IRISH JIG.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1937, Page 14

IRISH JIG.

HAPPINESS RECIPE. GREAT-GRANDMOTHER AT 95. CAUSTIC COMMENTS ON 1937. Mrs. Annie Collins, of Williamstown. Victoria, is 95. but that's no reason why she wouldn't be doing an Irish jig for ye now, if ye'd play the music. Mrs. Collins still dances and singe to herself, because she has liked to dance and sing all her life—and that's the way to enjoy yourself, too, she said, not by "running round drinking and smoking and doing the silly things young girls do now." She is sorry for silly young girls— "they don't have any good times, and they make themselves look cheap." Of course, she was born in Ireland. Her parents brought her to Australia 87 years ago in the sailing ship (ircat Britain. They went to Kilmore. which took a week from Port Melbourne by bullock wagon. Her father wa* i policeman and helped to-hunt bushrangers. Every day when he was riding off he would call out cheerfully: "I might come back alive, or I mightn't." There were plenty of young people in the district, and their only amusement was dancing jigs and polka. The late Mr. John Collins, of Williamstown, her husband, built the 60-year-old house in Champion Road, North Williamstown, where Mrs. Collins still lives with her daughter, Mrs. Lawson, the only survivor of four children. There are six grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren. They attended her birthday party. To-dav Mrs. Collins goss round her place sweeping, gardening, shelling peas, full of lively talk—at 05. She likes the radio when it plays Irish songs, and the picture shows, too, but she" will tell you —straight—that we don't know how" to enjoy ourselves nowadays because we have forgotten how to dance and sing. And .she will do a bit of the liish jig —just to show you.