Page 2 of 10 Music on the Wind —by Gardiner M. Weir "I can't Danny." "Why not? Ah'll make ye a good husban', so Ah will. Your land an' my land put together is somethin' tae think about. A hunnerd an' forty-wan acres altogether! Ye'll lack for nothin'." But Uncle Danny went away a disappointed man. "What is it wimmen want, anyway," he said to me. It was Easter and I was off from school. Uncle Danny and I were out one afternoon counting the newborn lambs when the dog barked and pointed his nose down the hill. A woman was cycling down the lane with a bundle tied to the handlebars. "Now, who could thon be?"  Uncle Danny asked of the world at large. She stopped the bicycle and untied the bundle. Uncle Danny watched for a bit and you could see that curiosity was getting the better of him. The woman set up what looked like a table and got busy taking stuff out of a box. It was then that our dog set off running. “Come on!” whispered Uncle Danny “Ah got tae see what she’s up to.”  I was right beside him for my curiosity was getting the better of me too. “Maybe she’s only having herself a picnic,” I suggested. “Nah! She’s up to no good, by the looks of it! ”The damp soil of spring and the thorn bushes covered up the sounds of our getting there. We were right down by the stone hedge that borders the lane before she heard us and turned round. “Oh! You scared me.” She looked at us with bright blue eyes staring out of her head. When she realized we were just a couple of harmless crayturs her mouth crinkled up at the corners in a friendly way.  She had beautiful white teeth. “I hope I’m not trespassing?” “Naw!” Uncle Danny assured her. “It’s a right-away. Ye can do what ye want so ye can.” “That’s nice. I’m trying to paint the scene before me. Your house over there, is it?” “Aw aye! It is that!” Danny gave the woman a thorough going over with his eyes, sizing her up and down on the sly; her face in profile, the line of her nose and chin and her lips pouted as she concentrated on her work. She would look up and down at the scene before her and draw her brush across the paper; wash it out and try another color. In no time at all she had captured the scene of the glen as if she had taken a photo; only better; and in color; Uncle Danny’s thatched house with the trees around it and the figure of his mother standing out front in the yard tossing scraps to the hens. Even the auld turkey gobbler was in the picture, and the hillside behind and the glen sloping down to the sea. “Can Ah take a wee gander?” asked Uncle Danny for he was still standing off to the side looking more at her than at the painting. Continued on Music on the Wind, page 3. Copyright © Gardiner M. Weir.January 2000 Page updated 19 Nov  2005 Background and Ireland's OWN logo by Míchealín Ní Dhochartaigh Copyright © 2005 Ireland's OWN. All Rights Reserved.