AN ISLAND CEILIDH Part 7: THE POST-SHOW DRINK
The Pendergast family connection to folk music goes all the way back to my Great- Grandfather James “Big Jim” Pendergast. He and his wife Gertrude published two collections of Island folklore. My Grandfather Reginald Pendergast continued the tradition with his own folklore collections, and my father is a full-time folk musician.
“Big Jim” Pendergast was a longtime friend of Dr. Sandy Ives, a prominent American folklorist who collected the folk songs of Larry Gorman and Lawrence Doyle, two of PEI’s most prolific song-makers. When Sandy Ives knocked on Jim’s door for the first time in Charlottetown, PEI, he was greeted by a beast of a man with a wooden cane in hand. Jim had offered to help Sandy on his hunt for Larry Gorman’s songs. He described the encounter in his book, Drive Dull Care Away. “Why, you’re but a lad,” said Jim. Gertrude came over to say hello, and Sandy was sent to the room he’d be staying in. “Go up and get on your best bib and tucker, we’re going to visit some of the split-tailed aristocracy of this town!”
As for me, I was born into the ceilidhs. Literally. When my mother went into labour Dad was in the middle of a show and had to leave. Now at twenty years old, I spend my summers performing at ceilidhs and concert halls around the Island.
In their book Folklore, Big Jim and Gertrude pose a question: “Is there a danger that the folklore of the Maritimes will soon become extinct?”
I think about this often. I was recently performing at the Cloak & Dagger Irish Pub in Toronto, and I sang a folk song by Island singer-songwriter Margie Carmichael called “The Red Dirt Road.” Glancing up at the pitifully small crowd, I noticed a couple in a booth singing along to the words. Had I put back one too many Guinness? The song is barely known on the Island, let alone in Toronto.
The couple had noticed that I was pleasantly surprised and we chatted on my break. As it turned out, they had visited the Island one summer and bought one of my father’s CDs with the song on it.
