After all, the old dancing-master, in spite of his most strenuous efforts to the contrary, bore, in simplicity of manners, in habits of life, and in the happy spirit which he received from and impressed upon society, a distant but not indistinct resemblance to the fiddler. Between these two, however, no good feeling subsisted. The one looked up at the other as a man who was unnecessarily and unjustly placed above him; whilst the other looked down upon him as a mere drudge, through whom those he taught practised their accomplishments. This petty rivalry was very amusing, and the “boys,” to do them justice, left nothing undone to keep it up. The fiddler had certainly the best of the argument, whilst the other had the advantage of a higher professional position. The one was more loved, the other more respected. Perhaps very few things in humble life could be so amusing to a speculative mind, or at the same time capable of affording a better lesson to human pride, than the almost miraculous skill with which the dancing-master contrived, when travelling, to carry his fiddle about him, so as that it might not be seen, and he himself mistaken for nothing but a fiddler. This was the sorest blow his vanity could receive, and a source of endless vexation to all his tribe. Our manners, however, are changed, and neither the fiddler nor the dancing-master possesses the fine mellow tints nor that depth of colouring which formerly brought them and their rich household associations home at once to the heart.
One of the most amusing specimens of the dancing-master that I ever met, was the person alluded to at the close of my paper on the Irish Fiddler, under the nickname of Buckram-Back. This man had been a drummer in the army for some time, where he had learned to play the fiddle; but it appears that he possessed no relish whatever for a military life, as his abandonment of it without even the usual forms of a discharge or furlough, together with a back that had become cartilaginous from frequent flogging, could abundantly testify. It was from the latter circumstance that he had received his nickname.
Buckram-Back was a dapper light little fellow, with a rich Tipperary brogue, crossed by a lofty strain of illegitimate English, which he picked up whilst in the army. His habiliments sat as tight upon him as he could readily wear them, and were all of the shabby-genteel class. His crimped black coat was a closely worn second-hand, and his crimped face quite as much of a second-hand as the coat. I think I see his little pumps, little white stockings, his coaxed drab breeches, his hat, smart in its cock but brushed to a polish and standing upon three hairs, together with his tight questionably coloured gloves, all before me. Certainly he was the jauntiest little cock living--quite a blood, ready to fight any man, and a great defender of the fair sex, whom he never addressed except in that highflown bombastic style so agreeable to most of them, called by their flatterers the complimentary, and by their friends the fulsome. He was in fact a public man, and up to every thing. You met him at every fair, where he only had time to give you a wink as he passed, being just then engaged in a very particular affair; but he would tell you again. At cockfights he was a very busy personage, and an angry better from half-a-crown downwards. At races he was a knowing fellow, always shook hands with the winning jockey, and then looked pompously about, that folks might see that he was hand and glove with those who knew something.