THE IRISH FIDDLER.
BY W. CARLETON.
What a host of light-hearted associations are revived by that living fountain of fun and frolic, an Irish fiddler! Every thing connected with him is agreeable, pleasant, jolly. All his anecdotes, songs, jokes, stories, and secrets, bring us back from the pressure and cares of life, to those happy days and nights when the heart was as light as the heel, and both beat time to the exhilarating sound of his fiddle.
The old harper was a character looked upon by the Irish rather as a musical curiosity, than a being specially created to contribute to their enjoyment. There was something about him which they did not feel to be in perfect sympathy with their habits and amusements. He was above them, not of them; and although they respected him, and treated him kindly, yet was he never received among them with that spontaneous ebullition of warmth and cordiality with which they welcomed their own musician, the fiddler. The harper, in fact, belonged to the gentry, and to the gentry they were willing to leave him. They listened to his music when he felt disposed to play for them, but it only gratified their curiosity, instead of enlivening their hearts—a fact sufficiently evident from the circumstance of their seldom attempting to dance to it. This preference, however, of the fiddle to the harp, is a feeling generated by change of times and circumstances, for it is well known that in days gone by, when Irish habits were purer, older, and more hereditary than they are now, the harp was the favourite instrument of young and old, of high and low.
The only instrument that can be said to rival the fiddle, is the bagpipe; but every person knows that Ireland is a loving country, and that at our fairs, dances, weddings, and other places of amusement, Paddy and his sweetheart are in the habit of indulging in a certain quiet and affectionate kind of whisper, the creamy tones of which are sadly curdled by the sharp jar of the chanter. It is not, in fact, an instrument adapted for love-making. The drone is an enemy to sentiment, and it is an unpleasant thing for a pretty blushing girl to find herself put to the necessity of bawling out her consent at the top of her lungs, which she must do, or have the ecstatic words lost in its drowsy and monotonous murmur. The bagpipe might do for war, to which, with a slight variation, it has been applied; but in our opinion it is only fit to be danced to by an assembly of people who are hard of hearing. Indeed, we have little doubt but its cultivation might be introduced with good effect as a system of medical treatment, suitable to the pupils of a deaf and dumb institution; for if any thing could bring them to the use of their ears, its sharp and stiletto notes surely would effect that object.
The fiddle, however, is the instrument of all others most essential to the enjoyment of an Irishman. Dancing and love are very closely connected, and of course the fiddle is never thought of or heard, without awakening the tenderest and most agreeable emotions. Its music, soft, sweet, and cheerful, is just the thing for Paddy, who under its influence partakes of its spirit, and becomes soft, sweet, and cheerful himself. The very tones of it act like a charm upon him, and produce in his head such a bland and delightful intoxication, that he finds himself making love just as naturally as he would eat his meals. It opens all the sluices of his heart, puts mercury in his veins, gives honey to a tongue that was, Heaven knows, sufficiently sweet without it, and gifts him with a pair of feather heels that Mercury might envy; and to crown all, endows him, while pleading his cause in a quiet corner, with a fertility of invention, and an easy unembarrassed assurance, which nothing can surpass. In fact, with great respect for my friend Mr Bunting, the fiddle it is that ought to be our national instrument, as it is that which is most closely and agreeably associated with the best and happiest impulses of the Irish heart. The very language of the people themselves is a proof of this; for whilst neither harp nor bagpipe is ever introduced as illustrating peculiarities of feeling by any reference to their influence, the fiddle is an agreeable instrument in their hands, in more senses than one. Paddy’s highest notion of flattery towards the other sex is boldly expressed by an image drawn from it, for when he boasts that he can, by honied words, impress such an agreeable delusion upon his sweetheart as to make her imagine “that there is a fiddler on every rib of the house,” there can be no metaphor conceived more strongly or beautifully expressive of the charm which flows from the tones of that sweet instrument. Paddy, however, is very often hit by his own metaphor, at a time when he least expects it. When pleading his cause, for instance, and promising golden days to his fair one, he is not unfrequently met by, “Ay, ay, it’s all very well now; you’re sugary enough, of coorse; but wait till we’d be a year married, an’ maybe, like so many others that promised what you do, you’d never come home to me widout ‘hangin’ up your fiddle behind the door;’” by which she means to charge him with the probability of being agreeable when abroad, but morose in his own family.
