Secret Ten: Fiddle Me This!

Continuing my meme of the Secret Ten, I realize there's still one more player to be revealed: The Mysterious Number Six. And today -- today is the day the veil of secrecy will be lifted, and oh so many of you will scratch your heads and say..."Who?"

We begin with Ami's question:

1, 6 and 10 get thrown into 5s continuity to help 5 in every way they can, do they prove to be useful?

Well, 5, as you might remember, is the fiddle savant Johnny from Charlie Daniels' song, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." Which is awesome: He certainly has a problem to solve: He needs to beat the devil in a fiddle-off.* (Good thing Spider-Man didn't show up. He'd cave so fast you could call him Altamira.)


Now if only Daffy Duck, Spider Jerusalem, and the Mysterious Number Six can solve it.

Daffy gives it a valiant effort, backing up Johnny with some cowboy gee-tar. Unfortunately, things don't go so well, sound wise, when the Devil (okay, Chuck Jones) plays a dirty trick on him and turns the volume down. Face it, kids -- that duck can't catch a break.

Spider, meanwhile, looks the Devil and Johnny over, and decides Johnny must be hiding something behind his good-ole-boy facade. Soon he's tapping away at his keyboard, digging into Johnny's past -- particularly his relationship with a girl named Frankie. Fact is, he was her man, and he done her wrong. Given the choice between the Beast and the Smiler, Spider once again backs the Beast, pounding away on his keyboard for the devil.

Which leaves Johnny in bad shape, with only the Mysterious Number Six to turn the tide for him. Luckily, that's truly his ace in the hole. Number six is Fflewddur Flam, from Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain books. (I talked about my love for them in this post last May.) Flam is a bard beyond compare, whose harp strings had the unfortunate habit of breaking whenever he stretched the truth (except for one enchanted string that would never break, no matter the circumstances). And while Daniel Webster might not want him on his side his battle with the devil, he's just the guy for Johnny. Fflewddur's harp brings a heavenly counterpoint to Johnny's down-home fiddle, and the two of them send the devil packing doubly fast.


There are a few images of Fflewddur from Disney's The Black Cauldron, a not-very-good adaptation of the second book in the series. So I'm snubbing them in favor of Patrick Ball, a harpist who performed a one-man show, O'Carolan's Farewell to Music, years ago in Wilmington. And if you go the the reviews on his blog, and scroll down to the one credited to "Arcade Suburban Publications?" That's from my review.

Rob

*And if this sentence is any indicator, he also has a spastic colon.