above occasion. Due to their ribald content, even these songs were ‘underground,‘ and have also escaped attention.[5] The apparent reason for the lack of frankness concerning the existence of music and musicians at the penal station, possibly relates to Port Arthur being a prison, where all concerned, inmates and staff, were supposed to be un-frivolous, with no superficial pleasures. The implications of Booth’s lyrics, written in his own handwriting, are far from frivolous.
One composition, probably not original, is an Irish drinking song:
ONE BOTTLE MORE
Assist me ye lads, who have hearts void of guile,
To sing in the praises of Erin’s Isle,
Where true hospitality open the door
And friendship detains us for one bottle more.
[Chorus ?]
One bottle more, one bottle more,
And friendship detains us for one bottle more.
****
Old England you taunt us, on our country forbear,
With our Bulls and our Brogues we are true and sincere
For if but one bottle remain’d in the store
We have generous hearts to give one bottle more.
Another, a bawdy ballad, ‘Stephen With Flora’, also in Booth’s hand, goes in part:
STEPHEN WITH FLORA
Stephen with Flora lying
On the grass one summers day
She was bashful and he was spying
Her fal lal de lal de de…
All her beauties as she lay
****
Thus addressed by her lover
Gay & ardent as the Sun
Flora gently lifted up her
Fal etc.
Downcast eyes & said ‘You’ve won.’
****
Swiftly then as darted steel is
Flew the gay & am’rous swain
And with vigour made her feel his,
Fal etc.
Kisses o’er & o’er again.
However, being sent to Port Arthur wasn’t only for recalcitrant prisoners. While Australia was an escape for family failures in Britain, similarly, VDL was an escape within an escape, with Port Arthur Penal Settlement, the ultimate ‘escape’ destination. Senior officials went to Port Arthur when other avenues for income failed. Lempriere was a failed entrepreneur, and master shipwright David Hoy initially failed when his first ship sank on its maiden voyage. Competent professionals, like Dr Gavin Casey, left after a short time. In other words, Port Arthur could be a temporary ‘escape’ for officials trying to maintain or re-establish themselves.
Hugh Archibald Fraser
A musical/cultural example of the latter Pt Arthur official is Hugh Archibald Fraser, who arrived in Australia as an emigrant in 1828 and was immediately appointed magistrate in NSW. His Australian Dictionary of Biography entry then refers – in the same sentence – to how he ’later became a penal overseer at Port Arthur.’ (He’s probably the only Port Arthur overseer in the ADB?!) What a career change – and why? Hugh Fraser, aged 48, had eloped with 17 year old Mary Anderson, born the year Hugh migrated to the colonies.[6] Like many emigrants since, they was escaping from ‘The Mainland’ to Tasmania, away from local condemnation. Having apparently blown a family fortune of £40,000 in NSW, Hugh Fraser and Mary Anderson (unwed), sailed from Sydney to Port Albert, Gippsland, (later Victoria), then to Tasmania on the Palmyra, arriving on 8 May 1844. (The shipping register lists them as passengers ‘Mr. Fraser’, and ‘Miss Anderson.’) One month later, they were married at St John’s Presbyterian Church, Hobart, by Rev James Bell. Witnesses were Simon Fraser and Margaret Fraser.[7] As Kirsty Reid has pointed out, marriage to a minor without parental consent was illegal under 19th century laws.[8]
At Port Arthur, Hugh Fraser was appointed Overseer of Blacksmiths and then a Bush Gang.[9] Family legend has it, that he was ‘well thought of by convicts to whom he used to give tobacco’. But Hugh Fraser wasn’t just any penal overseer or failed magistrate, but descended from a long line of Scottish bagpipers. At Port Arthur the couple had a child, Simon Fraser, born 1845, who went on to become a celebrated settler, bagpiper, buck-jumper, stockman and stockwhip maker in the Mansfield district in north eastern Victoria. Simon’s bag-piping skills, learnt as a child from his father Hugh – initially I suspect at Port Arthur- were such that his knowledge of the classical traditions of piping resulted in his ‘pibroach’ vocables, secretly handed down from mother to eldest son, were passed on to the young Simon, by his mother Mary Anderson. She was descended from the McCrimmins, celebrated pipers to the clan McLeod. The vocables are known as the ‘canntaireachd.’ Hugh had also learnt the secret language of pipers, which allowed certain notes to be inserted in the melody, and these acted as warning to clan members. These were also documented in 1816 by Hugh Fraser before he emigrated, and were passed on to his son, Simon. The lad’s knowledge of these traditions was such, (claim family members) that later, when an appeal came from Scottish folklorists wanting to collect the formerly traditions, Simon Fraser sent letters and manuscripts back to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to become the basis of a major collection.[10]
Was Hugh Fraser allowed to teach his son the pipes at Port Arthur, or even allowed to take them into the forests to play? Under Champ’s benevolent reign, such freedoms were possible. Later in Victoria, when the Port Arthur-born Simon Fraser and his brother were driving cattle, Simon used to ride at the front of the herd playing the bag-pipes, and his own large family entertained locally. But for urban musicians in stigmatised Tasmania, there was no freedom to blend or easily invent new traditions.
