When The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

     It's been a fairly quiet week here at Bloody Nib Manor. Despite the arrival of Autumn the other day the weather is still Summer-like, and, as usual for the shire in which the Manor is located, will stay so until the middle of October. The locals, as usual, make themselves and everyone else miserable by their night-time antics of running hither and thither while yelling, screaming, getting drunk, and fighting. Some cultures deal well with hot weather. Others don't. Among those who cannot handle hot days are the denizens of the shire. It will be only a few weeks before they start setting hayricks afire because, well, because that's what they do.
     But, of course, this, as usual for the first paragraph of any entry written by yours truly, has nothing to do with the matter about which he wishes to write and, hopefully, have the reader to think upon and consider.
     So let us get down to brass tacks starting with a bit of history to give some background to the matter.
     In 1843 there was a man in England named Robert Clarke. Mr. Clarke at the time was a farm labourer. He was also inventive. At the time there was a musical instrument referred to as a musical whistle. Said instrument was made of wood, was of a long cylindrical shape with a fipple and six holes along the length of the barrel. It was used to play what is now called "folk" music among the poor and working class. But they were, while not expensive, not cheap. And the quality of the whistles varied from whistle to whistle depending on the skill of the maker. Mr. Clarke, being a man who was on the look out for a way to improve his lot in life, realized that the fairly new material of tin-plated steel might make a good and inexpensive substitute for the wooden whistle that would have a more consistent quality of sound and tuning than the hand made wooden whistle. Working with a blacksmith Mr. Clarke developed the tooling for what was to be later called the "tin whistle" or the "penny whistle."
     As soon as Mr. Clarke got his tooling and methods to his satisfaction he and his son pushed a cart with tin whistles and the tooling to Manchester, England. On the way to Manchester they sold tin whistles and made tin whistles, and once they reached their destination they set up a small factory. Mr. Clarke called his first tin whistle from the Manchester factory The Meg. "Meg" was a slang word for a half-penny. A Clarke tin whistle was sold at the cost of a Meg or a half-penny. Below is an image of the descendant of the Meg being played by a sweeper boy.

     The whistles were so cheap that they could be bought by the poor for entertainment or to make money. They were cheaper than the wooden musical whistles and more consistent in sound and tuning. One famous whistler during the early days of the Clarke company was a man called Whistling Billy. Billy made basic living playing the Clarke tin whistle on street corners during the winter and spring and entertaining farm laborers during the Summer and Fall. It is said that his repertoire consisted of about 50 tunes. He was probably the first, and perhaps only, tin whistle super star.
     For some reason or another, the Irish living in England took to the Clarke tin whistle. They took the whistles back to Ireland with them and there developed a musical tradition based on the tin whistle, and for near 100 years the Clarke tin whistle was the tin whistle used for Irish music. For better or worse the English forgot their own traditional music and the tin whistle came to be a thing shoved into a restless child's mouth with the order, "Go out and play." To the English the tin whistle had become a toy for children. They preferred to take on the trappings of American popular music or have their traditional music taken over by art composers such as Percy Granger and turned into something "noble" instead of on the ground. Any tin whistle music in the English media meant rural and unsophisticated much like a Jew's harp means "hillbilly" in the U.S.
       The Irish, being Irish, decided that a Clarke tin whistle was a bit of an English toy. It was made, and had been made for many years, over one hundred, the same way that cheap 1950s tin plate toys were made. They were cheap and they wore out (usually the wooden fipple plug, after about eight months would fall out of the tin plate body because of the glue used to hold the fipple in the body just wore out). Never mind that a Clarke tin whistle could be purchased for less money than a couple of saxophone reeds. So the Irish decided that they would make a "better" tin whistle; a tine whistle that was more suited to Irish music. The result was an instrument made from a brass or tin plate tube with a plastic fipple and straight bore that was more shrill than the Clarke tin whistle. And it was an instrument that was more expensive than the Clarke tin whistle. Below is a photo of a Feodog tine whistle made of brass and made in Ireland.

     And by the time the 1960s came along the Irish form of tin whistle was considered THE tin whistle because, well, the Irish. They seem to own the instrument these days despite the fact that in timbre the Irish form of the tin whistle is not suited for all music. And the modern Irish tin whistle costs more than the original Clarke. In fact, nowadays, many times more than the Clarke whistle. A lot of tin whistle players (mostly those playing Irish music) like the Irish form of the instrument and consider the original Clarke form as obsolete and crude despite the fact that a Clarke, by an fuss budget, can be customized and tuned in ways that Generation, Oak or Feodog whistle cannot.. And since the 1990s there have been attempts by various manufacture more and more "perfect" tin whistles. In fact, it seems that some tin whistle makers are attempting to make tine whistles that are of the same quality and tone as expensive recorders made of pear wood. But the fact of the matter is that a tin whistle, whether it is made of tin plate, brass, or even wood, is not a recorder. It is a "folk" or "traditional English/Irish" instrument. It is an instrument that was originally made for the farming and working class with a bit of bleeding over into the middle and upper classes. The Clarke was, and is, a good product. It is not perfect. But it is good, which means that the search for the perfect form of tin whistle is an exercise for the fussy and, well, really unbearable sort. To try to make a more perfect of the Clarke form of penny whistle is akin to trying to come up with a better can opener from the old cheap thing that we here at the Manor started using back in the 1950s. There's always a new and more "perfect" can opener, but despite this new wonder can opener there is always that cheap and old can opener that one goes to when one really wants to open a can and not show how modern or proper or with it one is.
     The Clarke penny whistle/tin whistle is a good thing and has been good for years. It's not perfect. Nothing, even this writer, is perfect. But since the Clarke penny whistle was first manufactured during a time when there was a tradition of English "folk" music and Irish "traditional" music not infected by eggheads, it reflects, by it's manufacture and sound something that was and is and will be for a fairly cheap price compared to the modern Irish penny whistle. It is the sound of the original product. It's imperfect, And thus reflects us.
     And here's a short video about the Clarke penny whistle:
The Clarke Tinwhistle Story DVD Trailer - YouTube