AN ISLAND CEILIDH PART 1: ON THEIR CEILIDH

“In the summertime the ceilidhs out from hibernation come, With guitars, flutes, and fiddles and the old accordion, The people come from all around to hear, and laugh and see, Us funny- looking fellers playing tunes and drinking tea”

-Shane Pendergast (Tea and Tunes)

ON THEIR CEILIDH

It’s ceilidh (kay-lee) night on Prince Edward Island. I catch a ride with my great-uncle Tom and his wife Fran. The seatbelt warning noise is beeping- Tom hasn’t buckled up. He’s a burly man; wears a polo shirt and khakis with his snow-white hair combed back. We come to the roundabout by the Stanley Bridge Hall. There’s a sign outside: THURSDAYS- MIKE AND TOM’S CEILIDH. It’s an old yellow two-story building; seats about a hundred fifty. A small line-up is forming outside the doors. I hope the mosquitoes aren’t too bad this evening. As we pull in, Tom stops beside the gathering and rolls down his window. “Is there something going on here tonight?” he asks.

“There’s a ceilidh at 7:30,” a woman responds.
“Are the entertainers any good?” barks Tom.
“Not sure, we haven’t heard them before.”

Somebody is onto Tom’s antics. They’ve heard him before- after all, he started the ceilidhs back in 1996. He and Fran had heard about a ceilidh in Spring Valley. They arrived at the little hall- there were about ten people there. The performers began to belt out the old country favourites. Each one proved sadder than the one before. My father Michael Pendergast remembers hearing about the experience. “One guy got up and he sang. There wasn’t anything he didn’t sing about, his dog had died and everything. It was a song he had written and he was crying on the stage. He’d sing a verse and then he’d cry and wipe his eyes. Then he’d sing some more.” Tom was horrified. This was not the kind of ceilidh he knew about. Tom came across the water from Ireland when he was twenty-one. A real ceilidh, in the old sense of the word, was a simple gathering with music, stories, and a wee drink (or three). People didn’t go to a ceilidh; they went “on their ceilidh.”

Back in Spring Valley, it was time for a break and a bite to eat. Someone opened up the front of the stage and pulled a couple of tables out. The lunch was already on them; throughout the entire first half all the sandwiches and sweets had been right underneath the stage all covered in paper towel (and dust). “Imagine them up there stampin’,” laughs my father.

Surely Tom could do better than this. He began his own ceilidh at Malpeque Hall, a tiny spot where the Women’s Institute gathered. Tom would have special guests join in on the fun; his nephew (my father) joined in ’97. As Dad recalls: “No air conditioning, no sound system. Just sat there and sang.” Soon, the Malpeque ceilidhs took off, and they added another weekly show at Stanley Bridge.