," said the old man, "he is looking back, and maybe he hears
you."

"Not he in throth. Sure he's partly bothered."

"How can he play the fiddle then, and be bothered?" said Coogan.

"Faix an' that's the very raison he is bothered; sure he moidhers the
ears off of him intirely with the noise of his own fiddle. Oh he's a
powerful fiddler."

"So I often heerd, indeed," said the old man.

"He bangs all the fiddlers in the counthry."

"And is in the greatest request," added Noonan.

"Yet he looks tatthered enough," said old Coogan.

"Sure you never seen a well dhrest fiddler yet," said Larry.

"Indeed, and now you remind me, I believe not," said the old man. "I
suppose they all get more kicks than ha'pence, as the saying is."

"Divil a many kicks Houligan gets; he's a great favorite intirely."

"Why is he in such distress then?" asked Coogan.

"Faith he's not in disthress at all; he's welkim everywhere he goes,
and has the best of atin' and dhrinkin' the place affords, wherever he
is, and picks up the coppers fast at the fairs, and is no way
necessiated in life; though indeed it can't be denied, as he limps
along there, that he has a great many ups and downs in the world."

This person, of whom the preceding dialogue treats, was a celebrated
fiddler in "these parts," and his familiar name of Hoppy Houligan was
acquired, as the reader may already have perceived, from his limping
gait. This limp was the consequence of a broken leg, which was one of
the consequences of an affray, which is the certain consequence of a
fair in Tipperary. Houligan was a highly characteristic specimen of an
Irish fiddler. As Larry Lanigan said, "You never seen a well dhrest
fiddler yet;" but Houligan was a particularly ill fledged bird of the
musical tribe. His corduroys have already been hinted at by Larry, as
well as his coat, which had lost half the skirt, thereby partially
revealing the aforesaid corduroys; or if one might be permitted to
indulge in an image, the half skirt that remained served to produce a
partial eclipse of the disc of corduroy. This was what we painters
call picturesque. By the way, the vulgar are always amazed that some
tattered remains of anything is more prized by the painter than the
freshest production in all its gloss of novelty. The fiddler's
stockings, too, in the neglected falling of their folds round his leg,
and the whisp of straw that fringed the opening of his gaping brogues,
were valuab