BUCKRAM-BACK,

THE COUNTRY DANCING-MASTER.

IN those racy old times, when the manners and usages of Irishmen were more simple and pastoral than they are at present, dancing was cultivated as one of the chief amusements of life, and the dancing-master looked upon as a person essentially necessary to the proper enjoyment of our national recreation. Of all the amusements peculiar to our population, dancing is by far the most important, although certainly much less so now than it has been, even within our own memory. In Ireland it may be considered as a very just indication of the spirit and character of the people; so much so, that it would be extremly difficult to find any test so significant of the Irish heart, and its varied impulses, as the dance, when contemplated in its most comprehensive spirit. In the first place, no people dance so well as the Irish, and for the best reason in the world, as we shall show. Dancing, every one must admit, although a most delightful amusement, is not a simple, nor distinct, nor primary one. On the contrary, it is merely little else than a happy and agreeable method of enjoying music; and its whole spirit and character must necessarily depend upon the power of the heart to feel the melody to which the limbs and body move. Every nation, therefore, remarkable for a susceptibility of music, is also remarkable for a love of dancing, unless religion or some other adequate obstacle, arising from an anomalous condition of society, interposes to prevent it. Music and dancing being in fact as dependant the one on the other as cause and effect, it requires little argument to prove that the Irish, who

are so sensitively alive to the one, should in a very high degree excel at the other; and accordingly it is so.

Nobody, unless one who has seen and also felt it, can conceive the incredible, nay, the inexplicable exhilaration of the heart, which a dance communicates to the peasantry of Ireland. Indeed, it resembles not so much enthusiasm as inspiration. Let a stranger take his place among those who are assembled at a dance in the country, and mark the change which takes place in Paddy's whole temperament, physical and moral. He first rises up rather indolently, selects his own sweetheart, and assuming such a station on the floor as renders it necessary that both should "face the fiddler," he commences. On the dance then goes, quietly at the outset; gradually he begins to move more sprightly; by and bye the right hand is up, and a crack of the fingers is heard; in a minute afterwards both hands are up, and two cracks are heard, the hilarity and brightness of his eye all the time keeping pace with the growing enthusiasm that is coming over him, and which eye, by the way, is most lovingly fixed upon, or, we should rather say, into, that of his modest partner. From that partner he never receives an open gaze in return, but in lieu of this, an occasional glance, quick as thought, and brilliant as a meteor, seems to pour into him a delicious fury that is made up of love-sometimes a little of whiskey, kindness, pride of his activity, and a reckless force of momentary happiness that defies description. Now commences the dance in earnest. Up he bounds in a fling or a caper— crack go the fingers-cut and treble go the feet, heel and toe, right and left. Then he flings the right heel up to the ham, up again the left, the whole face in a furnace-heat of ecstatic delight.

"Whoo! whoo! your sowl! Move your elbow, Mickey, (this to the fiddler). Quicker, quicker, man alive, or you'll lose sight of me. Whoo! Judy, that's the girl; handle your

feet, avourneen; that's it, acushla! stand to me! Hurroo for our side of the house!"

And thus does he proceed with a vigour, and an agility, and a truth of time, that are incredible, especially when we consider the whirlwind of enjoyment which he has to direct. The conduct of his partner, whose face is lit up into a modest blush, is evidently tinged with his enthusiasm for who could resist it?—but it is exhibited with great natural grace, joined to a delicate vivacity that is equally gentle and animated, and in our opinion precisely what dancing in a female ought to be— a blending of healthful exercise and innocent enjoyment.

There are a considerable variety of dances in Ireland, from the simple "reel of two" up to the country-dance, all of which are mirthful. There are, however, others which are serious, and may be looked upon as the exponents of the pathetic spirit of our country. Of the latter, I fear, several are altogether lost; and I question whether there be many persons now alive in Ireland who know much about the Horo Lheig, which, from the word it begins with, must necessarily have been danced only on mournful occasions. It is only at wakes and funereal customs in those remote parts of the country where old usages are most pertinaciously clung to, that any elucidation of the Horo Lheig and others of our forgotten dances could be obtained. At present, I believe, the only serious one we have is the cotillon, or, as they term it in the country, the cuta-long. I myself have witnessed, when very young, a dance which, like the hornpipe, was performed but by one man. This, however, was the only point in which they bore to each other any resemblance. The one I allude to must in my opinion have been of Druidic or Magian descent. It was not necessarily performed to music, and could not be danced without the emblematic aids of a stick and handkerchief. It was addressed to an individual passion, and was, unquestionably, one of those symbolic dances that were used in pagan

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rites; and had the late Henry O'Brien seen it, there is no doubt but he would have seized upon it as a felicitous illustration of his system.

Having now said all we have to say here about Irish dances, it is time we should say something about the Irish dancingmaster; and be it observed, that we mean him of the old school, and not the poor degenerate creature of the present day, who, unless in some remote parts of the country, is scarcely worth description, and has little of the national character about him.

Like most persons of the itinerant professions, the old Irish dancing-master was generally a bachelor, having no fixed residence, but living from place to place within his own walk, beyond which he seldom or never went. The farmers were his patrons, and his visits to their houses always brought a holiday spirit along with them. When he came, there was sure to be a dance in the evening after the hours of labour, he himself good-naturedly supplying them with the music. In return for this they would get up a little underhand collection for him, amounting probably to a couple of shillings or half-a-crown, which some of them, under pretence of taking the snuff-box out of his pocket to get a pinch, would delicately and ingeniously slip into it, lest he might feel the act as bringing down the dancing-master to the level of the mere fiddler. He, on the other hand, not to be outdone in kindness, would, at the conclusion of the little festivity, desire them to lay down a door, on which he usually danced a few favourite hornpipes to the music of his own fiddle. This, indeed, was the great master-feat of his art, and was looked upon as such by himself, as well as by the people.

Indeed, the old dancing-master had some very marked outlines of character peculiar to himself. His dress, for instance, was always far above the fiddler's, and this was the pride of his heart. He also made it a point to wear a castor,