So here's to brave Maloney, and may he never go
Again to work in prison for the shootin' of the crow,
With his fol the diddle, fol the diddle daddy."
The reader of this story can well judge my utter literary simplicity at the time when I tell him that I was angry with Joe for the criticism he passed upon my poem. While blind to the defects of my own verses I was wide awake to those of Mullholland, and I waited, angrily eager, until Joe finished the song.
"It's rotten!" I exclaimed. "You surely do not think that it is better than mine. What does 'fol the diddle' mean? A judge would not say that to a prisoner. Neither would he say, 'May the Lord have mercy on your soul,' unless he was going to pass the sentence of death on the man."
"What you say is quite right," replied Joe. "But a song to be any good at all must have a lilt at the tail of it; and as to the judge sayin', 'May the Lord have mercy on your soul,' maybe he didn't say it, but if you have 'control' at the end of one line, what must you have at the end of the next one, cully? 'May the Lord have mercy on your soul' may be wrong. I'll not misdoubt that. But doesn't it fit in nicely?"
Moleskin gave me a square look of triumph, and went on with his harangue.
"Barrin' these two things, the song is a true one. Maloney did get seven days' hard for shootin' the crow, and I mind it myself. On the night of his release I saw him in Moran's model by the wharf, and it was in that same model that Mullholland sat down and wrote the song that I have sung to you. It's a true song, so help me God! but yours!—How do you know that we'll fatten at Kinlochleven? More apt to go empty-gutted there, if you believe me! Then you say 'up is up, and down is down.' Who says that they are not? No one will give the lie to that, and what's the good of sayin' a thing that everyone knows about? You've not even a lilt at the tail of your screed, so it's not a song, nor half a song; it's not even a decent 'Come-all-you.' Honest to God, you're a fool, Flynn! Wait till you hear Broken-Snout Clancy sing 'The Bold Navvy Man!' That'll be the song that will make your heart warm. But your song was no good at all, Flynn. If it had only a lilt to it itself, it might be middlin'."
I recited the verse about Evelyn Hope, and when I finished, Joe asked me what it was about. I confessed that I did not exactly know, and for an hour afterwards we walked together in silence.
Late in the evening we came to the King's Arms, a lonely public-house half-way between the Bridge of Orchy and Kinlochleven. We hung around the building until night fell, for Joe became interested in an outhouse where hens were roosting. By an estimation of the stars it was nearly midnight when both of us took off our boots, and approached the henhouse. The door was locked, but my mate inserted a pointed steel bar, which he always carried in his pocket, in the keyhole, and after he had worked for half a minute the door swung open and he crept in.