iful old town.

"I never heard those words before," said the fiddler, after I had
finished the first stanza.

"Get on with you," said I.

"Regular Orange words!" said the fiddler, on my finishing the second
stanza.

"Do you choose to get on?" said I.

"More blackguard Orange words I never heard!" cried the fiddler, on my
coming to the conclusion of the third stanza. "Divil a bit farther will
I play; at any rate till I get the shilling."

"Here it is for you," said I; "the song is ended, and, of course, the
tune."

"Thank your hanner," said the fiddler, taking the money, "your hanner has
kept your word with me, which is more than I thought your hanner would.
And now your hanner let me ask you why did your hanner wish for that
tune, which is not only a blackguard one but quite out of date; and where
did your hanner get the words?"

"I used to hear the tune in my boyish days," said I, "and wished to hear
it again, for though you call it a blackguard tune, it is the sweetest
and most noble air that Ireland, the land of music, has ever produced.
As for the words, never mind where I got them; they are violent enough,
but not half so violent as the words of some of the songs made against
the Irish Protestants by the priests."

"Your hanner is an Orange man, I see. Well, your hanner, the Orange is
now in the kennel, and the Croppies have it all their own way."

"And perhaps," said I, "before I die, the Orange will be out of the
kennel and the Croppies in, even as they were in my young days."

"Who knows, your hanner? and who knows that I may not play the old tune
round Willie's image in College Green, even as I used some twenty-seven
years ago?"

"Oh then you have been an Orange fiddler?"

"I have, your hanner. And now as your hanner has behaved like a
gentleman to me I will tell ye all my history. I was born in the city of
Dublin, that is in the village of Donnybrook, as I tould your hanner
before. It was to the trade of bricklaying I was bred, and bricklaying I
followed till at last, getting my leg smashed, not by falling off the
ladder, but by a row in the fair, I was obliged to give it up, for how
could I run up the ladder with a patten on my foot, which they put on to
make my broken leg as long as the other. Well your hanner, being obliged
to give up my bricklaying, I took to fiddling, to which I had always a
natural inclination, and played about the streets, and at fairs, and
wakes, and weddings. A