In those days, the favourite exhibitions were the jig, the reel, the hornpipe, and the country-dance. The last-named was considered dreadfully genteel--too aristocratic, in fact, for the multitude--and was learned and practiced (as courting and kissing often are) on the sly! The reel was countenanced--and no more. It was rather Scotch than Irish. Every one was expected to be able to go that laborious piece of amusement called "The Sailor's Hornpipe,"--faint vestiges of which are extant, to this hour, in nautical scenes,--as represented on the stage. Words cannot describe the evolutions of this remarkable dance, when exhibited with all the scientific varieties of which it was capable. The shuffles, cross-shuffles, jumps, hops, leaps, cuttings, slides, and so on, which were introduced, I am unable to describe. The manner in which "heel-and-toe" was employed and varied, some abler historian may record.
That the hours passed away on swift pinions at these dancing academies, may well be imagined. There was any quantity of flirtation at all times, and about half the marriages in the country owed their origin to these _réunions_. It is creditable to the proverbial good conduct of my countrywomen, that loss of character rarely, if ever, resulted from these free-and-easy meetings.
The real glory of the evening, however, was when the dancing-master, after a world of solicitation, would "take the flure," in order to give his admiring pupils a touch of his quality. On such an occasion, the door of the house would be lifted off its hinges, and placed in the centre of the floor. Abandoning the little _kit_ (a small-sized violin) which was his companion at all other exhibitions, he would allow a blind piper to "discourse most excellent music," and, on the door, would commence that wondrous display of agility, known, in my time, as "cover the buckle;"--a name probably derived from the circumstance that the dancing-master, while teaching, always wore large buckles in his shoes, and by the rapidity of motion with which he would make his "many twinkling feet" perpetually cross, would seem to "cover" the appendages in question. The great effort was to exhibit all varieties of steps and dances, without once quitting the prostrate door on which the exhibitor took his stand. The jumps, the "cuttings" in the air, the bends, the dives, the wrigglings, the hops--these were all critically regarded by his audience, and sometimes rewarded with such exclamations as "That's the way,"--"now for a double cut,"--"cover-the-buckle, ye divel,"--"Oh, then, 'tis he that handles his feet nately." At the conclusion, when he literally had danced himself almost off his legs, he would bow to the company, and--if he were very much a favourite, or had eclipsed all former displays--one of the prettiest girls in the room would go round, plate in hand, and make a collection for him. How the ten-penny and five-penny bits would tumble in, on those occasions--particularly if the fair collector could be induced to announce, with a blush and a smile, that she would take an extra donation on the usual terms, which meant that, for five shillings into the plate, any gallant swain might brush the dew from her own coral lips, on that occasion only and by particular desire. Can you doubt, for a moment, that the likely "boy" who had been sitting by her side all the evening, making babies on her eyes (as the saying is), and with his arm round her waist, just to steady her in her seat, would jump up and fling his crown-piece into the treasury--though the pecuniary sacrifice would probably involve his being obliged to dispense, for a few weeks more, with "the new Carline hat" on which his dandyism had set its mind, for his Sunday adorning!