Various

“ The only instrument that can be said to rival the fiddle, is the bagpipe; but every person knows that Ireland is a loving country, and that at our fairs, dances, weddings, and other places of amusement, Paddy and his sweetheart are in the habit of indulging in a certain quiet and affectionate kind of whisper, the creamy tones of which are sadly curdled by the sharp jar of the chanter. It is not, in fact, an instrument adapted for love-making. ”

“ He is in truth a man whose lot in life is happily cast, and whose lines have fallen in pleasant places. The phase of life which is presented to him, and in which he moves, is one of innocent mirth and harmless enjoyment. Marriages, weddings, dances, and merry-makings of all descriptions, create the atmosphere of mirth and happiness which he ever breathes. With the dark designs, the crimes, and outrages of mankind, he has nothing to do, and his light spirit is never depressed by their influence. ”

“ Thus passed the life of Mickey M’Rorey, and thus pass the lives of most of his class, serenely and happily. As the sailor to his ship, the sportsman to his gun, so is the fiddler attached to his fiddle. His hopes and pleasures, though limited, are full. His heart is necessarily light, for he comes in contact with the best and brightest side of life and nature ”

“ Every house, too, every heart, and every hand, is open to him; he never knows what it is to want a bed, a dinner, or a shilling. Good heavens! what more than this can the cravings of a human heart desire! For my part, I do not know what others might aim at; but I am of opinion that in such a world as this, the highest proof of a wise man would be, a wish to live and die an Irish fiddler. ”

“ Our very clouds have to a great degree a distinctive character—the result of the humidity of our climate; they have a grandeur of form and size, and a force of light and shadow, that are but rarely seen in other countries; they are Irish clouds—at one moment bright and sunny, and in the next flinging their dark shadows over the landscape, and involving it in gloomy grandeur. It is in this striking force of contrast in almost every thing that we look at, that the peculiarity of our scenery chiefly consists ”

“ Nothing can exceed the overflowing kindness and affection with which the Irish fiddler is received on the occasion of a dance or merry-making; and to do him justice he loses no opportunity of exaggerating his own importance. From habit, and his position among the people, his wit and power of repartee are necessarily cultivated and sharpened. Not one of his jokes ever fails—a circumstance which improves his humour mightily; for nothing on earth sustains it so much as knowing, that, whether good or bad, it will be laughed at. ”

“ The education of the Indian child is an object of the most profound interest, not only to his own family but to the whole tribe. He is taught to love his country and tribe, to contemn falsehood, to reverence age, to be modest and silent; he is strictly enjoined to reward a kindness, but also to avenge an injury; to aid and guard a friend, but also to injure, by every means in his power, and relentlessly to persecute, an enemy; to abhor theft, unless it be practised on the property of an enemy, when it is called highly meritorious. ”

“ The colours with which Nature has painted the surface of our island are equally peculiar. There is no variety of green, whether of depth or vivid brightness, which is not to be found covering it; they are hues which can be seen nowhere else in equal force; and even our bogs, which are so numerous, with all their mutations of colour, now purple, and anon red, or brown, or black, by their vigorous contrasts give additional beauty and life to the landscape, and assist in imparting to it a sort of national individuality. ”

“ In fact, with great respect for my friend Mr Bunting, the fiddle it is that ought to be our national instrument, as it is that which is most closely and agreeably associated with the best and happiest impulses of the Irish heart. The very language of the people themselves is a proof of this; for whilst neither harp nor bagpipe is ever introduced as illustrating peculiarities of feeling by any reference to their influence, the fiddle is an agreeable instrument in their hands, in more senses than one. ”

“ It is indeed a melancholy alternative that devotes the poor sightless lad to an employment that is ultimately productive of so much happiness to himself and others. This alternative is seldom resorted to, unless when some poor child—perhaps a favourite—is deprived of sight by the terrible ravages of the small-pox. In life there is scarcely any thing more touching than to witness in the innocent invalid the first effects, both upon himself and his parents, of this woeful privation. ”

“ Truth to him is like a mountain landmark to the pilot: he fixes his eye upon a point that does not move, and he enters the harbour in safety. On the contrary, one who despises truth and loves falsehood is like a pilot who takes a piece of drift-wood for his landmark, which changes with every changing wave. ”

“ Having thus shown that the fiddle and its music are mixed up so strongly with our language, feelings, and amusements, it is now time to say something of the fiddler. In Ireland it is impossible, on looking through all the classes of society, to find any individual so perfectly free from care, or, in stronger words, so completely happy, as the fiddler, especially if he be blind, which he generally is. ”

“ The native American is deeply imbued with religious feeling; no Indian who maintains a fair character in his tribe is without some place of retirement for worship and meditation; a lonely tree, a nook in the bank of a stream, the hollow of a rock, are frequently selected for this purpose; nor is the habit confined to such tribes as have no fixed religious ceremonies; it was practised by the Mandans and others, many of whom possessed oratories such as we have just described, in addition to their “medicine” or “mystery lodges,” which may be called their public temples. ”

“ Surely such a man is important, as filling up with enjoyment so many of the painful pauses in human misery. He is a thousand times better than a politician, and is a true philosopher without knowing it. Every man is his friend, unless it be a rival fiddler, and he is the friend of every man, with the same exception. ”

“ Silence and solitude the most profound are impressed on all its time-worn features; we are among the dead only; and we are forced, as it were, to converse with the men of other days. In all our frequent visits to these ruins we never saw a living human being among them but once. It was during a terrific thunder-storm, which obliged us to seek shelter behind one of the stone crosses for an hour. The rain poured down in impetuous torrents, and the clouds were so black as to give day the appearance of night. ”

