"Le deuxième plus habile
L'embrassant sous le menton"--
made me redden, and the envoi nigh burned me alive
with blushes, yet was rapturously applauded, and the
patroon fell a-choking with his gross laughter.
Then Walter Butler would sing, and, I confess, did
it well, though the song was sad and the words too
melancholy to please.
"I know a rebel song," cried Colonel Claus. "Here,
give me that fiddle and I'll fiddle it, dammy if I don't--ay,
and sing it, too!"
In a shower of gibes and laughter the fiddle was
fetched, and the Indian fighter seized the bow and drew
a most distressful strain, singing in a whining voice:
"Come hearken to a bloody tale,
Of how the soldiery
Did murder men in Boston,
As you full soon shall see.
It came to pass on March the fifth
Of seventeen-seventy,
A regiment, the twenty-ninth.
Provoked a sad affray!"
"Chorus!" shouted Captain Campbell, beating time:
"Fol-de-rol-de-rol-de-ray--
Provoked a sad affray!"
"That's not in the song!" protested Colonel Claus, but everybody sang it
in whining tones.
"Continue!" cried Captain Campbell, amid a burst of laughter. And Claus
gravely drew his fiddle-bow across the strings and sang:
"In King Street, by the Butcher's Hall
The soldiers on us fell,
Likewise before their barracks
(It is the truth I tell).
And such a dreadful carnage
In Boston ne'er was known;
They killed Samuel Maverick--
He gave a piteous groan."