“No matter; we know what it’s about. That’s the way with the Legion; they don’t know much English, but they generally guess what I’m at.”
This argument seemed to satisfy all Mike’s remaining scruples; so placing himself in an attitude of considerable pretension as to grace, he began, with a voice of no very measured compass, an air of which neither by name nor otherwise can I give any conception; my principal amusement being derived from a tol-de-rol chorus of the major, which concluded each verse, and indeed in a lower key accompanied the singer throughout.
Since that I have succeeded in obtaining a free-and-easy translation of the lyric; but in my anxiety to preserve the metre and something of the spirit of the original, I have made several blunders and many anachronisms. Mr. Free, however, pronounces my version a good one, and the world must take his word till some more worthy translator shall have consigned it to immortal verse.
With this apology, therefore, I present Mr. Free’s song:
AIR,—Na Guilloch y’ Goulen.
Oh, once we were illigint people,
Though we now live in cabins of mud;
And the land that ye see from the steeple
Belonged to us all from the Flood.
My father was then King of Connaught,
My grand-aunt Viceroy of Tralee;
But the Sassenach came, and signs on it,
The devil an acre have we.
The least of us then were all earls,
And jewels we wore without name;
We drank punch out of rubies and pearls,—
Mr. Petrie can tell you the same.
But except some turf mould and potatoes,
There’s nothing our own we can call;
And the English,—bad luck to them!—hate us,
Because we’ve more fun than them all!
My grand-aunt was niece to Saint Kevin,
That’s the reason my name’s Mickey Free!
Priest’s nieces,—but sure he’s in heaven,
And his failins is nothin’ to me.
And we still might get on without doctors,
If they’d let the ould Island alone;
And if purple-men, priests, and tithe-proctors
Were crammed down the great gun of Athlone.
As Mike’s melody proceeded, the major’s thorough bass waxed beautifully less,—now and then, it’s true, roused by some momentary strain, it swelled upwards in full chorus, but gradually these passing flights grew rarer, and finally all ceased, save a long, low, droning sound, like the expiring sigh of a wearied bagpipe. His fingers still continued mechanically to beat time upon the table, and still his head nodded sympathetically to the music; his eyelids closed in sleep; and as the last verse concluded, a full-drawn snore announced that Monsoon, if not in the land of dreams, was at least in a happy oblivion of all terrestrial concerns, and caring as little for the woes of green Erin and the altered fortunes of the Free family as any Saxon that ever oppressed them.
There he sat, the finished decanter and empty goblet testifying that his labors had only ceased from the pressure of necessity; but the broken, half-uttered words that fell from his lips evinced that he reposed on the last bottle of the series.
“Oh, thin, he’s a fine ould gentleman!” said Mike, after a pause of some minutes, during which he had been contemplating the major with all the critical acumen Chantrey or Canova would have bestowed upon an antique statue,—“a fine ould gentleman, every inch of him; and it’s the master would like to have him up at the Castle.”