The boys and girls in a double row
Wait face to face till the magic bow
Shall whip the tune from the violin,
And the merry pulse of the feet begin.
In shirt of check, and tallowed hair,
The fiddler sits in the bulrush chair
Like Moses' basket stranded there
On the brink of Father Nile.
He feels the fiddle's slender neck,
Picks out the note, with thrum and check;