Shetland-Music.com

John Stickle, also a descendant of the first Fredaman, was one of the foremost of many good fiddlers in Unst in his day.

He learnt and retained the tunes of his Stickle kinsman Freedie the fiddler from his young days, and his career as a cooper coincided with the boom years in the Shetland herring fishery in the decade before World War 1, when Baltasound was the biggest herring port in Europe. During the summer season Unst's population swelled to 10,000, most of them Scots fishermen and shore workers; given this degree of contact in work and socially, it's not surprising that John acquired a huge repertoire of tunes and songs.

Although he was in his old age when musicologists began to investigate Shetland's musical heritage from the late 1940s onwards, his memory was clear and his playing abilities still apparent. Pat Shaw noted and recorded him first, followed by fieldworkers from the School of Scottish Studies; more than fifty years after his death, musicians today are still unearthing and appreciating gems from the wealth of archive material he was able to pass on for the benefit of posterity.