“ The first time I ever heard Mickey play was also the first I ever heard a fiddle. Well and distinctly do I remember the occasion. The season was summer—but summer was summer then—and a new house belonging to Frank Thomas had been finished, and was just ready to receive him and his family. The floors of Irish houses in the country generally consist at first of wet clay; and when this is sufficiently well smoothed and hardened, a dance is known to be an excellent thing to bind and prevent them from cracking. ”

“ They listened to his music when he felt disposed to play for them, but it only gratified their curiosity, instead of enlivening their hearts—a fact sufficiently evident from the circumstance of their seldom attempting to dance to it. This preference, however, of the fiddle to the harp, is a feeling generated by change of times and circumstances, for it is well known that in days gone by, when Irish habits were purer, [Pg 53] older, and more hereditary than they are now, the harp was the favourite instrument of young and old, of high and low. ”

“ The very tones of it act like a charm upon him, and produce in his head such a bland and delightful intoxication, that he finds himself making love just as naturally as he would eat his meals. It opens all the sluices of his heart, puts mercury in his veins, gives honey to a tongue that was, Heaven knows, sufficiently sweet without it, and gifts him with a pair of feather heels that Mercury might envy ”

“ These preliminary amusements being now over, Mickey is conducted to the dance-house, where he is carefully installed in the best chair, and immediately the dancing commences. It is not my purpose to describe an Irish dance here, having done it more than once elsewhere. It is enough to say that Mickey is now in his glory; and proud may the young man be who fills the honourable post of his companion, and sits next him. He is a living storehouse of intelligence, a travelling directory for the parish—the lover’s text-book—the young woman’s best companion ”

“ Then commenced the usual battle, as to who should be honoured by permission to carry the fiddle-case. Oh! that fiddle-case! For seven long years it was an honour exclusively allowed to myself, whenever Mickey attended a dance any where at all near us; and never was the Lord Chancellor’s mace—to which, by the way, with great respect for his lordship, it bore a considerable resemblance—carried with a prouder heart or a more exulting eye. But so it is—
“These little things are great to little men.” ”

“ He who walks by the light of it has the advantage of the mid-day sun; he who would spurn it, goes forth amid clouds and darkness. There is no way in which a man strengthens his own judgment, and acquires respect in society so surely, as by a scrupulous regard to truth. ”

“ The drone is an enemy to sentiment, and it is an unpleasant thing for a pretty blushing girl to find herself put to the necessity of bawling out her consent at the top of her lungs, which she must do, or have the ecstatic words lost in its drowsy and monotonous murmur. The bagpipe might do for war, to which, with a slight variation, it has been applied; but in our opinion it is only fit to be danced to by an assembly of people who are hard of hearing. ”

“ The ceremony by which this dignity is attained among the Sioux, is one involving no little suffering. The candidate for this honour has innumerable splints of wood driven through the most sensitive parts of his flesh, and being suspended by some of these to a pole, with his medicine bag in his hand, he is expected to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the sun from its rising to its setting, when he is taken down, and entitled to be called a medicine or mystery man for the remainder of his life ”

“ Indians sometimes drive whole herds of buffalo, elk, and deer, into impassable ravines or to the brink of precipices, when they slaughter as many as they may need; but none were ever destroyed wantonly before the introduction of whisky; whereas at this time whole herds are killed merely for their skins, the flesh being left to decay on the prairies; and this, by depopulating the hunting-grounds, induces famine, and is another cause of Indian suffering and final extinction.
Buffaloes are often destroyed by the panther; solitary individuals sometimes fall a prey to a pack of wolves ”

“ All believe in a future state of existence—in the reward of the good by an eternal residence in pleasant and plentifully supplied hunting grounds beyond the great waters—and in the punishment of the wicked by transformation into some loathsome beast, reptile, or insect, and by banishment to barren, parched, and desolate regions, the abodes of bad spirits, for a period proportionate to the enormity of their guilt. ”

“ Gaming.—I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in his hand; and all that follows in his fatal career from that fatal time is only sharpening the dagger before he strikes it to his heart.—Cumberland. ”

“ The buffalo is sometimes hunted by men who have partially concealed their persons in the skin of the white wolf, and who creep to within shot of their game by favour of this disguise; for the buffalo, accustomed to the white wolf, and safe from his attack unless, when, separated from the herd, he becomes the prey of a pack, permits the approach of the Indian thus masked, the latter being careful to keep to leeward of his game, whose scent is very acute. ”

“ We are, however, not so easy of belief in a case so much at variance with the ordinary regulations of nature; at the same time that we are free to admit that it is hard to conceive what motive the young man or his parents could have for carrying on such an imposition, as the latter endeavoured at first to conceal the matter altogether, and, in the next place, have repeatedly refused money offered by their respectable visitors, though, in fact, their means are a good deal diminished by the hospitality extended to each successive guest ”

“ The fiddle, however, is the instrument of all others most essential to the enjoyment of an Irishman. Dancing and love are very closely connected, and of course the fiddle is never thought of or heard, without awakening the tenderest and most agreeable emotions. ”

“ This last notice, and many others of the kind which occur in our Annals, are of great value in showing the original uses of our round towers, as set forth in Mr Petrie’s Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland, now in course of publication.
In concluding these notices of a spot so long the abode of the piety, art, and learning of remote times, we may add, that in its present deserted and ruined state it is a scene of the deepest and most solemn interest; and the mind must indeed be dull and earthly in which it fails to awaken feelings of touching and permanent interest. ”