The Fortunes Of Glencore. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ like a British Grenadier,” cried Billy, with enthusiasm.

      “Carbineer, if the same to you, master,” said the other, quietly; “I never served in the infantry.”

      “Tros Tyriusve mihi,” cried Billy; “which is as much as to say, —

      “‘To storm the skies, or lay siege to the moon,

      Give me one of the line, or a heavy dragoon,’

      it’s the same to me, as the poet says.”

      And a low murmur of the company seemed to accord approval to the sentiment.

      “I wish you ‘d give us a tune, Billy,” said one, coaxingly.

      “Or a song would be better,” observed another.

      “Faix,” cried a third, “‘tis himself could do it, and in Frinch or Latin if ye wanted it.”

      “The Germans was the best I ever knew for music,” broke in Craggs. “I was brigaded with Arentschild’s Hanoverians in Spain; and they used to sit outside the tents every evening, and sing. By Jove! how they did sing – all together, like the swell of a church organ.”

      “Yes, you’re right,” said Billy, but evidently yielding an unwilling assent to this doctrine. “The Germans has a fine national music, and they ‘re great for harmony. But harmony and melody is two different things.”

      “And which is best, Billy?” asked one of the company.

      “Musha, but I pity your ignorance,” said Billy, with a degree of confusion that raised a hearty laugh at his expense.

      “Well, but where’s the song?” exclaimed another.

      “Ay,” said Craggs, “we are forgetting the song. Now for it, Billy. Since all is going on so well above stairs, I’ll draw you a gallon of ale, boys, and we ‘ll drink to the master’s speedy recovery.”

      It was a rare occasion when the Corporal suffered himself to expand in this fashion, and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence.

      Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle and began that process of preparatory screwing and scraping which, no matter how distressing to the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move rapidly; and at moments he was seen to beat time with his foot, as though measuring out the rhythm of a verse.

      “I have it now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, making a low obeisance to the company; and so saying, he struck up a very popular tune, the same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of “The night before Larry was Stretched;” and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness, managed with considerable taste, sang —

      “‘A fig for the chansons of France,

      Whose meaning is always a riddle;

      The music to sing or to dance

      Is an Irish tune played on the fiddle.

      To your songs of the Rhine and the Rhone

      I ‘m ready to cry out  I am satis;

      Just give us something of our own

      In praise of our Land of Potatoes.

      Tol lol de lol, etc.

      “‘What care I for sorrows of those

      Who speak of their heart as a cuore;

      How expect me to feel for the woes

      Of him who calls love an amore!

      Let me have a few words about home,

      With music whose strains I ‘d remember,

      And I ‘ll give you all Florence and Rome,

      Tho’ they have a blue sky in December.

      Tol lol de lol, etc.

      “‘With a pretty face close to your own,

      I ‘m sore there’s no rayson for sighing;

      Nor when walkin’ beside her alone,

      Why the blazes be talking of dying!

      That’s the way tho’, in France and in Spain,

      Where love is not real, but acted,

      You must always portend you ‘re insane,

      Or at laste that you ‘re partly distracted.

      Tol lol de lol, etc.’”

      It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy’s impromptu as did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The irritabile genus has its soft side, and can enjoy to the uttermost its own successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure.

      “You’re right, there, Jim Morris,” said he, turning suddenly round towards one of the company; “you never said a truer thing than that. The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go – in all weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and the mountain streams all flowin’ over – I can just go into my own mind, just the way you’d go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I don’t need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don’t want ships, nor coaches, nor horses, to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow kingdoms. When I haven’t tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin’ wid princesses, and handin’ empresses in to tay.”

      “Musha, musha!” muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to discuss his own miraculous gifts.

      “And,” resumed Billy, “it isn’t only what ye are to yourself and your own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond between you, wouldn’t think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware – cheap penknives and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the like – and I wandered about for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in Ireland – more wood, forest timber, and better-off people, but nothing beyond that!

      “Well, one evening – it was in August – I came down by a narrow path to the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot, and well chosen, for you could count as many as five promontories running out into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water’s edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin’ to change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive, and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in the lake below under the СКАЧАТЬ