" She would stay for "Dan Tucker."
Peter came in for "Tucker," an extra man being necessary,
and then off they went into
Clear the way for old Dan Tucker,
He's too late to come to supper.
Two by two they circled around, Peter in the centre
singing--
Old Dan Tucker
Was a fine old man--
Then back to the right--
He washed his face
In the frying-pan.
Then around in a circle hand in hand--
He combed his hair
On a wagon-wheel,
And died with the tooth-ache
In his heel!
As they let go of their partners' hands and went right
and left, Peter made his grand dash into the circle, and
when the turn of the tune came he was swinging his mother,
his father had Tonald's partner, and Tonald was in the
centre in the title roll of Tucker, executing some of
the most intricate steps that had ever been seen outside
of the Isle of Skye.
Then the tune changed into the skirling bag-pipe lilt
all Highlanders love--and which we who know not the Gaelic
profanely call "Weel may the keel row"--and Tonald got
down to his finest work.
He was in the byre now at home beyond the sea, and it
is not strange faces he will be seein', but the lads
and lassies of the Glen, and it is John McNeash who
holds the drone under his arm and the chanter in his
hands, and the salty tang of the sea comes up to him and
the peat-smoke is in his nostrils, and the pipes skirl
higher and higher as Tonald McKenzie dances the dance of
his forbears in a strange land.
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