as, in short, the very next thing to seeing
the hunt itself.

The best of him was, he was noways stingy of his music, and many a
merry dance the boys and girls of the neighbourhood used to have in
his father's cabin; and he would play up music for them, that they
said used as it were to put quicksilver in their feet; and they all
declared they never moved so light and so airy to any piper's playing
that ever they danced to.

But besides all his fine Irish music, he had one queer tune of his
own, the oddest that ever was heard; for the moment he began to play
it everything in the house seemed disposed to dance; the plates and
porringers used to jingle on the dresser, the pots and pot-hooks used
to rattle in the chimney, and people used even to fancy they felt the
stools moving from under them; but, however it might be with the
stools, it is certain that no one could keep long sitting on them, for
both old and young always fell to capering as hard as ever they could.
The girls complained that when he began this tune it always threw them
out in their dancing, and that they never could handle their feet
rightly, for they felt the floor like ice under them, and themselves
every moment ready to come sprawling on their backs or their faces.
The young bachelors who wished to show off their dancing and their new
pumps, and their bright red or green and yellow garters, swore that it
confused them so that they never could go rightly through the _heel
and toe_ or _cover the buckle_, or any of their best steps, but felt
themselves always all bedizzied and bewildered, and then old and young
would go jostling and knocking together in a frightful manner; and
when the unlucky brat had them all in this way, whirligigging about
the floor, he'd grin and chuckle and chatter, for all the world like
Jacko the monkey when he has played off some of his roguery.

The older he grew the worse he grew, and by the time he was six years
old there was no standing the house for him; he was always making his
brothers burn or scald themselves, or break their shins over the pots
and stools. One time, in harvest, he was left at home by himself, and
when his mother came in she found the cat a-horseback on the dog, with
her face to the tail, and her legs tied round him, and the urchin
playing his queer tune to them; so that the dog went barking and
jumping about, and puss was mewing for the dear life, and slapping her
tail backwards and forwards, which, a