ed,
sometimes a jig is danced for our benefit. The spectators make a ring,
and the chosen dancers go into the middle, where their steps are watched
by a most critical and discriminating audience with the most minute and
intense interest. Our Molly is one of the best jig dancers among the
girls here (would that she were half as clever at cooking!); but if you
want to see an artist of the first rank, you must watch Kitty O'Rourke,
from the neighbouring village of Dooclone. The half door of the barn is
carried into the ring by one or two of her admirers, whom she numbers
by the score, and on this she dances her famous jig polthogue, sometimes
alone and sometimes with Art Rooney, the only worthy partner for her in
the kingdom of Kerry. Art's mother, 'Bid' Rooney, is a keen matchmaker,
and we heard her the other day advising her son, who was going to
Dooclone, to have a 'weeny court' with his colleen, to put a clane
shirt on him in the middle of the week, and disthract Kitty intirely by
showin' her he had three of thim, annyway!

Kitty is a beauty, and doesn't need to be made 'purty wid cows'--a feat
that the old Irishman proposed to do when he was consummating a match
for his plain daughter. But the gifts of the gods seldom come singly,
and Kitty is well fortuned as well as beautiful; fifty pounds, her own
bedstead and its fittings, a cow, a pig, and a web of linen are supposed
to be the dazzling total, so that it is small wonder her deluderin' ways
are maddening half the boys in Ballyfuchsia and Dooclone. She has the
prettiest pair of feet in the County Kerry, and when they are encased in
a smart pair of shoes, bought for her by Art's rival, the big constable
from Ballyfuchsia barracks, how they do twinkle and caper over that half
barn door, to be sure! Even Murty, the blind fiddler, seems intoxicated
by the plaudits of the bystanders, and he certainly never plays so well
for anybody as for Kitty of the Meadow. Blindness is still common in
Ireland, owing to the smoke in these wretched cabins, where sometimes a
hole in the roof is the only chimney; and although the scores of
blind fiddlers no longer traverse the land, finding a welcome at all
firesides, they are still to be found in every community. Blind Murty
is a favourite guest at the Rooney's cabin, which is never so full that
there is not room for one more. There is a small wooden bed in the
main room, a settle that opens out at night, with hens in the straw
underneat