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Updated: June 29, 2025
There may, perhaps, be some choice of expression, and some excellence of arrangement, that cannot be shewn in translation. After we had exhausted the Erse poems, of which Dr. Johnson said nothing, Miss M'Lean gave us several tunes on a spinnet, which, though made so long ago as in 1667, was still very well toned. She sung along with it. Dr.
Then she to whom I pris'ner was, Said to me, tauntingly, Now cheer your heart, and sing a song And tune your mind to joy. Alas! said I, how can I frame My heavy heart to sing, Or tune my mind, while thus enthrall'd By such a wicked thing! But yet, if from my innocence I, ev'n in thought, should slide, Then let my fingers quite forget The sweet spinnet to guide.
God bless him for his goodness to me! Dinner not being ready, the young ladies proposed a tune upon the spinnet. I said, I believed it was not in tune. They said, they knew it was but a few months ago. If it is, said I, I wish I had known it; though indeed, ladies, added I, since you know my story, I must own, that my mind has not been long in tune, to make use of it.
We drink coffee, we drink tea, we pick clever little holes in our absent neighbors, in brisk duet and tortuous solo we hammer the blameless spinnet, we sing affecting songs about "fair doves," and "cleansing fires," and people "far away," and still our deliverers come not. They must hear our appealing melodies clearly through the walls and doors, but still they come not.
As I grew older I had masters in dancing and the spinnet, and my mother herself was most careful of my deportment. Likewise she taught me such practices of our religion as I had not learnt from my grandmother, and then it was I found that I was to be brought up differently from Eustace and the others. I cried at first, and declared I would do like Eustace and my father.
"I'll forbid him my house!" cries Father, starting up. "I'll send a bullet through his head! I'll October him, and sober him too, if he has not a care! Fan! Where's Fan? Go to the spinnet, girl, and sing me a right good Tory song, to take the taste of that abominable stuff out of my mouth."
To the right was an open door, giving admittance to a room hung with tapestry, with a small carpet in the centre of the floor, and a table prepared for the morning meal. There was a certain cheerfulness about it, though it was bare of furniture; but there was an easy chair, a settee, a long couch, a spinnet, and an embroidery frame, so that altogether it had capabilities of being lived in.
Like her brother, she was ardent and energetic, if she had aught to be ardent about; she was addicted to novels, when she could get them from the dirty little circulating library at Mohill; she was passionately fond of dancing, which was her chief accomplishment; she played on an old spinnet which had belonged to her mother; and controlled the motions and actions of the two barefooted damsels who officiated as domestics at Ballycloran.
He could then sleep at nights, permit his wife and children to share their frugal stores with those who needed, troll "Ere around the huge oak," while his wife accompanied him on the spinnet, and encourage his daughters to wed men in what was their then sphere of life, rather than those who might not consider the gentle blood they inherited, and their superior education, a sufficient set-off to their limited means and humble station.
But the Prince appreciated us, and wished to do more for us than our father permitted. We had books always when we wished them; and my sister Marie learned to play on a spinnet that they had up there, and had belonged, they said, to the Leczinski themselves. "I wasn't interested in spinnets. That castle held something better for me.
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