  A ballad-singer has come into Ardara. It is late afternoon. He stands in the middle of the Diamond—a sunburnt, dusty figure, a typical Ishmael and stroller of the roads. The women have come to their doors to hear him, and a benchful of police, for lack of something better to do, are laughing at him from the barrack front. The ballad he is singing is about Bonaparte and the Poor Old Woman. Then he changes his tune to “The Spanish Lady”—a Dublin street-song: As I walked down thro’ Dublin city At the hour of twelve in the night, Who should I spy but a Spanish lady, Washing her feet by candlelight. First she washed them, and then she dried them Over a fire of amber coal: Never in all my life did I see A maid so neat about the sole! A STREET IN ARDARA. Finally he gives “I’m a Good Old Rebel,” a ballad of the type that became so popular in the Southern States of America after the Civil war: I’m a good old rebel—that’s what I am, And for this fair land of freedom I don’t care a damn; I’m glad I fought agin it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no one-horse pardon for anything I done. I followed old Marse Robert for four years nigh about, Got wounded in three places and starved at Point Look-Out: I cotched the rheumatism a-campin’ in the snow, But I killed a chance of Yankees, and I’d like to kill some moe. Two hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust, We got two hundred thousand before they conquered us: They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot— I wish it was two millions instead of what we got! And now the war is over and I can’t fight them any more, But I ain’t a-goin’ to love them—that’s sartin shor’; And I don’t want no one-horse pardon for what I was and am, And I won’t be reconstructed, and I don’t care a damn! He howls out the verses in disjointed, unmusical bursts. He acts with head and arms, and at places where he is worked up to a particular frenzy he takes a run and gives |
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