"They laid themselves down beneath a fir-tree,
And a wonderful dream then dreamed the three,
(All.) Husch, husch! bang, bang! trara!"
Here a tall Italian-looking keeper, who hailed from the Tyrol, and who was sitting next to Spiegelmann, sang forth the experiences of the first dreamer—
"I dreamt that as I went beating the bush,
There ran out before me the deer—husch, husch!"
His neighbour, Bagel, who had once been complimented by Kaiser Francis of Austria, and was never done with the story, personated the second dreamer—
"And as from the yelp of the beagle he sprang,
I riddled his bide for him there—bang, bang!"
The third from Spiegelmann, a short stout little man, called Falz, who had once been a clockmaker in Whitechapel, was the next dreamer—
"So soon as the deer on the ground I saw,
I merrily sounded my horn—trara!"
The burden of the tale now returned to Spiegelmann, who thus finished it, and pointed the moral—
"Lo! as they lay there and chatted, these three,
Swiftly the wild deer ran past the tree:
And ere the three huntsmen had seen him aright,
O'er hill and o'er valley he'd vanished from sight!
(All.) Husch, husch! bang, bang! trara!
Husch, husch! bang, bang! trara!"
"I declare," said little Mrs. Christmas, standing on tiptoe, to peep in at the window on the bronzed faces, and the dim candle, and the long narrow tables in the low-roofed room, "it is quite like a scene in a play, though they don't sing very well."