Having thus shown that the fiddle and its music are mixed up so strongly with our language, feelings, and amusements, it is now time to say something of the fiddler. In Ireland it is impossible, on looking through all the classes of society, to find any individual so perfectly free from care, or, in stronger words, so completely happy, as the fiddler, especially if he be blind, which he generally is. His want of sight circumscribes his other wants, and, whilst it diminishes his enjoyments, not only renders him unconscious of their loss, but gives a greater zest to those that are left him, simple and innocent as they are. He is in truth a man whose lot in life is happily cast, and whose lines have fallen in pleasant places. The phase of life which is presented to him, and in which he moves, is one of innocent mirth and harmless enjoyment. Marriages, weddings, dances, and merry-makings of all descriptions, create the atmosphere of mirth and happiness which he ever breathes. With the dark designs, the crimes, and outrages of mankind, he has nothing to do, and his light spirit is never depressed by their influence. Indeed, he may be said with truth to pass through none but the festivals of life, to hear nothing but mirth, to feel nothing but kindness, and to communicate nothing but happiness to all around him. He is at once the source and the centre of all good and friendly feelings. By him the aged man forgets his years, and is agreeably cheated back into youth; the labourer snatches a pleasant moment from his toil, and is happy; the care-worn ceases to remember the anxieties that press him down; the boy is enraptured with delight, and the child is charmed with a pleasure that he feels to be wonderful.
Surely such a man is important, as filling up with enjoyment so many of the painful pauses in human misery. He is a thousand times better than a politician, and is a true philosopher without knowing it. Every man is his friend, unless it be a rival fiddler, and he is the friend of every man, with the same exception. Every house, too, every heart, and every hand, is open to him; he never knows what it is to want a bed, a dinner, or a shilling. Good heavens! what more than this can the cravings of a human heart desire! For my part, I do not know what others might aim at; but I am of opinion that in such a world as this, the highest proof of a wise man would be, a wish to live and die an Irish fiddler.
And yet, alas! there is no condition of life without some remote or contingent sorrow. Many a scene have I witnessed connected with this very subject, that would wring the tears out of any eye, and find a tender pulse in the hardest heart. It is indeed a melancholy alternative that devotes the poor sightless lad to an employment that is ultimately productive of so much happiness to himself and others. This alternative is seldom resorted to, unless when some poor child—perhaps a favourite—is deprived of sight by the terrible ravages of the small-pox. In life there is scarcely any thing more touching than to witness in the innocent invalid the first effects, both upon himself and his parents, of this woeful privation. The utter helplessness of the pitiable darkling, and his total dependence upon those around him—his unacquaintance with the relative situation of all the places that were familiar to him—his tottering and timid step, and his affecting call of “Mammy, where are you?” joined to the bitter consciousness on her part that the light of affection and innocence will never sparkle in those beloved eyes again—all this constitutes a scene of deep and bitter sorrow. When, however, the sense of his bereavement passes away, and the cherished child grows up to the proper age, a fiddle is procured for him by his parents, if they are able, and if not, a subscription is made up among their friends and neighbours to buy him one. All the family, with tears in their eyes, then kiss and take leave of him; and his mother, taking him by the hand, leads him, as had been previously arranged, to the best fiddler in the neighbourhood, with whom he is left as an apprentice. There is generally no fee required, but he is engaged to hand his master all the money he can make at dances, from the time he is proficient enough to play at them. Such is the simple process of putting a blind boy in the way of becoming acquainted with the science of melody.
In my native parish there were four or five fiddlers—all good in their way; but the Paganini of the district was the far-famed Mickey M’Rorey. Where Mickey properly lived, I never could actually discover, and for the best reason in the world—he was not at home once in twelve months. As Colley Cibber says in the play, he was “a kind of a here-and-thereian—a stranger nowhere.” This, however, mattered little; for though perpetually shifting day after day from place to place, yet it somehow happened that nobody ever was at a loss where to find him. The truth is, he never felt disposed to travel incog., because he knew that his interest must suffer by doing so; the consequence was, that wherever he went, a little nucleus of local fame always attended him, which rendered it an easy matter to find his whereabouts.
