After walking about a mile I overtook a man with a game leg…. In his hand he carried a fiddle. “Good morning to you,” said I. “A good marning to your hanner, a merry afternoon and a roaring joyous evening—that is the worst luck I wish to ye.” “Are you a native of these parts?” said I. “Not exactly, your hanner—I am a native of the city of Dublin, or, what’s all the same thing, of the village of Donnybrook which is close by it.”... “You are a professor of music, I suppose?” “And not a very bad one, as your hanner will say if you allow me to play you a tune.” “Can you play Croppies Lie Down?” “I cannot, your hanner, my fingers never learnt to play such a blackguard tune; but if ye wish to hear Croppies Get Up I can oblige ye.” “You are a Roman Catholic, I suppose?” “I am nat, your hanner—I am a Catholic to the backbone, just like my father before me. Come, your hanner, shall I play ye Croppies Get Up ?” “No,” said I; “it’s a tune that doesn’t please my ears. If, however, you choose to play Croppies Lie Down, I’ll give you a shilling.” “Your hanner will give me a shilling? ” “Yes,” said I; “if you play Croppies Lie Down: but you know you cannot play it, your fingers never learned the tune.” “They never did, your hanner; but they have heard it played of ould by the blackguard Orange fiddlers of Dublin on the first of July, when the Protestant boys used to walk round Willie’s statue on College Green—so if your hanner gives me the shilling they may perhaps bring out something like it.”… Thereupon the fiddler, taking his bow and shouldering his fiddle, struck up in first-rate style the glorious tune, which I had so often heard with rapture in the days of my boyhood in the barrack yard of Clonmel; whilst I, walking by his side as he stumped along, caused the welkin to resound with the words, which were the delight of the young gentlemen of the Protestant academy of that beautiful old town.… “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.” …[L]ong after I had left him I could hear him playing on his fiddle in first-rate style the beautiful tune of “ Down, down, Croppies Lie Down.” << less