"For she's my only daughter,
'Tis I myself that taught her
To wear spangled clothes
And twirl round on her toes,
And her name it was Julia McNaughter."
Between songs there were jokes, as at the minstrels.
"Ta-ta, James; au revore," they called to men mowing in the meadows.
"And havna ye a letter for us?" they asked the old woman at a lonely post-office.
To a beggar by the way-side they gave witticisms with their pennies:
"Canna ye sing a Gaelic song?"
"Canna ye stand on your head?"
"He's a Grecian!"
If the point of their jokes is not very clear, the fault is not mine; I am trying to be not witty, but realistic.
There was one in the party—a woman, of course—who remembered duty.
"Isn't it bonny country?" she kept asking. "And what's yon bonny glen, my laddie?" and she poked the guard.