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American Ballads and Folk Songs
you can play the rest of that tune, you kin stay in this cabin for the rest of your natural life. Git right down, hitch your horse and come in! I don't keer if it is a-rainin'! I don't keer if the beds is all full! We'll make a shake-down on the floor and ye kin kiver with the door. We hain't got much to eat, but what we have, you're mighty welcome to it. Here, Sal, old woman, fly round and git some corn-dodgers and bacon for the gentleman,—he knows the last part of the tune! Don't you, stranger—didn't you say you did? ... If you know it, you are a friend and a fbrother-come-to-me-arms'j if you don't, you've excited the tiger in my bosom and I'll have nothing short of your heart's blood! Git down, git down!
Stranger: Yes, I can play itj there's no use of your getting mad I'll play it for you as soon's I get something to eat.
Squatter: Fly 'round here, old woman, set the table, bring out the knives and forks.
{Here the little boy was to fut in his oar and, say: "Daddy, you know we haven't got any forks, and there ain't any knives to go 'round")
Squatter: Like to know why there ain't! There's little butch and big butch, and short handle and cob handle, and no handle at all, and if that ain't knives enough to set any gentleman's table in this country, I would like to know! Git off'n your hoss, stranger, and come in and have someth'n, and then play the rest of that tune.
The result of it is that the stranger gets off, takes the seat of the squatter and the fiddle, and then starts in playing the last part of the tune, but refuses to play the first part.
Then the squatter becomes interested and begins plying questions to the stranger 5 . . . to all of which the stranger replies with as much imperturbability as is possible and in the same style as he was replied to when he came} that is, he gives answers as short as may be, and then ends the discussion by playing the tune, always and only in the second part.
I have known this to last for an hour, and I have never seen an audi-
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