Fiddler Cured the Camp
Wal, things they was deader’n old Billy-be-darn,
The boss was pernickity, cook wouldn’t yam;
For we’d heard ev’ry story old Beans had to spin,
And we hadn’t no longin’s to hear ’em agin;
Old Pitts, the head chopper, we’d pumped him out, too,
—And he swow’d that he’d sung ev’ry song that he knew.
As the rest wasn’t gifted, a sort of a damp
Old glister of silence fell over Peel’s camp.
The deacon-seat doldrums were blacker’n old Zip,
We’d set there an hour with never a yip,
’Cept the suckin’ o’ lips at the quackin’ T.D.‘s,
With the oof and the woo of the lonesome pine trees
Wistling over our smok’-hole. It grew on us, too;
Our thoughts got as thick an’ as musty an’ blue
As the cloud o’ tobacker smoke, mixed with the steams
From the woolens that dried on the stringers and beams.
Old Attegat Peter said we was bewitched;
He said that he seed the Old Gal when she twitched
A fistful o’ hair out the gray hosses’ tail
For a-makin’ witch tattin’. She’d hung on a nail
The queerisome web, so he said, an’ the holes
—They were fifty—they stood for the whole of our souls.
An’ there we would swing, an’ hang there we must,
Till the hoodoo was busted. Eternally cussed,
So he said, was the buffle-brained feller that dared
To touch the witch-web that was holding us snared.
Aw, we didn’t believe it—’tain’t like that we did!
But still we warn’t fussy! If we could get rid
Of the dumps by a charm, we was ready to try,
And Peter said singin’ would knock ’em sky high.
Wal, Peter said “singin’;” I can’t tell a lie,
’Twarn’t singin’, ’twarn’t nothin’—that mourn-
ful ki-yi!
That seemed like a beller in ev’ry man’s boot,
An’ ’twarn’t none surprisin’ the witch didn’t scoot.
So there did we set in a stew an’ a cloud,
A grumpy old, lumpy old dob of a crowd.
But oh, landsy sake a-Peter, when the fiddle come to camp,
W’y you wouldn’t know the place:
—Wuz a grin on ev’ry face
W’en we know’d the critter’d got it. An’ it reely seemed the lamp
Had a ’leetric light attachment; an’ you oughter heard us stamp
When that feller took his fiddle out an’ rosined up the bow.
Then he yawked an’ yeaked an’ yawked
’Twistin’ keys ontil she squawked,
An’ we set there jest a-gawpin’; not a word to say, but, oh,
We was right on pins an’ needles fer to have him let ’er go.
Tweedle-weedle, yeaky, yawky, ’nother twist, an’ pretty soon
He was waitin’ to begin,
With ’er underneath his chin;
He a-askin’, all a-grinnin’, “Wall, boys, name it; what’s your tune?”
An’ we hollered all in concert, “Whoop ’er up on ‘Old Zip Coon’!”
Oh, the deacon-seat had cushions an’ the bunks were stuffed with down,
While the feller sawed the strings;
We could feel our sproutin’ wings,
An’ we wanted to go soarin’, go a-sailin’, wear a crown,
Tear the ground up, whoop-ta-ra-ra, mix some red and paint the town.
Oh, he played the “Lights o’ London” an’ he played “The Devil’s Dream,”
—All the old ones—played ’em all;
Rode right on ’er—made ’er squall;
Didn’t stop to semi-quiver, tip-toe Nancy, pass the cream;
No; he let ’er go Jerooshy, clear the track an’
lots o’ steam.
Thought I’d never heerd such playin’ sence the Lord had giv’ me breath
An’ that P. I.—seems as if
He could put the bang an’ biff
In the chitter of a cat-gut like to touch the very peth
In yer marrow; like to raise yer from the very jaws of death.
So, oh, landsy sake a-Peter, when that fiddle come our way,
Say, you wouldn’t know the place,
—Wus a grin on ev’ry face.
—Went to workin’ like the blazes an’ our vittles set—an’ say,
Guess the Hoodoo flew to thunder when the Haw-Haw come to stay.