Mickey was blind from his infancy, and, as usual, owed to the small-pox the loss of his eyesight. He was about the middle size, of rather a slender make, and possessed an intelligent countenance, on which beamed that singular expression of inward serenity so peculiar to the blind. His temper was sweet and even, but capable of rising through the buoyancy of his own humour to a high pitch of exhilaration and enjoyment. The dress he wore, as far as I can remember, was always the same in colour and fabric—to wit, a brown coat, a sober-tinted cotton waistcoat, grey stockings, and black corduroys. Poor Mickey! I think I see him before me, his head erect, as the heads of all blind men are, the fiddle-case under his left arm, and his hazel staff held out like a feeler, exploring with experimental pokes the nature of the ground before him, even although some happy urchin leads him onward with an exulting eye; an honour of which he will boast to his companions for many a mortal month to come.
The first time I ever heard Mickey play was also the first I ever heard a fiddle. Well and distinctly do I remember the occasion. The season was summer—but summer was summer then—and a new house belonging to Frank Thomas had been finished, and was just ready to receive him and his family. The floors of Irish houses in the country generally consist at first of wet clay; and when this is sufficiently well smoothed and hardened, a dance is known to be an excellent thing to bind and prevent them from cracking. On this occasion the evening had been appointed, and the day was nearly half advanced but no appearance of the fiddler. The state of excitement in which I found myself could not be described. The name of Mickey M’Rorey had been ringing in my ears for God knows how long, but I had never seen him, or even heard his fiddle. Every two minutes I was on the top of a little eminence looking out for him, my eyes straining out of their sockets, and my head dizzy with the prophetic expectation of rapture and delight. Human patience, however, could bear this painful suspense no longer, and I privately resolved to find Mickey, or perish. I accordingly proceeded across the hills, a distance of about three miles, to a place called Kilnahushogue, where I found him waiting for a guide. At this time I could not have been more than seven years of age; and how I wrought out my way over the lonely hills, or through what mysterious instinct I was led to him, and that by a path too over which I had never travelled before, must be left unrevealed, until it shall please that Power which guides the bee to its home, and the bird for thousands of miles through the air, to disclose the principle upon which it is accomplished.
On our return home I could see the young persons of both sexes flying out to the little eminence I spoke of, looking eagerly towards the point we travelled from, and immediately scampering in again, clapping their hands, and shouting with delight. Instantly the whole village was out, young and old, standing for a moment to satisfy themselves that the intelligence was correct; after which, about a dozen of the youngsters sprang forward, with the speed of so many antelopes, to meet us, whilst the elders returned with a soberer but not less satisfied manner into the houses. Then commenced the usual battle, as to who should be honoured by permission to carry the fiddle-case. Oh! that fiddle-case! For seven long years it was an honour exclusively allowed to myself, whenever Mickey attended a dance any where at all near us; and never was the Lord Chancellor’s mace—to which, by the way, with great respect for his lordship, it bore a considerable resemblance—carried with a prouder heart or a more exulting eye. But so it is—
“These little things are great to little men.”
“Blood alive. Mickey, you’re welcome!” “How is every bone of you, Mickey? Bedad we gev you up.” “No, we didn’t give you up, Mickey; never heed him; sure we knew very well you’d not desart the Towny boys—whoo!—Fol de rol lol.” “Ah, Mickey, won’t you sing ‘There was a wee devil come over the wall?’” “To be sure he will, but wait till he comes home and gets his dinner first. Is’t off an empty stomach you’d have him to sing?” “Mickey, give me the fiddle-case, won’t you, Mickey?” “No, to me, Mickey.” “Never heed them, Mickey: you promised it to me at the dance in Carntaul.”
“Aisy, boys, aisy. The truth is, none of yez can get the fiddle-case. Shibby, my fiddle, hasn’t been well for the last day or two, and can’t bear to be carried by any one barrin’ myself.”
“Blood alive! sick is it, Mickey?—an’ what ails her?”
“Why, some o’ the doctors says there’s a frog in her, an’ others that she has the cholic; but I’m goin’ to give her a dose of balgriffauns when I get up to the house above. Ould Harry Connolly says she’s with fiddle; an’ if that’s true, boys, maybe some o’ yez won’t be in luck. I’ll be able to spare a young fiddle or two among yez.”
Many a tiny hand was clapped, and many an eye was lit up with the hope of getting a young fiddle; for gospel itself was never looked upon to be more true than this assertion of Mickey’s. And no wonder. The fact is, he used to amuse himself by making small fiddles of deal and horse-hair, which he carried about with him as presents for such youngsters as he took a fancy to. This he made a serious business of, and carried it on with an importance becoming the intimation just given. Indeed, I remember the time when I watched one of them, which I was so happy as to receive from him, day and night, with the hope of being able to report that it was growing larger; for my firm belief was, that in due time it would reach the usual size.
