Girls here, no doubt, as elsewhere, lose
this trustful candor as they grow older.
Just as we were starting, the old woman screamed out from the door,
in a shrill voice, addressing the driver, "Did you see ary a sick man
'bout 'Tigonish?"
"Nary."
"There's one been round here for three or four days, pretty bad off;
's got the St. Vitus's. He wanted me to get him some medicine for it
up to Antigonish. I've got it here in a vial, and I wished you could
take it to him."
"Where is he?"
"I dunno. I heern he'd gone east by the Gut. Perhaps you'll hear of
him." All this screamed out into the night.
"Well, I'll take it."
We took the vial aboard and went on; but the incident powerfully
affected us. The weird voice of the old woman was exciting in
itself, and we could not escape the image of this unknown man, dancing
about this region without any medicine, fleeing perchance by night
and alone, and finally flitting away down the Gut of Canso. This
fugitive mystery almost immediately shaped itself into the following
simple poem:
"There was an old man of Canso,
Unable to sit or stan' so.
When I asked him why he ran so,
Says he, 'I've St. Vitus' dance so,
All down the Gut of Canso.'"
This melancholy song is now, I doubt not, sung by the maidens of
Antigonish.
In spite of the consolations of poetry, however, the night wore on
slowly, and soothing sleep tried in vain to get a lodgment in the
jolting wagon. One can sleep upright, but not when his head is every
moment knocked against the framework of a wagon-cover. Even a jolly
young Irishman of Plaster Cove, whose nature it is to sleep under
whatever discouragement, is beaten by these circumstances. He wishes
he had his fiddle along. We never know what men are on casual
acquaintance. This rather stupid-looking fellow is a devotee of
music, and knows how to coax the sweetness out of the unwilling
violin. Sometimes he goes miles and miles on winter nights to draw
the seductive bow for the Cape Breton dancers, and there is
enthusiasm in his voice, as he relates exploits of fiddling from
sunset till the dawn of day. Other information, however, the young
man has not; and when this is exhausted, he becomes sleepy again, and
tries a dozen ways to twist himself into a posture in which sleep
will be possible. He doubles up his legs, he slides them under the
seat, he sits on the wagon bottom; but the wagon swings and jolts and
knocks him about. His patience under this punishment is admirable,
and there is something pathetic in his restraint from profanity.
It is enough to look out upon the magnificent night; the moon is now
high, and swinging clear and distant; the air has grown chilly; the
stars cannot be eclipsed by the greater light, but glow with a
chastened fervor.
