First in prominence among these three came Wat Ollamoor--if that were his real name--whom the seniors in our party had known well.
He was a woman's man, they said,--supremely so--externally little else.
To men be was not attractive; perhaps a little repulsive at times.
Musician, dandy, and company-man in practice; veterinary surgeon in theory, he lodged awhile in Mellstock village, coming from nobody knew where; though some said his first appearance in this neighbourhood had been as fiddle-player in a show at Greenhill Fair.
Many a worthy villager envied him his power over unsophisticated maidenhood--a power which seemed sometimes to have a touch of the weird and wizardly in it.

Personally he was not ill-favoured, though rather un- English, his complexion being a rich olive, his rank hair dark and rather clammy--made still clammier by secret ointments, which, when he came fresh to a party, caused him to smell like 'boys'-love' (southernwood) steeped in lamp-oil.

On occasion he wore curls--a double row--running almost horizontally around his head.

But as these were sometimes noticeably absent, it was concluded that they were not altogether of Nature's making.

By girls whose love for him had turned to hatred he had been nicknamed 'Mop,' from this abundance of hair, which was long enough to rest upon his shoulders; as time passed the name more and more prevailed.
His fiddling possibly had the most to do with the fascination he exercised, for, to speak fairly, it could claim for itself a most peculiar and personal quality, like that in a moving preacher.