looking at me. She came over and she said, “What’s your name?” I told her, “I’m Angus MacLean.”

Oh, I looked around for quite a while and finally we got married. She was a fine, fine girl. Fine~looking too. She had one [child] in Boston. We were married nearly three years.

You know, when she died there, do you know all I had when I paid my board and my rent and everything? I had about 14 dollars left.... They had a meeting there and they made a hundred and forty dollars in the meeting [from] all my people that was up there and all her people. The casket there was mahogany.

I was going on 28 when I got married the second time.... You couldn’t hear your ears for a shivaree. Oh my, it was something awful. Great fun. Oh my goodness. They had a...saw. Come in, saw and all. And the hammer to hit it. You could hear it ring. And this fella had a gun...put a big load in it. “You were making so much noise,” he said..., “I didn’t hear my gun going off.” He never heard his gun!

My last wife was a schoolteacher. She taught school different places — in town, at my home, and Point Prim, and all them places, and Hazelbrook.... And she took an abscess on her liver and they couldn’t operate on it you know. She only lived two months like that. She died in the Island Hospital.1

Good Times

Oh, I been at different parties, you know, here, there, and everywhere... I played in Mattapan and up in Quincy and Boston. And Montreal, I played down there for them, and Charlottetown, and different places.

I was at — Albert was his first name [Murchison] — I was down there playing. And Jemima was there, MacEachern. Oh, there was a big crowd down there that night. I was there playing that night and he had a big washtub half—full of boiled lobsters for lunch for us. Yeah, we had a great old time.

I was at two or three places in Iona, different places there I played for them. And all the soldiers when they come home, I played for them.

Oh, I used to have good times. Now, I often was in bed at 10 o’clock at night and there ’d be a rap come at the door and I’d get up. They’d want me to play the fiddle somewheres. “Oh well, it’s pretty hard on me,” I says. So I’d get up anyhow and I’d go. I’d make more that night than I’d make

1. The Prince Edward Island Hospital, on Brighton Road in Charlottetown, is now the Prince Edward Home for senior citizens.

___________.________———— 208 BELFAST PEOPLE