Tune of the month: Da Full Rigged Ship

If Shetland fiddling has a flagship, this is it — literally. Da Full Rigged Ship is the best known of the old listening tunes, and it does what the title promises: played right, it heaves. It's usually paired with Da New Rigged Ship, its brisker cousin, but the old tune is the deeper water.

The tune. It's commonly played in AEAE tuning — both bottom strings up a tone — which sets the whole fiddle ringing in sympathy with itself. If you've never retuned before, don't fear it: go up slowly, and expect the instrument to take a minute to settle. In AEAE the drones do half the work for you; the melody sits on top of a hum like a hull on a swell.

The bowing is the whole game. The tune moves in long, rolling strokes rather than the tight saw of a reel — think of the bow arm as the sea and the fingers as the rigging. Keep the bow on the string; the old players barely lifted it. The characteristic figure is a strong down-bow across two strings letting the open string ring under the melody note. If it sounds a little rough, you're probably doing it right — polish is not the point.

Where to hear it: Tom Anderson and Aly Bain both recorded definitive versions, and Anderson's Ringing Strings collection has the notation with the tuning marked. But this is a tune the dots can only gesture at — come along on a Tuesday and we'll take it slowly, drones and all, until the ship sails.