Page:Shiana - Peadar Ua Laoghaire.djvu/238

224 and sweet was the second voice; and they kept time with each other and with the music in perfect harmony. Then, as if a door had been opened, all the music swelled and rose with great power. The movement became more rapid, the energy grew greater, and an added sweetness came into the voices. They went rising above each other and sinking below each other. They went whirling around each other. They were down upon the floor. They were up among the rafters. They were in this corner, in that corner, in the other corner—till a kind of nervousness began to come upon the people, who were giving side-looks over their shoulders to see if anyone had spoken.

Then the music again increased in power, as if another door had been opened, larger than the first. There arose a swelling and a strength and a volume of musical sound. It turned and it twisted and it rolled along the floor, and along the walls, and along the roof of the house, overhead. It was sometimes a bellow, and sometimes a wild shout, and sometimes a loud weeping, and sometimes a heart-breaking cry, that you would think would draw a sigh from a stone. Again it was a burst of laughter and merriment and delight and gladness, such as you would think would raise the dead out of the earth—the women's voices and the child-voices speaking and responding distinctly through the loudest of the bellowing, through the bitterest of the weeping, through the merriest of the laughter; and then there would be heard now and again, amid the whole commotion, a long, sharp, wild, terrible shriek, which would freeze the blood of all who heard it.