She's All the World to Me

by Sir Hall Caine

Then Mr. Wag walked up the hill to Balladhoo, and, "Jemmy," said he, "it's mortal strange the way a man of your common-sense can't see that you'd wallop that squeaking ould Tommy-Bill-beg in a jiffy if you'd only consent to sing a ballad along with him. Do it at the Oiel Verree to-night, Jemmy, and bless me! that's the time when they'll be seeing what a weak, ould, cracked pot of a voice is at the craythur."

The gardener of Balladhoo fell an easier prey to the plot than the harbor-master, and a carol was selected. It was to be the ancient carol on the bad women mentioned in the Bible as having (from Eve downward) brought evil on mankind. This was accounted an appropriate ditty for these notable illustrations of bachelordom.

Now, Tommy-Bill-beg always kept his carols where Danny saw them—pinned against the walls of his cottage. The "Bad Women" was the carol which was pinned above the mantelpiece. It resembled all the others in being worn, crumpled, and dirty; but Tommy knew it by its locality, and could distinguish every other by its position.

Young Mr. Wag had somehow got what he called a "skute" into this literary mystery; so, after arranging with Jemmy Quark, he watched Tommy-Bill-beg out of his house, crept into it unobserved took down the carol pinned above the mantelpiece, and fixed up another in place of it from a different part of the room. The substituted carol happened, oddly enough, to be a second copy of the Same carol on "Bad Women," with this radical difference: that the one taken down was the version of the carol in English, and the one put up was the version in Manx.

The bells began to ring, and Tommy-Bill-beg donned his best petticoat and monkey-jacket, put the carol in his pocket, and went off to church.

Prayers had been said that night to a thin congregation, but no sooner were they done, and the parson had prepared to leave, than great crowds of young men and maidens trooped down the aisles. The young women went up into the gallery, and from that elevation shot down at their bachelor friends large handfuls of peas; but to what ancient spirit of usage, beyond the ancient spirit of mischief, the strange practise was due must be left as a solemn problem to the learned and curious antiquaries.

Nearly everybody carried a candle, the candles of the young women being usually adorned with a red ribbon and rosette. The brilliance of illumination was such as the dusky old church enjoyed only once in a year.

When everything was understood to be ready, and the parish clerk had taken his station inside the communion-rail, the business of the Oiel Verree began. First one man got up and sang a carol in English; then another sang a Manx carol. The latter depicted the physical sufferings of Christ, and described, with an intensity of "naturalism" even yet unknown to modern literature, how the "skin was torn off his shoulder-blade." But the great event of the night was to be the carol sung by the sworn enemies, Tommy-Bill-beg and Jemmy Quark Balladhoo.

At last their time came. They rose from opposite sides of the church, eyed each other with severe looks, stepped out of their pews, and walked down the aisle to the door of the porch. Then they turned about in silence, and, standing side by side, faced the communion.

The whispering in the gallery and tittering in the body were audible to all except the persons who were the occasion of them.