The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth

Author:Barry Unsworth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-09T22:00:00+00:00

19

In the course of the following days, helped along by the wrestler’s two shillings and by farthings and halfpennies from his fiddling and singing, Sullivan got across the Humber at Hartgate, bypassed York and was approaching Bridlington when he found a fair in progress at a seaside village called Rushburn. It was late afternoon, he was tired and footsore, and it came to him that this would be a pleasant and healthful place to stay the night. He had sixteen pence; half of that would get him a plate of bread and cheese and onion and a bed. If he could add to his stock by playing and singing for an hour or two, he would be off to a good start next morning on what he felt would be the last leg of his journey to the birthplace of Billy Blair. In pursuance of this aim, he found a corner, spread his waistcoat and began, as usual, with a lively air to draw the people in. This time it was a tune he had first heard as a child in Ireland, “The Galway Piper.” To add to the performance he shuffled his feet and nodded his head and turned his body this way and that in time with the tune. When a knot of people had gathered, he lowered his fiddle and broke into song. He knew a great many songs and did not think much beforehand of which to chose. Now, stirred to a sort of nostalgia by what he had just been playing, he sang some of the words to it:

Loudly he can play or low,

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