As we went along, Mickey, with his usual tact, got out of us all the information respecting the several courtships of the neighbourhood that had reached us, and as much, too, of the village gossip and scandal as we knew.
Nothing can exceed the overflowing kindness and affection with which the Irish fiddler is received on the occasion of a dance or merry-making; and to do him justice he loses no opportunity of exaggerating his own importance. From habit, and his position among the people, his wit and power of repartee are necessarily cultivated and sharpened. Not one of his jokes ever fails—a circumstance which improves his humour mightily; for nothing on earth sustains it so much as knowing, that, whether good or bad, it will be laughed at. Mickey, by the way, was a bachelor, and, though blind, was able, as he himself used to say, to see through his ears better than another could through the eyes. He knew every voice at once, and every boy and girl in the parish by name, the moment he heard them speak.
On reaching the house he is bound for, he either partakes of, or at least is offered, refreshment, after which comes the ecstatic moment to the youngsters: but all this is done by due and solemn preparation. First he calls for a pair of scissors, with which he pares or seems to pare his nails; then asks for a piece of rosin, and in an instant half a dozen boys are off at a break-neck pace, to the next shoemaker’s, to procure it; whilst in the meantime he deliberately pulls a piece out of his pocket and rosins his bow. But, heavens! what a ceremony the opening of that fiddle-case is! The manipulation of the blind man as he runs his hand down to the key-hole—the turning of the key—the taking out of the fiddle—the twang twang—and then the first ecstatic sound, as the bow is drawn across the strings; then comes a screwing; then a delicious saw or two; again another screwing—twang twang—and away he goes with the favourite tune of the good woman, for such is the etiquette upon these occasions. The house is immediately thronged with the neighbours, and a preliminary dance is taken, in which the old folks, with good-humoured violence, are literally dragged out, and forced to join. Then come the congratulations—“Ah, Jack, you could do it wanst,” says Mickey, “an’ can still; you have a kick in you yet.” “Why, Mickey, I seen dancin’ in my time,” the old man will reply, his brow relaxed by a remnant of his former pride, and the hilarity of the moment, “but you see the breath isn’t what it used to be wid me, when I could dance the Baltehorum Jig on the bottom of a ten-gallon cask. But I think a glass o’ whisky will do us no harm afther that. Heighho!—well, well—I’m sure I thought my dancin’ days wor over.”
“Bedad an’ you wor matched any how,” rejoined the fiddler. “Molshy carried as light a heel as ever you did; sorra a woman of her years ever I seen could cut the buckle wid her. You would know the tune on her feet still.”
“Ah, Mickey, the thruth is,” the good woman would say, “we have no sich dancin’ now as there was in my days. Thry that glass.”
“But as good fiddlers, Molshy, eh? Here’s to you both, and long may ye live to shake the toe! Whoo! bedad that’s great stuff. Come now, sit down. Jack, till I give you your ould favourite, ‘Cannie Soogah.’”
These were happy moments and happy times, which might well be looked upon as picturing the simple manners of country life with very little of moral shadow to obscure the cheerfulness which lit up the Irish heart and hearth into humble happiness. Mickey, with his usual good nature, never forgot the younger portion of his audience. After entertaining the old and full-grown, he would call for a key, one end of which he placed in his mouth, in order to make the fiddle sing for the children their favourite song, beginning with
“Oh! grand-mamma, will you squeeze my wig?”
This he did in such a manner, through the medium of the key, that the words seemed to be spoken by the instrument, and not by himself. After this was over, he would sing us, to his own accompaniment, another favourite, “There was a wee devil looked over the wall,” which generally closed that portion of the entertainment so kindly designed for us.
Upon those moments I have often witnessed marks of deep and pious feeling, occasioned by some memory of the absent or the dead, that were as beautiful as they were affecting. If, for instance, a favourite son or daughter happened to be removed by death, the father or mother, remembering the air which was loved best by the departed, would pause a moment, and with a voice full of sorrow, say, “Mickey, there is one tune that I would like to hear; I love to think of it, and to hear it; I do, for the sake of them that’s gone—my darlin’ son that’s lyin’ low: it was he that loved it. His ear is closed against it now; but for his sake—ay, for your sake, avourneen machree—we will hear it wanst more.”