Repairs and instrument-making
No convict musician has yet been found who merged into 19thC and 20th C culture. ‘Frank the Poet’ belatedly became part of Australian traditions, buried under the ‘Hated Stain.’
At Port Arthur, however, officials could not perform their music without the instrument making and repairing skills of prisoners, indicating convict musicians and instrument repairers were on site. Lempriere refers to his trumpet being repaired after dropping it. He also records that Commandant Booth’s guitar was ‘strung by de Custumas’ before his performance. In 1837, the Pt Puer carpenters returns for 1836-7 lists a ‘violoncello made for Divine service’, and valued at £2.[11] Divine service? What about the rest of the week? Other returns from Pt Puer- or Pt Arthur- make no mention of violin makers; who was the lone violin maker at that site? Who was the Booth’s ‘roadie’ or guitar tuner?!
The guitar tuner, “ de Custumas,” appears to be John Perez de Castanos, aged 35, tried in London in December 1836, with Piedro Calligana, aged 28, for stealing gold seals[12]. While de Castanos’ ‘Native Place’ is given as ‘Carthagina/Cartagina’, his country is not identified, but is located in Spain on the Meditteranean coast. Calligana supposedly originates from ‘Carara, Italy.’ However, the men’s named appear to indicate Spanish origins, and, in addition, ‘Cartegena’, is located on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, while a short distance inland, is the town of ’Caravaca’.[13] On arrival in October 1836, de Castanos was, ‘Sent to Port Arthur immediately on landing for being one of the ring leaders in the Mutiny on Board his prison ship Sarah when on passage from England.’ Their trade is given as ‘labourer,’ with no mention of musicianship. However, Calligana was assigned to Reichenburg[14]. at Oatlands, who was later choirmaster and musician of St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Hobart[15].
Perez de Castanos’ initial time at Port Arthur coincides with the guitar tuning mentioned by Lempriere. He later returned to Port Arthur in 1839 for unspecified offences[16], remaining until 1843.
End of Excerpt
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Footnotes from the excerpt
[1] Mercury 20/3/1905 p 5. AOT.
[2]Mercury 20/3/1905 p 5. According to his record, Foggo was never located at Oatlands.
[3]Lempriere, 14/5/1834; 16/4/1838.
[4]Lempriere, 13/9/1837.
[5]Heard, p 80; Glover Civilian Officials of Port Arthur; their Life and Lifestyles, NPWS, 1984, p104.
[6]ADB Vol 8 p 578; file PAMA.
[7]C/F, PAMA; Broxam, Shipping Arrivals and Departures, Tasmania, vol3 1843-1850, p 30.
[8]pers comm, June 2003.
[9]CSO 50/19/1844, p252, & CSO 50/20/1845, p 252.
[10]ADB ibid. Whether these Frasers are related to the Simon Fraser whose collection of fiddle tunes and other melodies published in 1816 became a basis for Scottish traditional music, is at this stage, unclear.
[11]CSO5/178/4230.
[12]Con 31/7 (not 31/11 as listed on the AOT database.) Both men were transported for 14 years; (Southerwood, T The Convict’s Friend, p 283
[13]Reader’s Digest World Atlas, p126.
[14] Clarinettist Reichenburg was active in 1837 at the opening of St John’s Catholic Church, Richmond.( MacFie, PH Silent Impact: The Irish Inheritance at Richmond, Tasmania, P&P Irish-Australian Studies 1995, p491)
[15] )By 1841, Calligana was at Government House.
[16] In 1839, de Castanos was at Campbell Town briefly, but back at PA by 1839, and still there in 1843 as a constable-that is, a rank allowing him to be allocated as wished by the Commandant. His pardon was gazetted on 14/1/1845