Fair thee well, summer . . . Part 3 of 3

". . . Did you not know moonbeams are slick as soap, Davie?"

Davie gaped at me as if I already was askate on moonbeams, but he did the windows fine. Next I had him wash the blackboard, then fill our bucket with fresh drinking water from the creek. I swept and hummed, dusted and hummed. . .

"Do you know this old tune, Davie?" I asked, for it seemed to me an impossibly dim prospect that anyone should go through this wonderful thing, life, knowing only songs of Texans and horses. "You don't? That's odd, for it seems to be addressed to you."
"Me?"
"Surely. Listen to it."

Dancing at the rascal fair,
try it, Davie, if you dare,
hoof and shoe, stag and mare,
dancing at the rascal fair.

Davie whipped through the last of his tasks as if afraid my lunacy might be catching. "Is there anything more, Mr. McCaskill?"

. . . There was a thing more I wanted done, but I needed to be the doer. I went to the freshly washed blackboard and in my best hand, which was an urchin's scrawl compared to Anna Ramsay's, wrote large the next verse to come:


Dancing at the rascal fair,
moon and star, fire and air,
choose your mate and make a pair,
dancing at the rascal fair.

- excerpt from DANCING AT THE RASCAL FAIR, by Ivan Doig

(3:37 length)





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