Send three and fourpence

I went to my local knitting group yesterday, and we spent some of the time discussing allotments. Now that our local plant nursery has closed we swapped recommendations for others, further afield. I noted one down in my knitting notebook: Philpotts.

This afternoon I got round to googling Philpotts, and found lots of links to the story of a man who murdered his children. I tried again, adding "plant nursery" to give Google more of a hint, and finally found (or, perhaps, phinally phound) Fillpots garden centre.

This mild form of Chinese whispers made me think of Skippinish. I've pinched one of their sets: they play Flett with Bee. Or, as they call it, Bea. As the CD is in the car I can't check the rest of the title. Mr MacInnes calls it The sands of Loch Bee. My dots, origin forgotten, give it as The shores of Loch Bee. I suppose the the sands of the loch will lie on its shore, but how does Bee become Bea? Loch Bee is a loch on South Uist. There is no such place as Loch Bea.

I suppose the person in charge of the sleeve note text may have typed the title out wrongly, or only been told the title and guessed at the spelling. Perhaps Skippinish themselves had only ever heard the tune title, maybe at a session somewhere. "Great tune! What do you call that?" is a common enough question at sessions, but I've never heard anyone ask for a spelling. It's one of the frustrations and joys of passing information orally, this mishearing, misremembering. It can amuse. It can mislead. Throw in all the tunes that have alternative names, some closer than others, and you wonder whether tune titles are much use at all. Much better to hum it and let everyone play it.

I suppose some tunes end up with useful shorthand names. One of the oddest renamings for me is Kilbowie Cottage. My dots come from David Glen's Edinburgh Collection, via the ever wonderful Ceol Sean. At the bottom of the tune is a footnote that says "the residence of John MacColl, The Champion Piper". Presumably it is this that leads Braebach to call the tune by the much longer name of John MacColl's March to Kilbowie Cottage. 

On a more practical note, Flett and Bee are getting on well, despite coming from opposing sides of Scotland, I think I need a last half inch off the tubing for maximum comfort, and I think that the buzz is partly to do with temperature.