RACY IRISH STORIES.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 301, 29 August 1908, Page 7

RACY IRISH STORIES.

Anecdotes of concert-touring and entertaining in Ireland are given by Dr W. A. Houston Gollisson —clergyman and musician—in his book, “ Dr Collisson In and On Ireland.” He once attended a cathedral festival, and found an altercation going on at the door between an old gentleman who had no ticket and the policeman on duty. The old gentleman, indignant at having to procure a ticket to enter a church, exclaimed that he “ wondered whether we should require tickets to get into Heaven ?” “ Possibly not, sir,” returned the po iceman, “ but you won t heai Ml dame Albani there!” A local musician at Carlow told him that that afternoon a farmer, k had called on him and asked him to give his daughter singing lessons, and added that as a particular favour he wanted him to teach her to “ sing in Italics !” Dr Collisson at a musical party in Tipperary played Mendelssonn s “ Rondo Capriccioso,” a valse of Chopin’s, and finally a mazurka of his own. After the third, the , hostess rushed up to him and declared that “ she liked the last piece the best of all the three, but she supposed it showed her own bad taste to like rubbishy little trifles like that!” At a concert near Cork an impresario was in great difficulties over a trio for a violin, pianoforte and harmonium. A kindly member of the audience offered his help and was told that the harmonium was lower than the piano' 11 Oh! never mind that!” he said, with an encouraging slap on the back ; come and put a couple of bricks under it !” Just before a performance of his at a hydro an old lady came up to him and said, “ I see we are to have all your own compositions to-day. Are we not going to have some good music as well ?” At Gorey another lady came up at the close of an entertainment and said that she had enjoyed it very much indeed, but what she liked best was his singing of “ Maguire’s Motor-bike “it was,” she explained, “ so delightfully vulgar!” It was Mr Percy French who used to introduce one of his songs by saying, “ This song is a little vulgar —I think you’ll like it.” An improvement on the wellknown mushroom-gathering story is told by an English commercial traveller. After waiting two hours in a railway waiting-room for an over-due train, he was at last told by the stationmaster that “ she ” was near at hand ; “ because the engine-driver’s dog had been sighted, running along about a quarter mile down the line.” A Sunday school boy once remonstrated with him for spending his money too freely, for, he explained, “if you were to save your money you’d be a gentleman, sir, and then you needn’t be a clergyman !” At Enniscorthy he had given his photograph to a lady, and seeing it lying on her table he observed, “ Nearly as ugly as the original, eh ?” “ Oh, by no means, Dr Collisson !” was her ambiguous reply.