WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 99 



escaped from official red-tape entanglements and got to the 

 comparative wilds of the west of Shetland. 



Last night before we left Lerwick we entertained the Cus- 

 tom House and other officials very modestly, I must here 

 say, and they entertained us too in the way of songs and 

 arguments and stories. A Swedish captain joined the enter- 

 tainment and our evening meal of cormorants and light 

 beer without making a very wry face at either, and later he 

 gave us songs. He was slightly grizzled, with close-cropped 

 beard and hair, with brilliant blue eyes, and he shook his 

 head and beard and closed his eyes whilst he sang, and hit 

 off some of his notes most exquisitely truly sang Freuden's 

 " Der ganger tre Jenter i Solen " (Three maids towards the 

 sun went under the linden trees, and the flowers swept their 

 skirts as they sang tra-la, tra-la, tra-la-la-la), and he quite 

 excelled himself and shook his head twice as hard, in a 

 dainty ditty about a maid who argued she might do many 

 things " For mama did so when she var a flikke " ( I think 

 "flikke" stands for our "flapper"), and verses of this he 

 hummed and sang right into the middle of our most solemn 

 debates on international politics. Our friend of the " wyles " 

 and the Bow Bells accent, junior Customs officer, turned out 

 to be Southern Irish, and for the evening at least a strong 

 Home Ruler and Socialist. His song was too blue to catch 

 on, but his Socialism raised Henriksen's fighting spirit 

 to such heat that we had almost to hold the disputants. 

 But through all the smoke and heated discussion and 

 small amount of beer, our worthy Swede either slept or 

 awakened and sang " So did mama, when she were a 

 flikke," smiling and shaking his head in a most ingratiating 

 manner. 



Then we had a Gaelic song from MacDiarmid of the Isles, 

 and Glen Lyon, and with the Norwegian national song we 

 dispersed, the Swede still smiling, singing about the flikke, 

 and the Cockney from Cork firing off fluent platitudes. 

 Henriksen would hardly believe me when I told him that 

 any Southern Irishman could be just as eloquent and 

 excited on any side of any subject under the sun. I hope 

 they were not all drowned, for they went ashore in a very 