Mickey always played such tunes in his best style, and amidst a silence that was only broken by sobs, suppressed moanings, and the other tokens of profound sorrow. These gushes, however, of natural feeling soon passed away. In a few minutes the smiles returned, the mirth broke out again, and the lively dance went on as if their hearts had been incapable of such affection for the dead—affection at once so deep and tender. But many a time the light of cheerfulness plays along the stream of Irish feeling, when cherished sorrow lies removed from the human eye far down from the surface.
These preliminary amusements being now over, Mickey is conducted to the dance-house, where he is carefully installed in the best chair, and immediately the dancing commences. It is not my purpose to describe an Irish dance here, having done it more than once elsewhere. It is enough to say that Mickey is now in his glory; and proud may the young man be who fills the honourable post of his companion, and sits next him. He is a living storehouse of intelligence, a travelling directory for the parish—the lover’s text-book—the young woman’s best companion; for where is the courtship going on of which he is not cognizant? where is there a marriage on the tapis, with the particulars of which he is not acquainted? He is an authority whom nobody would think of questioning. It is now, too, that he scatters his jokes about; and so correct and well trained is his ear, that he can frequently name the young man who dances, by the peculiarity of his step.
“Ah ha! Paddy Brien, you’re there? Sure I’d know the sound of your smoothin’-irons any where. Is it thrue, Paddy, that you wor sint for down to Errigle Keerogue, to kill the clocks for Dan M’Mahon? But, nabuklish! Paddy, what’ll you have?”
“Is that Grace Reilly on the flure? Faix, avourneen, you can do it; devil o’ your likes I see any where. I’ll lay Shibby to a penny trump that you could dance your own namesake—the Calleen dhas dhun, the bonny brown girl—upon a spider’s cobweb, widout breakin’ it. Don’t be in a hurry, Grace dear, to tie the knot; I’ll wait for you.”
Several times in the course of the night a plate is brought round, and a collection made for the fiddler: this was the moment when Mickey used to let the jokes fly in every direction. The timid he shamed into liberality, the vain he praised, and the niggardly he assailed by open hardy satire; all managed, however, with such an under-current of good humour, that no one could take offence. No joke ever told better than that of the broken string. Whenever this happened at night, Mickey would call out to some soft fellow, “Blood alive, Ned Martin, will you bring me a candle?—I’ve broken a string.” The unthinking young man, forgetting that he was blind, would take the candle in a hurry, and fetch it to him.
“Faix, Ned. I knew you wor jist fit for’t; houldin’ a candle to a dark man! Isn’t he a beauty, boys?—look at him, girls—as cute as a pancake.”
It is unnecessary to say, that the mirth on such occasions was convulsive. Another similar joke was also played off by him against such as he knew to be ungenerous at the collection.
“Paddy Smith, I want a word wid you. I’m goin’ across the counthry as far as Ned Donnelly’s, and I want you to help me along the road, as the night is dark.”
“To be sure, Mickey. I’ll bring you over as snug as if you wor on a clane plate, man alive!”
“Thank you, Paddy; throth you’ve the dacency in you; an’ kind father for you, Paddy. Maybe I’ll do as much for you some other time.”
Mickey never spoke of this until the trick was played off, after which, he published it to the whole parish; and Paddy of course was made a standing jest for being so silly as to think that night or day had any difference to a man who could not see.
Thus passed the life of Mickey M’Rorey, and thus pass the lives of most of his class, serenely and happily. As the sailor to his ship, the sportsman to his gun, so is the fiddler attached to his fiddle. His hopes and pleasures, though limited, are full. His heart is necessarily light, for he comes in contact with the best and brightest side of life and nature; and the consequence is, that their mild and mellow lights are reflected on and from himself. I am ignorant whether poor Mickey is dead or not; but I dare say he forgets the boy to whose young spirit he communicated so much delight, and who often danced with a buoyant and careless heart to the pleasant notes of his fiddle. Mickey M’Rorey, farewell! Whether living or dead, peace be with you!
There is another character in Ireland essentially different from the mere fiddler—I mean the country dancing-master. In a future number of the Journal I will give a sketch of one who was eminent in his line. Many will remember him when I name Buckram-Back.