I struck up another dance--'Paddy get up'--and the 'fear lionta' and
the first dancer went through it together, with additional rapidity
and grace, as they were excited by the presence of the people who
had come in. Then word went round that an old man, known as Little
Roger, was outside, and they told me he was once the best dancer on
the island.
For a long time he refused to come in, for he said he was too old to
dance, but at last he was persuaded, and the people brought him in
and gave him a stool opposite me. It was some time longer before he
would take his turn, and when he did so, though he was met with
great clapping of hands, he only danced for a few moments. He did
not know the dances in my book, he said, and did not care to dance
to music he was not familiar with. When the people pressed him again
he looked across to me.
'John,' he said, in shaking English, 'have you got "Larry Grogan,"
for it is an agreeable air?'
I had not, so some of the young men danced again to the 'Black
Rogue,' and then the party broke up. The altercation was still going
on at the cottage below us, and the people were anxious to see what
was coming of it.
About ten o'clock a young man came in and told us that the fight was
over.
'They have been at it for four hours,' he said, 'and now they're
tired.'
Indeed it is time they were, for you'd rather be listening to a man
killing a pig than to the noise they were letting out of them.
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